Millenials to end football?

[Aedilred]

I have heard that the padding and helmets used in American football might actually be contributing to serious injury rather than preventing it. The construction of the armour is designed to protect against impact, but it can't protect as well against torsion, which is what causes a lot of the really nasty injuries. Moreover, the feeling of protection which it gives players causes them to run in harder than they otherwise would, and makes them hit harder when they do, increasing their risk to at least a corresponding level anyway. Rugby players by contrast develop better "natural" protection in muscle and fat which actually insulates them better against the sort of injuries they're running up against.

(I've also heard a not entirely dissimilar story about skiing helmets, which are all the rage now after the Natasha Richardson business. They do a reasonable job at protecting you from injury if you hit your head, but they decrease your awareness of the rest of the slope and make you more likely to crash in the first place. Also, it means that if you hit someone else, you're more likely to injure them. So although they might make a small difference to the number of fatal injuries on the slopes, they might actually be increasing the number of serious nonfatal injuries.)

(I have also also heard commentary from cricket afficionados about the way that helmets have changed play there - batsmen now seem less proficient at the hook shot, and wicketkeepers seem to be less preternaturally responsive when helmeted. Although all the commentators fully accept that it might just be rose-tinted goggles when looking at older players, and in cricket at least nobody disputes that helmets should stay. They are very definitely a Good Thing.)

I would be interested to see comparative stats for serious injuries in rugby and American football (and AFL, for that matter). Although you do get some nasty injuries in rugby and most players sustain a lot of cosmetic damage over the course of their careers (how players like Szarzewski manage to get away with such beautiful long hair I have no idea), it seems like nasty injuries are rarer. But that might just be an erroneous impression.

[Joran]

I have heard that the padding and helmets used in American football might actually be contributing to serious injury rather than preventing it. The construction of the armour is designed to protect against impact, but it can't protect as well against torsion, which is what causes a lot of the really nasty injuries. Moreover, the feeling of protection which it gives players causes them to run in harder than they otherwise would, and makes them hit harder when they do, increasing their risk to at least a corresponding level anyway. Rugby players by contrast develop better "natural" protection in muscle and fat which actually insulates them better against the sort of injuries they're running up against.

The same commentary can be found in hockey. The armor that's supposed to protect the player -- shoulder pads, elbow pads (in hockey) and helmets (in football) -- are coated in hard plastic and can be used as weapons. There's some talk about coating those pads with a soft material to reduce the use of them as weapons, especially in hockey. Additionally, there are some helmets that have better padding, but as you said, they don't stop some of the forces that cause concussions.

The key difference between rugby and American football is that football has many more collisions at full speed with players going opposite directions. American football has many plays like passes, punts, and kick-offs where there's plenty of room for each player to get up to their maximum speed before plowing into each other. It's absolutely devastating, especially with the mass and strength of current day players.

P.S. At least we've improved since the days of Teddy Roosevelt. American football came to the brink of being banned because too many people were dying.

[Aedilred]

Thanks to this thread I've just spent the last twenty minutes watching videos of Wilko, Tana Umaga and BOD.

I'm not exactly complaining.

[KuReshtin]

The difference in the hits of Rugby and American Football were measured during an episode of Sports Science.
Yes, i know these tests obviously aren't 100% applicable to a regular game, but at least it gives a bit of insight in how things work.

Video here.

Now, Rugby players have started wearing flak jackets under their shirts in the last few years, so the people claiming that rugby players don't use pads are slightly incorrect. not everyone uses them, but a lot do.

[pendell]

I have a friend, who is a diehard Steelers fan. She just told me that she can't in good conscience watch anymore football; that by doing so, she was contributing to a corporation that profits off of brain injury. I doubt many people will do this, but I think we as a society will eventually come to an uneasy truce like fans of boxing and MMA do.

The question is, if we banned football, would people stop playing it?

