I would never let my child play contact football. The data is beyond clear that this sport causes irreparable life altering damage to the brain.

A lot of football players also suffer from mental health issues which, not to state the obvious, is likely not helped by banging your head all the time.

John Urschel cited the CTE risk when he decided to quit the NFL and pursue his math PhD. He just published https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.06785 which seems to be a significant result from where I'm standing, but I can't really tell what's what with math at that level.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Urschel

> In August 2015, an incident gave him a taste of what a prolonged NFL career could mean. Urschel suffered a helmet-to-helmet collision with Ravens safety Terrence Brooks during an open-field drill in practice. The impact knocked the OL unconscious.

> While recovering, Urschel realized that he could not solve high-level mathematical proofs and noticed a drop in his cognitive abilities and sharpness. It took almost a month for his mental clarity to return, giving him a firsthand glimpse of brain trauma's dangers.

> Subsequently, in spring 2016, he secretly enrolled in MIT's applied mathematics doctoral program. He juggled MIT coursework during the week with Ravens games on Sundays, staying up late to balance both commitments.

> Since his early NFL retirement, Urschel completed his PhD in 2021, served as a member at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, and returned to MIT as a tenure-track assistant professor in 2023.

https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/legitimate-liability-ex-ra...

Here's a link to the study.[1] Since CTE can only be diagnosed by slicing up the brain, and former NFL players only tend to donate their brains to study if they're experiencing cognitive issues, there's obviously a bias in the sample. They tried to adjust for this by looking at rates of cognitive impairment in NFL players who donated their brains versus those who didn't. The ratio varied from 1.8x to 4x depending on age at death.

Unfortunately the number of brains studied isn't large enough to determine whether different positions have different levels of CTE. I'd guess that kickers would have very low risk compared to other positions, as they are rarely involved in collisions. Their stats hint that is the case, but the p-values are ridiculously high due to the small sample size.

1. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

Don't forget the hearing loss and tinnitus, too. Boxers and footballers tend to go deaf.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140707134223.h...

> Leonetti recently spoke to retired players alongside EarQ at a meeting of the Chicago chapter of the NFL Players Association. When Leonetti asked how many players had experienced concussions during their career, they all raised their hands. When Leonetti asked how many have experienced hearing loss approximately 25 percent raised their hands. When he asked how many have tinnitus approximately 50 percent raised their hands.

I haven't watched an NFL game in years. I can no longer enjoy seeing people trade their brain function and lifespan for money that way. For that matter I recently revisited an extreme skiing video I bought long ago. Several of the people in the credits are dead now.

All sports carry some risk. I ride a road bike. I wouldn't tell others how to weigh the risks of their sports of choice. I just wouldn't pay to watch someone fly a wing suit, knowing how some of those people have died.

There are even studies linking soccer ("football") to an increased risk of dementia. One large study found that the risk was highest among defenders (who tend to head the ball most frequently) and lowest among goalkeepers (who rarely do.)

That study stopped short of establishing a link to CTE specifically, which can only be definitively diagnosed postmortem. But smaller autopsy studies have found CTE in former soccer players.

We focus a lot on Boxing and American football, but I suspect the risk of CTE is far more widespread across sports than is talked about (every concussion, hard contact, head impact, etc all add up)

I love football, but it's insane that we allow this for entertainment. Guardian helmets are insufficient. They need to commit to big changes, some of which will alter the game. No head in practice whatsoever. Redesign the line of scrimmage. Mandatory month out for concussions. I'll still enjoy whatever it becomes.

75% is an estimate. Of the 396 brains actually examined, 93% had CTE, though donors skew heavily toward players with symptoms.

It adds a sort of tragic element to the game. Growing up I used to cheer for big hits now there's a recognition you are often watching someone lose several years off of their life.

There's also these guardian caps to reduce some of the shock, but they're not very effective - they absorb like 10% of the blow, and you don't see very many players wearing them in-game.

The number one change they could make to the game to make it safer is going back to leather helmets. Players would be far more cautious.

Or with technology we have today, not allow any helmet contact to any part of the body. You could outfit the helmets with a sensor and a light so the refs know it happened.

