PBS Frontline: League of Denial

[Mags]

I apologize if this was posted before....

Did anyone see this show? It was on Tuesday night, 8:00 PM CST. Pretty amazing look at the impact football has on the brain, and the high incidence of CTE among the player's brains that were looked at (after death, obviously)....

This was an ESPN project, I read, before the NFL put pressure on ESPN to not show it/continue it. I assume that is how it ended up on PBS (I had to do a search to even find the channel number).

But it was a 2 hour show, with no commercials. The chilling thing was, they even found CTE in high school football players that died. I know a number of parents that won't even let their kids play football, due to the brain injury issue. I'm sure that wouldn't fly as a parent in Texas, but there are parents that are making that decision.

So, did anyone see it? Thoughts? Would you/do you let your kids play football? If you do, is this anything you worry about?

 

[hedgehog]

I have it dvr'd, looked interesting too me

 

[PAChicky]

I would have liked to see it. My mother is against my son playing football. He is in 4th grade- 9 years old, one of the smaller boys on the team and plays midget football on the B squad. Some of the boys we play against from Selinsgrove are pretty big and some already play dirty.

There is a boy on our A squad who is 13. A few weeks back at a game suffered a pretty good hit and at the time didn't know he had a concussion. The next night at practice he ended up having a seizure and was rushed to the ER. He has still not fully recovered- still having balance, sight, migraine issues.

There is a chance my son could get hurt out on that field, and I worry about it every time he suits up. But I don't want to live with the fear of holding him back from something he loves because of something that I hope never happens.

 

[Mags]

I would have liked to see it. My mother is against my son playing football. He is in 4th grade- 9 years old, one of the smaller boys on the team and plays midget football on the B squad. Some of the boys we play against from Selinsgrove are pretty big and some already play dirty.

There is a boy on our A squad who is 13. A few weeks back at a game suffered a pretty good hit and at the time didn't know he had a concussion. The next night at practice he ended up having a seizure and was rushed to the ER. He has still not fully recovered- still having balance, sight, migraine issues.

There is a chance my son could get hurt out on that field, and I worry about it every time he suits up. But I don't want to live with the fear of holding him back from something he loves because of something that I hope never happens.

I think you can stream it from the PBS website... under "Frontline" and "League of Denial"... it is 2 hours long, with no commercials - so admittedly, it is a long time to sit in front of a computer.

You could check their listings - they may replay it.

It was very interesting. The NFL disputes much of the analysis (naturally) but the doctors they talked to sounded pretty sure.

To me, there was one big hole in their study. They looked at like 49 brains of former football players, and all but 1 had significant evidence of CTE. But that was a "self-selection" issue - all the brains sent were of players that had issues that were consistent with CTE - memory loss, etc.

It would be instructive if they could get the brains of "normal" players that passed away - ones that showed no systems.

But it was scary when they got the brain of an 18 year old football player who was known for hard hitting, etc when he commiitted suicide. He had never been diagnosed with a concussion and had no issues that one would relate to CTE. Yet he had a fair amount of CTE damage in his brain.

It makes one wonder if the increasing number of folks that are getting Alzheimers and other brain related issues are due to them playing contact sports when they were younger. Maybe not with the current 70+ generation, as football was not big when they were growing up. But it will be interesting to see how the 40-50 year old age group, the baby boomers, age....

 

[shawn555]

I apologize if this was posted before....

Did anyone see this show? It was on Tuesday night, 8:00 PM CST. Pretty amazing look at the impact football has on the brain, and the high incidence of CTE among the player's brains that were looked at (after death, obviously)....

This was an ESPN project, I read, before the NFL put pressure on ESPN to not show it/continue it. I assume that is how it ended up on PBS (I had to do a search to even find the channel number).

But it was a 2 hour show, with no commercials. The chilling thing was, they even found CTE in high school football players that died. I know a number of parents that won't even let their kids play football, due to the brain injury issue. I'm sure that wouldn't fly as a parent in Texas, but there are parents that are making that decision.

So, did anyone see it? Thoughts? Would you/do you let your kids play football? If you do, is this anything you worry about?

It was an excellent program, a must watch.

It actually started as a dual project with espn's outside the lines teaming up with Frontline. The NFL forced espn to pull out of the program.

 

[PAChicky]

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365093675/

I got this link on PBS's website. I'm watching it now- I should have time to watch it all before I leave to go home for the day.

 

[fatdaddycool]

I apologize if this was posted before....

Did anyone see this show? It was on Tuesday night, 8:00 PM CST. Pretty amazing look at the impact football has on the brain, and the high incidence of CTE among the player's brains that were looked at (after death, obviously)....

This was an ESPN project, I read, before the NFL put pressure on ESPN to not show it/continue it. I assume that is how it ended up on PBS (I had to do a search to even find the channel number).

But it was a 2 hour show, with no commercials. The chilling thing was, they even found CTE in high school football players that died. I know a number of parents that won't even let their kids play football, due to the brain injury issue. I'm sure that wouldn't fly as a parent in Texas, but there are parents that are making that decision.

So, did anyone see it? Thoughts? Would you/do you let your kids play football? If you do, is this anything you worry about?

Yes I saw it. Was a sad but excellent show. I coached youth football for 16 seasons and I have found that mothers and fathers in Texas are just as concerned about their kids as they are anywhere else.
To the point, I think we will see a lot more players that already have this condition come forward and have their brains looked at after death Hopefully, the Nfl does more for the victims of this. Insurance is denying their coverage already saying it's a pre-exisying condition so we know they aren't going tohelp amIright?