I'm thinking of our experiment with Prohibition, when we effectively banned the sale of alcohol. The problem with opposing a basic, primal human drive is that it's going to be expressed somehow. If there is no legal football , perhaps there will be illegal football. Run by criminal gangs. With far fewer rules and 1000% more nastiness. Or perhaps ordinary people will find other ways to compete which are even nastier.

The argument I'm giving comes right out of "Unseen Academicals". They had banned Foot The Ball (European style, what we Americans call soccer), and the result is that people kept dying in illegal matches. Re-legalizing the sport meant that there could be referees and rules and safety precautions, thus striking a balance between impossible perfection and doing what people are going to do anyway. That's pretty much exactly what happened during real-life Prohibition as well.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[snoopy13a]

The question is, if we banned football, would people stop playing it?

I'm thinking of our experiment with Prohibition, when we effectively banned the sale of alcohol. The problem with opposing a basic, primal human drive is that it's going to be expressed somehow. If there is no legal football , perhaps there will be illegal football. Run by criminal gangs. With far fewer rules and 1000% more nastiness. Or perhaps ordinary people will find other ways to compete which are even nastier.

Yes, people would stop playing it. Not that many people play football as it is, and the vast majority of players stop after high school. Few play in college and a bare handful play post-college--either professionally (NFL, CFL, or Arena League) or in a semi-pro/amateur league. Banning football would not affect that many athletes. After all, most current football players understand that their playing days will likely end at the age of 17.

American adults have other sports to expend their competitive drive: pick-up basketball, beer-league softball, golf, tennis, raquetball, running, cycling, etc. We don't need football as an outlet because we have other sports to play. If the NFL was banned, fans would be upset, but they'd get over it. There are other sports to watch. Baseball, basketball, hockey, and soccer would just pick up the slack.

[pendell]

If the NFL was banned, fans would be upset, but they'd get over it.

...

May I ask how you arrive at this conclusion? Because I'm scanning my internal database of football fans I have known, and "get over it" is not the most likely action I would expect from banning their most beloved sport, about which they are sometimes more passionate than about their wives.

Heck, now that I think about it, more so. It's not uncommon for men to go into their Man Cave on football day and completely ignore their wives, disregarding the fact that this neglect is costing them potential future mating opportunities. It is almost as if football has become, for the moment, more pleasurable than sexual intercourse.

I'm not exactly sure how such a sublimation occurs. The meatbag mind is a mystery to me. But regardless, a person that passionate about football seems unlikely to simply get over it. Because they've invested so much of their self identity in it.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Dimonite]

If the NFL was banned, I'd go to Switzerland or something, because at that point the US has stopped caring about personal liberty. Oh, and it would completely screw over our economy. Basically, it's an entirely unfeasible situation.

[Coidzor]

...

May I ask how you arrive at this conclusion? Because I'm scanning my internal database of football fans I have known, and "get over it" is not the most likely action I would expect from banning their most beloved sport, about which they are sometimes more passionate than about their wives.

Heck, now that I think about it, more so. It's not uncommon for men to go into their Man Cave on football day and completely ignore their wives, disregarding the fact that this neglect is costing them potential future mating opportunities. It is almost as if football has become, for the moment, more pleasurable than sexual intercourse.

I'm not exactly sure how such a sublimation occurs. The meatbag mind is a mystery to me. But regardless, a person that passionate about football seems unlikely to simply get over it. Because they've invested so much of their self identity in it.

Honestly I figured all that was either a colossal joke or a trained and culturally expected form of mutual spousal abuse, sort of like how many suspect that PMS largely exists because we believe it's supposed to exist.

Also, isn't the idea of the article that these people are just going to grow old and die off and not be replaced with equivalent individuals? I rather doubt that there's going to be very many angry old geriatric men to begin with, statistically, and I don't see any reason to fear what they would be capable of, as the men who are in their 40s now aren't supposed to be reaping any immortality benefits or anti-aging therapy to enable them to have hale and hearty physical shells even as they become octogenarians.

