a bit of a disconnect here:
Data from the nation’s largest brain bank (a center that researches brains which have been donated for educational purposes) recently found evidence of degenerative brain disease in 76 of 79 former NFL players.
That’s 96 percent.
yet they conclude:
Football isn’t going anywhere. People will call it barbaric. People will keep their kids out of it. Fine. But it's not going anywhere. Period.
and they base this conclusion on... improved diagnosis of concussions??? Well, sure that's a good thing, but I guarantee football
is going somewhere, unless they can manage to better PREVENT concussions, not just diagnose them.
The data may not be there to study this, but what is needed is older data to see if concussion rates & CTE have increased over time, or if they were at some point "reasonable." If the latter, football is going to have to rethink itself and maybe go back to an earlier era when concussions were less frequent. if it's always been this bad, I don't see any way it remains anywhere near as popular as it has been in the long run. Similar to the decline in the popularity of boxing, tastes change, and most people are put off by an activity that results in 96% of its participants enduring brutal brain damage, and eventually becoming deranged mutants, committing senseless and even violent acts up to and including suicide in their 40's or 50's. It's not really hyperbole to call that
barbaric, but I could be wrong there. I know I'm out-of-touch with popular culture most of the time. and most Buckeyes almost all the time...
Regardless of whether it's barbaric or not, the people maintaining that nothing will change, football won't go away, etc. are clueless. It will most certainly change as more players see those stats and conclude it's not worth the risk, and health insurers either start charging the teams/leagues astronomical premiums, or excluding football brain injuries from coverage. Of course this won't happen overnight, but the statistical evidence and horror stories (Junior Seau, Dave Duerson, et al) have only been out there a couple years now, and already we're seeing some quite public early retirements solely on the basis of concerns for long term mental well-being.
the writing is on the wall.