Yes, this would drastically change the game and how it is played. But it would probably still be entertaining enough to draw in the crowds they hope to draw in.

I remember in an eight grade game coming back to the huddle and the lineman who played next to me was talking about his sister's homework. He clearly had a concussion and we (the players) sent him to the sideline where the coaches berated him for coming out of the game and sent him back (this was in the 80s).

Already at the JV level I saw multiple concussions in games. Not kos but guys woozy liked they'd been punched. Nobody cared back then (US south).

Is this magnified that NFL selects for big men hitting extra hard due to body size physics. Impact force / wear and tear / fatigue doesn't scale linearly to body mass receiving. Like if there was weight class / height class american football, where with BMI/FFMI cap, would smaller bodies beat the shit out of each other on the regular with less accumulated effects.

Played for four years ... my conclusion: regular, calm, ordinary people don't usually excel at american football. Aggressive, intense, competitive folk have a great time tho' ... it's not safe at all. Every last one of the starters self-identify as: a headbuster!

The lifetime risks and dangers involved in many of these sports is my main counterargument to those I encounter that oppose the NIL money flowing into collegiate sports for removing the amateurism feel of it.

The young men and women are putting their health and safety on the line potentially with life altering injuries, they should be compensated for it. Doubly so since beforehand the universities were more than happy to profit solely from their work.

This is such a brutal sport. For reasons outside my control (see: partner), NFL games are on in my house every weekend—and therefore in my peripheral vision. It seems like every game a 20 something in their prime is being carted off for a season ending injury. Unacceptable costs. Tennis is the way. Boxing without contact.

Holy buried lede, Batman:

>The bulk of the head impacts that these former NFL players experienced didn’t occur at the NFL level. They occurred at the collegiate level ... and at the high school level and in many cases the youth level. And all of those cumulative hits to the head added up to result in an increased risk,” said Daneshvar.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/nfl-cte-players-s...

Why can't CTE be diagnosed until after death? Do the lesions not show up in scans?

Glad this is being talked about.

The game should be changed. It’s very clear.

People will adapt.

What is the percent of the general population?

Note that ex-players dying last decade played ~50 years prior, in the ~1960s. It was a significantly more violent game than it is today. Look up Chuck Bednarik's famous hit on Frank Gifford, and Bednarik's reaction after - that was a highlight.

I still think it's dangerous and changes are needed, but today's players are safer.

I know the millennial urge is to have everything condensed down to a one minute video that knocks down orthodox thinking and presents a bold new idea that magically no one has ever thought of before. It's never as simple as they make it seem. However, that's actually the case here - the solution seems to boil down to banning tackles in practice until HS or college outside of gamedays and acknowledging that five-year-olds can still sustain CTE.

https://youtu.be/V7MOK-F8o5I?si=ClJcs-vYmSWv_Ph8

I wonder if it's possible to take the head out of American football, and use helmets as just extra protection in accidents - like helmets in almost every other endeavor (climbing, construction, bicycling, etc.). Make it a game played from the neck down.

You can count on people saying it's impossible, 'this isn't football', players saying 'I can't play this way; I'll retire', etc. That happens with every change, including the ones that all the players accept and play with now, and which are part of the most popular sport in the U.S. Not unlike responses to changes in technology.

Already, things like helmet-to-helmet hits, spearing helmet-first, etc. are against the rules (I don't know the exact rules). Players can control what body parts make contact with what on the opposing player - obviously: in other things in life, including other sports, you don't instinctively lead with your skull.

I would guess that blocking between the offensive and defensive lines would be the biggest change. They begin inches apart and slam into each other at the start of each play, and generally whoever gets leverage lower will win. I think it would just look different, more arms and less body-to-body.

Also, are there sensors for helmets that would pickup impacts? I think sensing the accoustics / vibrations might be sufficient.

This isn't an NFL problem, it's the very nature of the game. The lifelong damage is done by the time they reach that point. Average NFL tenure is less than 4 years, but anyone who reaches that level has been playing since they were 8.

I'm kinda surprised its that low. Football, especially at the pro and college levels, has players (especially linemen) taking car crash level hits every single play.