[KuReshtin]

Yes, people would stop playing it. Not that many people play football as it is, and the vast majority of players stop after high school. Few play in college and a bare handful play post-college--either professionally (NFL, CFL, or Arena League) or in a semi-pro/amateur league. Banning football would not affect that many athletes. After all, most current football players understand that their playing days will likely end at the age of 17.

American adults have other sports to expend their competitive drive: pick-up basketball, beer-league softball, golf, tennis, raquetball, running, cycling, etc. We don't need football as an outlet because we have other sports to play. If the NFL was banned, fans would be upset, but they'd get over it. There are other sports to watch. Baseball, basketball, hockey, and soccer would just pick up the slack.

In the US,there are about 1.2 million high school and college football players every year [source TMQ], and while that is significantly less than the amount of people playing Association football (soccer to our Trogland friends) worldwide, it's still quite a lot of people.
Ok, so most of those players won't keep playing after they leave college, or even high school, but I don't think people will stop playing it if it gets banned. After all, there are different versions of it that can be played without serious risk of personal injury, such as flag football, or just touch football.
The thing is, though, that I would bet that if only touch or flag football were allowed to be played, people would still progressively edge back towards full contact football, and then we'd be back where we are right now again.

[Coidzor]

The thing is, though, that I would bet that if only touch or flag football were allowed to be played, people would still progressively edge back towards full contact football, and then we'd be back where we are right now again.

Not if the infrastructure was re-purposed and American demographic shifts continue to deepen ties with and support of Association Football.

Have the sport die down to basketball or (*shudder*) baseball levels of fandom, have association football continue to rise to prominence and either equal or exceed basketball, have the real die-hard football fans mostly be pensioners or deceased due to aging, have football get actually banned and the leagues dissolved and the infrastructure and money put in other places...

Probably would be able to claw its way up to about Roller Derby, maybe Hockey levels, but definitely wouldn't be able to reclaim its place in the sun from Basketball and Association Football if it had to deal with all of that.

[Joran]

The question is, if we banned football, would people stop playing it?

I'm thinking of our experiment with Prohibition, when we effectively banned the sale of alcohol. The problem with opposing a basic, primal human drive is that it's going to be expressed somehow. If there is no legal football , perhaps there will be illegal football. Run by criminal gangs. With far fewer rules and 1000% more nastiness. Or perhaps ordinary people will find other ways to compete which are even nastier.

The argument I'm giving comes right out of "Unseen Academicals". They had banned Foot The Ball (European style, what we Americans call soccer), and the result is that people kept dying in illegal matches. Re-legalizing the sport meant that there could be referees and rules and safety precautions, thus striking a balance between impossible perfection and doing what people are going to do anyway. That's pretty much exactly what happened during real-life Prohibition as well.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

I doubt very much there will be a ban of football. Boxing has a similar profile in terms of brain damage; after all, the point of boxing is to cause enough damage to someone's brain to disrupt their balance or knock them unconscious. Yet there are no bans in boxing and there's both Olympic boxing and prize fighting.

The tastes of society change as we migrate from sport to sport. The three biggest sports in the United States at the turn of the 20th century were boxing, baseball, and horse racing. 30 years ago, Bruce Jenner was a household name since he won the decathalon and was thought to be the best athlete in the world. Now, I bet you can't even name who won the last decathalon.

If football doesn't handle its concussion issue, either through rule changes -- Teddy Roosevelt helped institute the forward pass as a fix to all those football players dying -- or equipment changes, I think a few more people will feel the way my friend feels and attention will dissipate. Football is the most popular sport in America by far now, but there's nothing that says it must remain so.

P.S. Where in my post did you see a sentiment to ban football? Just wondering if it was a tangent, since my friend is BOYCOTTING football, not advocating it to be banned.

[Maelstrom]

The difference in the hits of Rugby and American Football were measured during an episode of Sports Science.
Yes, i know these tests obviously aren't 100% applicable to a regular game, but at least it gives a bit of insight in how things work.

Video here.

Now, Rugby players have started wearing flak jackets under their shirts in the last few years, so the people claiming that rugby players don't use pads are slightly incorrect. not everyone uses them, but a lot do.

