(April 27, 2013 at 10:56 pm)thesummerqueen Wrote: I can't remember the podcast it was on - perhaps "Straight Dope" - but part of the discussion was that football got more dangerous as protection got better due to some sort of risk threshold.
The problem has nothing to do with padding or helmets or dirty hits. It has to do with CTE.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_tra...phalopathy
A helmet may stop a fractured skull but the impact of the blow can still cause brain damage. CTE is the build up of this damage from repetitive hits. In football, every player on every play generally hits or gets hit by someone and the damage is cumulative. The article above is dated, though. Recently MRIs were improved to the point where you don't have to be dead for the injury to be detected. Of course, they still can't fix it. I don't have too much sympathy for the professionals. They are adults who decide to risk their lives for money.
But high schools? Junior-varsity? That's where the problem is going to come from.
