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Repeated hits, not concussions, cause CTE: study


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This has been out there a while. It's why football, MMA, and boxing will no longer exist in another twenty years or so, and hockey will be much different.

 

That's a bit much.

 

It will certainly place a limit on any future growth of contact sports, as more parents will steer their kids toward the non-contact ones.

 

But as long as there are adolescent males and young adult males with healthy testosterone levels, there will be an interest in contact sports and in engaging in activities where health and safety are compromised.

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This has been out there a while. It's why football, MMA, and boxing will no longer exist in another twenty years or so, and hockey will be much different.

Hockey already is much different to what it was even 15 years ago.

 

The physical component of the sport is all but gone, at least in the regular season.

 

Makes for a rather bland product IMO.

 

Hockey without hitting, physicality, grudges, drama, conflict, hate, and the odd fight is kind of like kissing your sister...

 

...or a pre-season game in almost any sport.

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I always wonder about this with soccer.  One of my better friends back in high school (a while ago) played soccer, and I remember him telling he he hated the drill the coach made them run every week in practice...where they would practice hitting the ball with their head a few dozen times each.

 

I wonder how many players (pro, college, high school, little kids) have had their head hit by a soccer ball dozens, if not hundreds, of times doing such drills?

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I always wonder about this with soccer.  One of my better friends back in high school (a while ago) played soccer, and I remember him telling he he hated the drill the coach made them run every week in practice...where they would practice hitting the ball with their head a few dozen times each.

 

I wonder how many players (pro, college, high school, little kids) have had their head hit by a soccer ball dozens, if not hundreds, of times doing such drills?

 

It's a fair concern.

 

However, I think that the repeated sub-concussive whacks that (American) football delivers to its players are of a different (and more harmful) variety than the headers that are seen in soccer.

 

Soccer players have been heading the crap out of the ball for centuries (and much less so now as they learn the game (coaching guidelines prohibit teaching the technique until the kids are older (U12, maybe))). And even as life expectancy grew in the 19th and 20th centuries, we never heard about how former professional soccer players were, as a group, suffering from a disproportionate number of cognitive impairments or injuries as they aged.

 

I think this is mostly an issue for football.

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This has been out there a while. It's why football, MMA, and boxing will no longer exist in another twenty years or so, and hockey will be much different.

 

I think all sports in about 50+ years will be massively different when it comes to consumer consumption. The dawn of the tech era along with e-games, and quite honestly, millennials and younger people have many other interests besides sports. I am not sure if any sport will be able to keep up what they are currently doing in terms of ratings, and ticket sales.

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I think football is uniquely imperiled by this sort of research. Contact sports in general, not really.

 

American Football is nuts for this, because half the players on the field literally take a hit on every play. Maybe not to the head everytime, but the whole thing starts with the d- and o-lines slamming into each other. Running backs usually either block or get the ball and get tackled every play, too. Rugby and Aussie Rules Football are similar, but the hitting isn't as constant or consistent as gridiron is.

 

Hockey may be contact, and the contact is big, but players don't get hit literally every minute of the game.

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I always wonder about this with soccer.  One of my better friends back in high school (a while ago) played soccer, and I remember him telling he he hated the drill the coach made them run every week in practice...where they would practice hitting the ball with their head a few dozen times each.

 

I wonder how many players (pro, college, high school, little kids) have had their head hit by a soccer ball dozens, if not hundreds, of times doing such drills?

 

I remember reading a CTE research article a few years ago, when this stuff was just really gaining some traction.  The article focused on soccer players,and the researchers found that soccer players were showing symptoms of repeated brain injuries at a rate way higher than anyone expected.  Speculation was centered on heading the ball as a cause. 

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I remember reading a CTE research article a few years ago, when this stuff was just really gaining some traction.  The article focused on soccer players,and the researchers found that soccer players were showing symptoms of repeated brain injuries at a rate way higher than anyone expected.  Speculation was centered on heading the ball as a cause. 

 

I recall something like that too. Talk about a fundamental change in the game, can you imagine how the game would be different without out heading the ball?

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