That was some god awful science....

[THAC0]

The thing is, though, that I would bet that if only touch or flag football were allowed to be played, people would still progressively edge back towards full contact football, and then we'd be back where we are right now again.

Actually, NPR talked about this yesterday, I think. Maybe a few days ago. Bottom line? If places only offer flag football, parents won't sign their kids up. They demand the full-contact. Which is crazy.

[Erloas]

(I've also heard a not entirely dissimilar story about skiing helmets, which are all the rage now after the Natasha Richardson business. They do a reasonable job at protecting you from injury if you hit your head, but they decrease your awareness of the rest of the slope and make you more likely to crash in the first place. Also, it means that if you hit someone else, you're more likely to injure them. So although they might make a small difference to the number of fatal injuries on the slopes, they might actually be increasing the number of serious nonfatal injuries.)

Having started using a helmet when skiing last year, I can say that with a good fitting helmet it does very little to change your awareness of the people around you. About the only thing it would change is your ability to hear, which would also be the case if it were simply cold out and you wore a thicker hat.
If anything there might be a sampling bias. Right now helmet use isn't wide spread, but it is much more common in new skiers/snowboarders, especially younger people. They are also worn a lot by people that do dangerous stuff where they know there is a good chance something might happen.


I don't see football going anywhere any time soon. What I have seen quite a bit though is that most physical activities are becoming much more niche and less commonly done. You don't have as many kids casually riding bikes but the kids you do have riding bikes are doing the more extreme side of things. I see it a lot on the SCA too, general membership is down because "modern youth" are, on average, avoiding anything that seems like it might be exercise. Its not just the "nerds" now that aren't running or playing basketball or football. Unless you are "an athlete" you aren't going to be doing much physically active any more. There are however just as many "athlete" types around now as ever before and they are still the ones that are going to be in the NBA and NFL, etc. You're average kid in high school sports is never going to do anything in sports outside of high school. So you might loose a lot of the "average" kids playing at those levels, I doubt it will change much at all in the college and pro side of things.

[Coidzor]

Having started using a helmet when skiing last year, I can say that with a good fitting helmet it does very little to change your awareness of the people around you. About the only thing it would change is your ability to hear, which would also be the case if it were simply cold out and you wore a thicker hat.
If anything there might be a sampling bias. Right now helmet use isn't wide spread, but it is much more common in new skiers/snowboarders, especially younger people. They are also worn a lot by people that do dangerous stuff where they know there is a good chance something might happen.


I don't see football going anywhere any time soon. What I have seen quite a bit though is that most physical activities are becoming much more niche and less commonly done. You don't have as many kids casually riding bikes but the kids you do have riding bikes are doing the more extreme side of things. I see it a lot on the SCA too, general membership is down because "modern youth" are, on average, avoiding anything that seems like it might be exercise. Its not just the "nerds" now that aren't running or playing basketball or football. Unless you are "an athlete" you aren't going to be doing much physically active any more. There are however just as many "athlete" types around now as ever before and they are still the ones that are going to be in the NBA and NFL, etc. You're average kid in high school sports is never going to do anything in sports outside of high school. So you might loose a lot of the "average" kids playing at those levels, I doubt it will change much at all in the college and pro side of things.

And part of that can be attributed to the industrialization of high school sports as a feeder program to college sports programs, where the only point in playing in High School is if one thinks one has an honest shot at a scholarship to cover or defray the cost of getting an education or to generate enough press to go professional. At least as much as the general laziness and apathy of modern youth towards working up a healthy sweat.

[The Bushranger]

Football* isn't going away anytime soon. This is journalistic trolling.


* That other game in which a black-and-white ball is kicked around is and is only soccer.

[Erloas]

* That other game in which a black-and-white ball is kicked around is and is only soccer.

