Boxing's popularity though is not even close to what it once was. It's probably two reasons for that. The violence is one and all the shady characters that have been and are still involved in it.
I think we will see more and more parents keeping their kids from playing football the more we learn about concussions and its long term effects. We are really just tipping the iceberg on all of this. I don't think the NFL is going away anytime soon either but I can see a day where there will less and less kids playing it. Who know enough kids may not play to where there just won't be nearly as many good athletes that will choose football which will affect the quality of play. Sports like baseball,basketball and even soccer will start getting more of these better athletes.
Reds Fan Since 1971
I think the shady characters had more to do with boxing's demise, not the violence. After all, it's been replaced by MMA!
The popularity of MMA already seems to be waning.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
While I agree with you that the shady characters had more to do with the demise, MMA is not really more dangerous than boxing.
3 or 5 rounds of no more than 5 minutes, and fewer hits to the skull. Compare that to Boxing's 12 rounds of continued blows to the skull, and it's clear which is more dangerous in the long term. But I don't think the long term brain damage is really what turns people off.
I truly think that in the next 20 years, football will be more like flag football than what it was 5-10 years ago. People rhetorically say it's flag football now but they are still hitting hard out there. I know these kids don't care about the risks when they sign up for football but I know they didn't sign up for dying. Can this society continue to endorse a sport where even if you never get a concussion, you could wind up with Alzheimers or dementia or ALS when you are in your 50s. One kid dying because of a head injury is one kid too many.
Kingspoint (01-21-2018)
I think they'll get some new helmets, a few new rules in high school, and in 10 years this will become mostly be a piece of forgotten trivia.
Most of the doctors who do things like this convince themselves that they're telling the truth (mental gymnastics). Robert Kehoe is another example. He advocated for leaded gasoline for decades while being paid by the gasoline industry.
That might be a factor, but I also wouldn't be surprised to see many schools get rid of football if high schools start getting hit with lawsuits.Another thing that I believe to be true is that even if the NFL knew 20 years ago what they know now and decided to be forthcoming and tell the players everything; they could put a sign on every bench that warns them that playing football could lead to concussions which could lead to brain disease which could lead to early death and players would still want to play. These guys are in their 20s and early 30s and most men that age feel like they can do anything. They feel that even if they have problems, medical technology in the future will fix them up. Even if it doesn't, what is the alternative? Working at Wal Mart for minimum wage? Maybe they would have enough money to retire without having to work again but most likely they won't. Even though most of these guys went to college they are probably not well educated. While I have an enormous amount of sympathy for the players and I believe the NFL covered this up to protect themselves, you can't always protect people from themselves.
Sure. That'll do it. You think 15-17 year old kids dying due to getting their heads hit on the field is trivial?
Yeah but in a lot of these smaller towns high school football is the only thing they have going for them, sad to say. Not saying it won't happen but a lot of these programs won't go down without a fight.If the game is more like flag football, you can have your cake and eat it too.
Insurance is the x factor, it's the smaller towns that won't be able to afford insuring their programs. Lot of small towns in Ohio already don't have football - there were five high schools in the county where I grew up and only two had football. Basketball was the thing at the other schools.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Certainly not to those involved, but the numbers are tiny (about 3 per year - your kid's more likely to die from a lightning strike) and have been in decline since the 60s despite increased participation...mostly because they changed some same rules and introduced new helmets, just as I suggested.
Also, according to this compilation...
http://www.medicine.ox.ac.uk/bandoli...sk/sports.html
....these sports are more deadly than football:
swimming
cycling
running
soccer
tennis
Where's the outrage?
Last edited by kpresidente; 10-06-2014 at 09:04 PM.
You're trying to compare apples to orangutangs. The risks of sudden death in football is quite low but you're ignoring the litany of long term health issues that appear long after a person's playing days are over.
Unless there is an unreported epidemic of retired swimmers and tennis players suffering from dementia, early-onset Alzheimers or Parkinson's disease as the result of brain trauma that occurred in their athletic careers using that data to argue that any of those sports are more dangerous than football is pretty disingenuous.
Last edited by nmculbreth; 10-07-2014 at 02:36 AM.
M2 (10-06-2014),paintmered (10-07-2014)
Exactly. You see very few middle class boxers these days. Chris Algieri is about the only one I can think of.
Football's headed down that road. You can see the divide all over the region where I live. Pop Warner organizations are starving for cash. The principal reason why is the vast majority of kids who play are lower and working class. I live in the same town as Bob Kraft. He's tried like crazy to bolster the local high school and youth football teams. He's built fields, bought uniforms/equipment and sponsored flag football leagues through the rec department. No one plays. Our HS team hasn't won a game in two years. No one goes to the games. No one cares. The sport is dead here. A lot of area universities have dropped football programs because there's just not a feeder system coming from local high schools. If they're selecting for academic accomplishment they simply can't find football players. Plus, the programs weren't selling enough tickets to make money.
It seems like the NFL has been savvy on this. It'll get players from the lower rungs of the economic scale and cultivate fantasy football players from the middle and upper rungs of the economic scale.
I'm not a system player. I am a system.
I'm not comparing apples and oranges, you're jumping between two different topics. The post I responded to was specifically about on-field deaths, and I showed clearly the chances of that are trivial. The long term effect is a different issue altogether, unrelated to the point I was making about those other sports. But regarding those long term risks, I already pointed at that on average, football players live longer, healthier lives than the average Joe, because obviously there are benefits to playing football as well. Now, don't take that to mean I'm claiming the long-term trauma risks aren't there, it's just to provide some perspective in all this.
Last edited by kpresidente; 10-07-2014 at 05:08 PM.
Board Moderators may, at their discretion and judgment, delete and/or edit any messages that violate any of the following guidelines: 1. Explicit references to alleged illegal or unlawful acts. 2. Graphic sexual descriptions. 3. Racial or ethnic slurs. 4. Use of edgy language (including masked profanity). 5. Direct personal attacks, flames, fights, trolling, baiting, name-calling, general nuisance, excessive player criticism or anything along those lines. 6. Posting spam. 7. Each person may have only one user account. It is fine to be critical here - that's what this board is for. But let's not beat a subject or a player to death, please. |