Chris Henry dead after serious car accident

[macro]

I think it has something to do with only having a logo on one side of his helmet and how mentally taxing it has to be for him trying to figure out which side the logo goes on when he puts on the helmet.

Maybe they could put an "L" on one side and an "R" on the other? Nah, never mind...

[dougdirt]

The scary part is that Henry was never diagnosed with a concussion.

A lot of concussions go undiagnosed.

[Chip R]

Concussions in football often result from the head hitting the ground on a tackle so for that you definitely need to be wearing a helmet

Yes, but if players aren't playing with the pads and helmets they play with now, it's less likely that a player is going to be hit hard enough to receive a concussion. Of course it could still happen but it may be less likely. Also there is a school of thought that the helmets exacerbate concussions rather than mitigate them.

[Roy Tucker]

I have a feeling that these types of findings are going to lead to some radical changes in football.

What might be emerging is that football is too brutal for humanity to stand, i.e. like on a pack of cigarettes "playing football may be dangerous to your health".

[Sea Ray]

Yes, but if players aren't playing with the pads and helmets they play with now, it's less likely that a player is going to be hit hard enough to receive a concussion. Of course it could still happen but it may be less likely. Also there is a school of thought that the helmets exacerbate concussions rather than mitigate them.

Oh so you want to eliminate pads too?

[RedsBaron]

Players are so big and fast nowadays that I'm really surprised nobody has died on the field yet.

Last fall's Sports Illustrated pre-season preview of the NFL issue (9/7/09) had an article interviewing several current quarterbacks, including Carson Palmer. In that article Palmer was quoted as saying he expects someone to die on the field, the game is so violent. None of the other QBs disagreed with him. That was chilling.

[WMR]

Rugby-style American football would be fascinating to see attempted by today's professional athletes.

[Chip R]

Oh so you want to eliminate pads too?

If you are going to eliminate those kind of helmets, you pretty much have to eliminate those kind of pads.

[WMR]

Theoretically it would make the game even faster. There's a psychological factor to being all padded up, however, that probably increases a player's willingness to play with total reckless abandon.

[Redsfaithful]

What might be emerging is that football is too brutal for humanity to stand, i.e. like on a pack of cigarettes "playing football may be dangerous to your health".

I'm really wondering when my boys are old enough exactly what I'm going to say if they want to play. It was one thing when it was thought the main risk was broken bones, etc., another entirely now knowing the entire latter half of your life (or more even) could be ruined by potential brain trauma.

[RedsBaron]

I'm really wondering when my boys are old enough exactly what I'm going to say if they want to play. It was one thing when it was thought the main risk was broken bones, etc., another entirely now knowing the entire latter half of your life (or more even) could be ruined by potential brain trauma.

I was torn when my now 17 year old started playing football at age 13. Fortunately, his worst injury was a Lizfranc fracture (foot) he suffered last year, his junior year. He has now opted to not to play football in this coming season, his senior year, so he can concetrate on baseball, so I am relieved.
That said, I have always been much more nervous anytime any of my sons is driving a car, or riding in a car driven by his friends, than I ever was when Jason played football.

[Sea Ray]

He has now opted to not to play football in this coming season, his senior year, so he can concetrate on football, so I am relieved.

I don't get it. How does not playing football help him concentrate on football?

[RedsBaron]

I don't get it. How does not playing football help him concentrate on football?

Typo, since corrected. Baseball is his favorite sport, so by skipping football his senior year, and summer football workouts which are going on now, Jason has been able to play baseball in a summer league and can play baseball this fall.

[westofyou]

105 years ago:

After the 1905 season, when 18 deaths and 149 injuries were reported nationally, there was a general crackdown on the brutality of power football.

That year Penn played Swarthmore, whose team was built around Bob Maxwell, a 250-pound lineman of speed and agility. Penn was certain it would win if Maxwell could be contained, so the Quakers concentrated all their defense on him. Maxwell played the entire game, but when he tottered off the field he was a physical wreck. A photographer took his picture, and when President Roosevelt saw it he angrily issued an ultimatum that if the roughness was not taken out of football he would ban the game by presidential edict.

Finally, after much wrangling and many preliminary sessions, a meeting was held on January 12, 1906, in New York. Out of it came what we know today as the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Football Rules Committee, the game's governing body. The key figures were Captain Palmer Pierce of Army, William Reid of Harvard, and Walter Camp. Their important decisions were the creation of a neutral zone the length of the ball between opposing lines; requiring a minimum of six men on the line of scrimmage; raising the first down yardage from 5 to 10 yards; and legalizing the forward pass, with many restrictions. Another was the banning of "mass momentum" plays (many of which, like the infamous "flying wedge", were sometimes literally deadly).

Basically, what was followed was this: The forward pass was used sparingly, but the defensive line was weakened because the possibility of a pass had to be defended against. The neutral zone reduced in-fighting, and the 6-man requirement put additional restriction on mass play; the offensive game was reduced mainly to off-tackle smashes. The ground attack, now less potent, had five additional yards to make in three downs. Teams resorted to frequent punts and field goals, which counted four points (only one less than a TD), were relied on heavily.

In 1909, the game opened up some with the reduction of the field goal value to three points and the advent of the Minnesota shift. Williams' new offense was several seasons away from the East, however, and continued vicious line play raised the death toll to 33 and injuries to 246, 73 of them considered serious.

Then came these important rules changes:

1. Seven men were required on the offensive line.
2. Pushing and pulling the ball carrier and interlocked interference was
barred.
3. Crawling was prohibited.
4. The flying tackle, made with both feet off the ground, was outlawed.

Williams was not the first coach to devise a shift, but he was first to shift both the line and the backs-sometimes twice before the ball was centered-in intricate maneuvers to outflank the defense.

Mike Donahue, a Yale quarterback, went south to Auburn, and Dan McGugin, a Michigan guard under Yost, went to Vanderbilt in 1904: the South began to rise. Penn's John Heisman went to Georgia Tech the same year, and it was he who would lead the Yellow Jackets to the first national title won by a Southern team, in 1917.

On the Pacific coast, Stanford and California dropped football in favor of English Rugby at the time of the injuries uproar. But farther north, Gil Dobie, taking over at Washington in 1908, began a nine-year unbeaten string of 61 games in which the Huskies were tied only three times.

Read more: What safety regulations did Theodore Roosevelt place on college football? | Answerbag http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/52732#ixzz0sLrGsdgp