To go on a complete tangent... I never understood why soccer is called football in so many other places. Especially a lot of Spanish speaking countries, considering that neither the word foot or ball translates to foot or ball in pretty much any other language. Its like they want to confuse the issue. Seeing as how foot is pie and ball is bola in Spanish and most South American countries speak either Spanish or Portuguese (pe bola).

[Katana_Geldar]

...because you actually kick the ball along the ground with your foot?

[Aedilred]

It's called "football" because that's the name under which it was introduced. The history of football is long and complicated but it's been around for centuries and most of the time the rules were pretty basic and boiled down to "get this ball over there". Sometimes entire towns would play. There are still places in the UK where this sort of old-fashioned football is played (although usually with less violence than previously). In Eton, for instance, they play not one but two types of non-standard football: the slightly eccentric Field Game, and the totally crazy Wall Game. Anyone familiar with P.G. Wodehouse may remember the excellent scene where Tuppy Glossop gets corralled into a local village's extraordinarily violent version of rugby. And so on.

Modern football games developed - mostly in Britain - in the 19th century as people began to codify them. There were all sorts of different codes, but the main ones were rugby football and association football, out of which in turn developed Gaelic football, Australian Rules football, and American football as well as a few others. Each of these has developed quite a bit from its 19th-century origins. The most popular variety in each area would come to be known by the generic name "football". Association football proved particularly popular globally. When introduced to this new game, a foreigner would presumably ask "what's this game" and receive the response "football". The etymology likely didn't come into it.

"Soccer", fwiw, is originally a British term, used to distinguish Association football from Rugby football (or "rugger") or indeed other codes. In fact I first heard the term "soccer" used by public schoolboys long before I realised it was the standard American term.

[Ramza00]

Professional Football is not going to die because of protective parents, nor is it going to die due to some ban designed to protect the children.

This is how it is going to die.

1) We are seeing more and more evidence that brain trauma, even minor brain trauma (but over extended periods of time) leads to bad outcomes in the future. From lower intelligence to dementia, parkinsons, and alzheimers not in your 60s+ but in your 40s to 50s.
2) Due to the greater scientific evidence eventually some laywer is going to win a multiple million dollar verdict
3) High schools which are already cash strapped will see greater insurance costs due to having a high school football team. The need to have this insurance or else they are financial liable for what happens to their young students.
4) High schools will not allow football for they can't afford it
5) Besides changing the culture of football by not having your local school play it, less talent in the high school means less players going into college football.
6) Less players going into college football means less people going into the NFL

You destroy football by attacking its ability to recruit talent. By not having talented high school football students you are destroying NFL talent 10 years later.

Lawyers and Insurance are going to kill football, not some state legislature or pta moms.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Ah lawyers. I look foward to the day we can hunt them openly.

Don't even get me started on those insurance racketeers.

[Eldan]

If the NFL was banned, I'd go to Switzerland or something, because at that point the US has stopped caring about personal liberty. Oh, and it would completely screw over our economy. Basically, it's an entirely unfeasible situation.

Hah. You wouldn't like it here, we banned tons of sports for being too dangerous.

[Kelb_Panthera]

If the NFL was banned, I'd go to Switzerland or something, because at that point the US has stopped caring about personal liberty. Oh, and it would completely screw over our economy. Basically, it's an entirely unfeasible situation.

A) I don't think the article in question was suggesting that any banning was to be done. Just that if the predicted decrease in interest (which may or may not be an accurate prediction) is as widespread as they think, that the NFL will die a natural death due to attrition.

B) I don't know how you missed it, but the US economy is already in the tank as it is. However, I really don't think the NFL is so tied up in the overall economy that it's death would have a tremendous negative impact. In fact, if we stop paying tens of millions of dollars for grown men to play a game once a week and put that money back into the economy in a more efficient manner, it might actually help turn things around instead of making it worse.

[pendell]

Sort of a tangent, but in related generational news, millenials like to read more than their parents do . Evidently reading facebook and tweets encourages people to read other things as well.


Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Lady Tialait]

Yeah, the Generation definition doesn't really make a lot of sense. Mostly because it's redefined so often, and frequently to not allow for any real gaps.

