It's in the March 2011 issue, interviews Fred McNeill and his wife. It's a pretty interesting article - I haven't checked to see if it's online, I'm presuming not yet, but worth picking up the magazine for. It also confirms, if confirmation were needed, what a complete cunt Hines Ward is.
Google is your friend. http://www.gq.com/sports/profiles/201102/nfl-concussions-players?currentPage=1 Not the whole article, but some good quotes.
The original article 2009 http://www.gq.com/sports/profiles/200909/nfl-players-brain-dementia-study-memory-concussions Revisited 3/11 http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201102/jeanne-marie-laskas-nfl-concussions-fred-mcneill
Thanks for finding those. The original article makes for fascinating reading. How do you fix it? Well, that's difficult. The statement is clearly made that no amount of helmet redesign will change the damage being done, as it's the brain moving inside the skull that causes the injuries. The only thing I can think of, and it's an impossible idea to implement and in many ways completely illogical, is to do away with helmets completely. That would change the way in which impacts occur. After all, rugby players do not as far as I'm aware suffer from CTE, but they still hit extremely hard - they just do it in different ways. I'm not sure it's workable in the NFL though.
It may sound harsh, but I couldn't care less about head football head injuries. You also risk falling off a ladder and breaking your neck as a building contractor. Boohoo for them.
Pads and helmets were brought in after several deaths in the sport almost lead to it being outlawed. But iirc,there were other rule changes which probably done more to improve the safety of the game than pads and helmets.I think most of the deaths on the field were on kickoffs when the receiving team would form a multi man wedge and run over people.Back then you were allowed link arms and guys were breaking their necks when trying to break the wedge. This flying v wedge was outlawed at the same time as pads and helmets.I've heard people say that if they had just outlawed this flying wedge and other dangerous tactics then the game would of been much safer.Helmets and pads wouldn't be needed and the game wouldn't of evolved to todays game where the head and helmet is used as a weapon. I should point out that this was something I heard a long time ago and may be completely false or I've forgotten half of it.But it makes a lot of sense.Back before helmets they couldn't of been leading with their heads to make tackles or blocks. I think there is a similar theory for boxing.Boxing gloves actually do more harm than bare knuckle boxing as the fights last longer with sustainted blows to the brain.If they were using their bare hands,there would only be so many punches you can throw without hurting your hands and thus reducing your punching power. Either way I think you are right.The only way to stop this would be to remove helmets and thus dramatically reduce the head clashes.
The front page of the forum said in the link to this page "GQ article about head" I'm very disappointed in this thread, needless to say.
Remove facemasks and you won't see anybody leading with their head. Reduce roster sizes significantly. Guys will have to play a lot more, some both ways, and will need to be smaller and fitter to manage. Smaller bodies, less violent collisions. Nobody human should weigh north of 300lbs, let alone an elite athlete. Its absurd on its face. Basically, rugby-ize the game.
Then it wouldn't be football, and we wouldn't be here on this message board talking about it. This is not the only professional sport where the participants sacrifice life and limb for fame and fortune. In fact, Japan's sumo wrestlers make Vince Wilfork and Casey Hampton seem like children. It is what it is. I'm not going to feel sorry for or worry about a person who chooses to do this for a living. It is a trade off, one that plenty of guys work their asses off for, and don't even get a chance to make the choice. These guys make a living that is more than most of us will ever see playing a game. It has to even out somewhere. You can always play baseball, or move to Australia.
Sure it would be football. It'd be football like you see in highlights from when the Jets won the Super Bowl. Look at pictures of Don Maynard. Jerricho Cotchery looks like he could snap him in half like a twig. Football players on average play for a very short period of time, and experience very attenuated life expectancies afterward. I tend to have a level of sympathy for people I follow every week on TV, regardless of how much money they earn.
