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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Washington, D.C.

    "Heads Up Football"; Buying Camel Lites?

    The real threat to the NFL's future is not retired-player lawsuits over brain-trauma and ruined lives, it comes from below: the rightful fear of parents for their kids' safety and the as of now unspoken fear of the real elephant in the closet, lawsuits against schools, school districts, and those governmental bodies that sanction and run them, the "them" being public school football programs, leagues, championships, etc.

    Goodell has managed to limit the issue right now to the one that rightly has everyone's attention: brain concussions and the consequent permanent loss of function and early loss of cognitive abilities beginning when the injuries occur and progressing through dementia or other serious function loss at alarming rates at alarmingly early ages. He has begun taking steps to limit more and more the most obvious causes of concussions on the field, even while threatening to fight a lawsuit brought by brain damaged former players quite literally to the death of may of them, thus forcing a settlement on what many regard as unconsicionable terms. The principle issue that Goodell threatened war was on the issue of causation, and part of that gambit remarkably involved raising the question, who is to say when this damage began and how much it progressed before these plaintiffs ever got to the NFL. He specifically mentioned play at the high school and college level, which when you begin to conjure the number of different defendants that that portended, you get the picture of how lawsuits against Gooddell's league presnt as nothing more than a cost of doing business.

    Meanwhile, while scientists scurry to find out "more" about concussions and how to limit the long term impact on those who incur them in football , other issues of huge dimension go unaddressed. The the consequence of the uncountable number of non concussive slams of brains into skulls that occur during the normal course of play it seems will never be addressed because any tie in to loss of brain function will first have to be proved, and you can imagine how easy that will be, assuming the funding for meaningful study would come from anywhere and meaningful conclusions not subject to easy attack would be possible. And, attention has been deflected from the larger issue of the long term medical-care and quality-of-life costs of other injuries that are epidemic that are susceptible to short term "repairable" in many cases.

    Goodell's public relations fight to keep what has become a beyond violent sport acceptable in the public eye has now lead to the founding and funding of USAamerica Head's Up", an operation whose executive director claims is not an arm of the NFL and is not part of a gambit to convince the public that football will be made a game that is safe enough for even 7 year olds to play. How, by offering training to kids' coaches or anyone else who wants it at a cost of $5.00, made possible by NFL subsidization. The sole focus of the training is to teach these people how to teach 7 year olds a 5 step approach to impacting an opponent with the kid's head up, The official line is that the hoped for outcome of this training is that this 5-step approach to tackling and other aspects of intentional contact will become engrained and override what the kids have to understand is the real way it is done, and thus that the incidence of concussion, and long term cognitive damage will be diminished. The executive director denies any other motives and claims independence from the NFL who funds the program. There is, according to him, no agenda to influence parents to let their sons play an extraordinarily dangerous game, or to advance the NFL agenda to fight back the rising rejection of the sport in general. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/sp...anted=all&_r=0
    http://usafootball.com/headsup?gclid...FSHNOgodMFYAGg

    It seems obvious to many that this Heads UP initiative is part of a much larger strategy formulated by the PR firm Goodell has hired to fight back the rising tide against the seemingly uncontrollable violence of his sport, and thus the future of the league itself. He chose well, the PR firm is the same one who orchestrated for decades Big Tobacco's fight against lawsuits and regulation--there is no proof that smoking causes cancer, there might well be in each individual case other causes, and smoking, in any case, is a matter of individual choice. http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/...former-players

    Seems worth kicking around. I'll keep a very low profile, an occasional thought or two.
    Last edited by greybeard; 01-17-2014 at 10:40 PM.

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