For example if you look to Wikipedia, you can find that Millennials would have been born in 1980s. Millennials also being referred to as Generation Y. While Generation X being put back to the 60s and 70s. While those born in 2000 and beyond would be Generation Z (I'm sure it will be changed.)


As for the Millenials destroying American football, I call hogwash. I have heard this argument before in the late 80's claiming that Generation X would destroy American football in favor of Xtreme sports.

I also call hogwash because it's fun to say. Hogwash Hogwash Hogwash.....

[Joran]

A) I don't think the article in question was suggesting that any banning was to be done. Just that if the predicted decrease in interest (which may or may not be an accurate prediction) is as widespread as they think, that the NFL will die a natural death due to attrition.

There are already signs of parents shying away from youth football:

Football Safety Concerns Affect Youth Leagues.

"While USA Football, the sport’s national governing body, estimates 3 million children participate in youth football across the country, at least one study, conducted by the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, a Silver Spring-based trade association, found an 11 percent decline in tackle football’s “core” participation the past three years."

[Erloas]

B) I don't know how you missed it, but the US economy is already in the tank as it is. However, I really don't think the NFL is so tied up in the overall economy that it's death would have a tremendous negative impact. In fact, if we stop paying tens of millions of dollars for grown men to play a game once a week and put that money back into the economy in a more efficient manner, it might actually help turn things around instead of making it worse.

I think you are underestimating how wide spread the reach of the sports industry actually is. Football stadiums have a huge impact on land value in an area, a lot of shopping, dinning, and general entertainment businesses spring up around stadiums. While its true they would still exist without football, they do need some area to coalesce around and it is usually some other big draw, but it also helps those business be more profitable and less of a risk. And they bring in a fair amount of tourism, which brings in things like hotels.
On a local level they also employ a lot of people, not just the athletes and coaches, but a lot of other jobs like people working at merchandise and food booths, people taking care of the facilities. The constructor for the buildings in the first place and the continued work in and around the stadiums.

Then on the national side of things there is a lot of money in the broadcasting of the games, the ads during those broadcasts and even the distribution of it (its hard to not get ESPN because it carries NFL games, things like the NFL ticket on DirectTV and the various phone versions of about the same thing). Then you have the big events, like the Super Bowl, which is basically another holiday, it probably has more spending for parties then a lot of normal holidays.

As for what would happen with the wages paid to the athletes, you probably can't get a much better conduit for the money to circulate in the economy. Because that money is often spend rather quickly and on a very wide range of things. Consumer spending is the biggest driver to the economy as a whole and that is what they do. They also pay a lot of taxes, and its income earned in a way that usually hits the highest tax rates. There is also no way of taking that money, earned primarily from ticket sales and ad revenue (as paid to the NFL teams from the various TV/radio/print companies) and getting it into any "social improvements" types of projects directly.

Sports in general does a very good job of taking money from consumers and spreading it back into the economy and keeping the cycle going. It is also a service type of job and no resources are required to recirculate that money. It is essentially a "renewable resource" for stimulating the economy.

[Renegade Paladin]

This... depresses me. Destroying something just because you have no personal interest in it is a one-track route to cultural barbarism, even if your intentions are at least nominally philanthropic. It's a sad society that has no room for escapism. Besides, of all sports widely played, American football is one of the most tactically complex. If sports are to be exterminated on the basis of lack of complexity (which, to be honest, I find a rubbish measure on which to judge them) then gridiron should be one of the last to fall. Cricket might survive it, but even that's debatable.

Not lack of personal interest. It is barbaric and destructive, and should be dismantled and removed from schools because giving children and teenagers multiple concussions is demonstrably hugely detrimental to their health. This will inevitably destroy the NFL because they'll have no player base to draw from without the public subsidizing the training of their player pool, but too bad; their revenue streams are not worth the damage the sport does.

[Coidzor]

Honestly if we could get rid of the idea of the boy's club it'd help with a lot of that and the other social ills that it brings.