Doctors hold line, earlier knowledge of CTE, what if American football becomes 18+ in late 1960s?

What I have in mind is that a number of U.S. states are passing laws making tackle football 18+ right around the time of the first Superbowl between the Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs on Jan. 15, 1967. . .
Back to my starting POD . . .

the way many school districts may do it, say around 1965, is to end junior high football in its entirety (ages 12 to 14), and then have one more season of high school football, shifted to spring-only to de-emphasize the sport, and only have a regular season with no district championship or anything like that.
 
and they may invite the students onto the field . . .

I mean, the end of football might be weird and wondrous and great fun. As a result of a random drawing, or as a reward for volunteer work, or as a reward to an entire class, students might be invited onto the field to catch passes, to run sweeps, and other clever drills.

Maybe the "game" is played for one hour before halftime, then the marching band and other activities, and then one hour after halftime, keeping it shorter and sweeter than an actual serious game. And maybe the linemen do clever drills with blocking sleds, even a race through a short shalom course? The goal is to continue to develop and demonstrate skills for the chances of a college scholarship if that's what the player wishes to do. A significant side benefit is that the player is a lot less likely to get injured his senior year!

And during the "game," the two teams may mix it up so that each quarterback works with the receivers of the both teams, we're corralling runners rather than tackling them, and we're most definitely playing a game in which the shoulders not the head are emphasized on the offensive line. We are adding skills, and not hurting a player's chances for college ball.

. . . the last year of high school football.
 
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. . . as casual as the first day of tryouts!!
 
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Changes In Brain Scans Seen After A Single Season Of Football For Young Players

NPR (National Public Radio), Nov. 30, 2018.

' . . . Researchers used special MRI methods to look at nerve bundles in the brain in a study of the brains of 26 young male football players, average age 12, before and after one season. Twenty-six more young males who didn't play football also got MRI scans at the same time to be used as a control group.

'In the youths who played football, the researchers found that nerve fibers in their corpus callosum — the band that connects the two halves of brain — changed over the season, . . . '

' . . . He says they saw no changes in the integrity of the bundles. . . '
All the same, I don't think the changes are for the positive.

If it's a change as a result of trauma, I don't think it's a good thing.
 
Changes In Brain Scans Seen After A Single Season Of Football For Young Players

NPR (National Public Radio), Nov. 30, 2018.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health...a-single-season-of-football-for-young-players

' . . . That being said, both Whitlow and Kim caution against making their findings out to be more than what they are: preliminary results from a single study with a relatively small number of participants. . . '
The researchers almost have to say that or else they lose credibility with their colleagues.
 
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And it is a huge case of denial with parents, as much as smoking had been for years and years.

And perhaps as with smoking, it's important to point out that quitting now can eliminate most of the risk, especially if parents feel super guilty about allowing their kids to be at risk, or feel guilt-tripped by others.
 
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Going by how much money is involved in the NFL expect an opposite legal reaction, with probably other indsutries jumping on the counter-reaction. Doctors bringing up CTE early might lead to a TL where the US lacks any sort of smoking/drinking age and we've got running man-tier death sports on broadcast TV.
 
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https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-vicis-football-helmet/

Jan. 2016

' . . . Marver bangs his own company’s helmet down. The sound it makes is a flat, squishy thump—not something likely to thrill the average National Football League fan. Marver grins. “It’s up to us,” he says, “to make thump cool.” . . . '

' . . . It won’t be close on price. While most adult helmets retail for $200 to $400, the Zero1 will sell for $1,500.
Football might become both safer and 18+. And this product might take off even though it's been almost three years.

=================

In his book Head Game, Chris Nowinski said that for youth players 8, 9, and 10, the foam in a regular helmet is so stiff compared to the weight of the player that it provides very little slow-down distance at all.
 
Going by how much money is involved in the NFL expect an opposite legal reaction, with probably other indsutries jumping on the counter-reaction. Doctors bringing up CTE early might lead to a TL where the US lacks any sort of smoking/drinking age and we've got running man-tier death sports on broadcast TV.

Not sure why this would be. Smoking rates declined big time after the Surgeon General’s announcement and subsequent policy backlash against smoking. Back in the day, people could smoke pretty much whenever and wherever they pleased, and smoking in the house or the car was accepted and normal. Nowadays you can’t even smoke in bars, and a lot of casinos are even smoke-free. Hell, so are a lot of employers (I used to work at a casino that not only banned smoking but would fire employees who tested positive for nicotine.) Tobacco companies fought it but are losing more and more.

It would probably be a generational thing, but expect that, if CTE is discovered around the same time as the link between smoking and cancer (by the US anyway; it’s my understanding the Nazis beat America to the punch there) then expect football as we know it to be as fringe as smoking. Also expect a big increase in alternatives such as rugby, which would be the vaping of sports, I guess.
 
. . . and we've got running man-tier death sports on broadcast TV.
Yes, there'd probably be a market for this, but maybe not a big enough market for the main ESPN channels and similar.

The football fans I talk with (and I also count myself as a fan though falling away), go through a lot of gyrations to deny that it's a gladiator sport.

And I remember at the time of the Space Shuttle Challenge disaster, the news was interviewing some elementary students for local color, and one boy said, This is not some Steven Spielberg movie, this is real people. Now, maybe he heard someone say that, but he liked it and repeated it.
 
. . . Back in the day, people could smoke pretty much whenever and wherever they pleased, and smoking in the house or the car was accepted and normal. . .
I remember visiting Atlantic City in 2006 and going to casinos for the first time and it was a time-warpy thing. I mean, emotionally it felt like the 1970s where people were just smoking everywhere. (although I don't think the dealers were smoking, and it does seem unfair for the business to forbid employees from smoking even on their own time)

PS I now consider myself an intermediate Texas Hold'em player. :)
 

CalBear

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I think rugby teaches tackling in a stereotypical and very specific way, and it's not so important to fight for every inch of real estate

Please inform me further.
Okay.

Enough with the scattershot posting of whatever comes to mind every five minutes. Make full posts rather than this sort of BS to keep your thread on the front page, or whatever reason you are doing this sort of two sentence, post, two sentence in new thread, staccato style posting.
 
There are several important factors about CTE/brain injury. Central nervous system tissue, which is brain and spinal cord, does not repair itself. Unlike many other tissues in the body repair damage completely or in part with normal cells of the appropriate type, brain tissue only heals with scar (essentially). After injury, "unused" neurons in the brain can to some extent take over for ones that have been damaged/interrupted connections. This plasticity is much higher the younger you are and very high in children. Stopping the brain injuries keeps things from getting worse and to the extent any neurons are "sick" as opposed to killed it gives them a chance to heal. With smoking cessation you get, over time, a repair of the damage - how much depending on how bad the damage was.
 
The researchers almost have to say that or else they lose credibility with their colleagues.

That's right. I am a scientific researcher myself, and we have to be careful not to make any claims or conclusions without the data or evidence to back them up. If they are preliminary results or there's not enough to make a conclusion from, we say so.
 
Okay.

Enough with the scattershot posting of whatever comes to mind every five minutes. Make full posts rather than this sort of BS to keep your thread on the front page, or whatever reason you are doing this sort of two sentence, post, two sentence in new thread, staccato style posting.
Thank you for saying this. Yes, I probably went overboard. I will endeavor to do better in the future.
 
There are several important factors about CTE/brain injury. Central nervous system tissue, which is brain and spinal cord, does not repair itself. Unlike many other tissues in the body repair damage completely or in part with normal cells of the appropriate type, brain tissue only heals with scar (essentially). After injury, "unused" neurons in the brain can to some extent take over for ones that have been damaged/interrupted connections. This plasticity is much higher the younger you are and very high in children. Stopping the brain injuries keeps things from getting worse and to the extent any neurons are "sick" as opposed to killed it gives them a chance to heal. With smoking cessation you get, over time, a repair of the damage - how much depending on how bad the damage was.
With smoking back in the 1970s, a lot of people seemed to believe some people have the genes to get cancer, and some people don’t, and it’s already too late. This belief may be a lot less prominent today, but still kind of seems the majority view.

And then when they catch wind of things like this:
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy: Is Latency in Symptom Onset Explained by Tau Propagation?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.re...ymptom_Onset_Explained_by_Tau_Propagation/amp
I really think people put it together similarly, and end up believing, would’ve been better if we didn’t start, but too late now.

And it seems to me the goal with parents is to be both truthful of course, and also hopeful and optimistic about how new choices we might make can get the odds more in our favor.
 
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