How can you tell ?

I agree with # 1, but this is only to create the demise of football at all levels. We must have soccer like other countries. The soccer mom liberals are winning the war on football.

Well, guess they had better hold on to all that money they make. I´m sorry, but if you want to play a sport and get all those millions, then if there are side effects from that sport - too bad. You choose to play and make millions, you live with the consequences. No one forces you to do it.

They will need extra money to hire caregivers.

I don´t dispute it.

Similar studies should be done on some who played college ball. And on some who played high school but not college.

Glad to see medicine advancing.

And how many thousands of brains are ruined so a few imbeciles can make some money? Soccer is no better.

A lineman who plays Junior High, High School and College football has been taking head shots (mostly at practice) for 9 or 10 years without ever playing in the pros.

I´m one of them and.....what were we talking about ?

This may very well be the case, but I don´t think 5 players is a representitive sample.

A high percentage of those who defend our country are former football players. Like in most areas of endeavor, there are some losers in the pro ranks. As far as injuries, miners, farmers, construction and oil field workers also risk life and limb in their careers. Why the hate for football players?

Why assume it to be the effect of playing football, when it might be the cause of playing football.

Well then, I guess I got lucky here. My football career was over the day it started. I tried out for center, pulled back out of the line and tackled the incoming defensive end. Wound up in a pile right in front of the coach and his staff. He shook his head. Funny but my Mother was relieved and I got my car privileges back.

I have no doubt that this was a study designed to find a particular result.

Retired? A person has to have a certain amount of brain damage even to think about getting out on a field and trying to cripple or kill another person simply because he´s wearing clothes of a different color. And...it takes a brain a little less than sane to spend three hours and fifty minutes of commercials, replays, and a variety of chatterboxes so they can watch 10 minutes of the crippling and killing frenzy. ...and, no, #2, I´m not trying to promote soccer. Not because it´s so dangerous, but rather, because its more than a little silly. I have a better idea for these time-wasters...get a job.

How about going back to leather helmets (or some other type of soft helmet, and add eye protection and mouth guards? That would make the game safer, and I think even more entertaining.

Now if we could only get the linemen back to the 1960´s, when a big guy weighed 260, and the game was just as good and tough.

Democrat politicians must all have been pro-football players. That explains it.

How much brain damage is done by steroids?

As #9 suggests ... couldn´t it be that tau protein buildup is the reason they decided to play football in the first place?

Remove the facemasks from the helmets. Brain damage will be mitigated if helmets can no longer be used as weapons.
Better yet and if it´s the welfare of the players that´s the driver, the league should require winning teams to submit to tests for performance enhancing drugs after the game.
A positive test result would result in a forfeit of the game, a game that will have slowed down to the pace of a good high school game.

Wonder how much money these clowns were given to do this study? And where the money came from?

There are ways to improve the sport. Go back to leather helmets and REDUCE the size of shoulder pads. Today´s players are a lot bigger and hit a lot harder then players of yore. Guys like Red Grange had long careers and long lives because the sport was far less brutal in his day. Unless football changes lawsuits could bankrupt EVERY program from pee-wee league to the NFL. Billion dollar industries HAVE vaporized in the past. We used to employ Millions of milk men in this country. Today we have more milk than ever but milk men are as rare as hens teeth.

The play of the Ravens-Patriots game Sunday was a Pollard knockout of Ridley which caused a fumble and changed the momentum. This ain´t tiddly-winks. The pols wouldn´t dare outlaw the game, and the players want to play. Maybe try air helmets or something, but it´s a violent game by its nature. And our most popular sport by far.

#12 said it best....

The protests if the government ever decided that football is too dangerous would be epic. Football fans would not care if proof emerged that EVERY football player ends up with brain injury. Even though that would justify shutting down ANY OTHER industry the NFL fans would suffer apoplexy on a continental scale if they tried to take away their weekly fix. NFL fans would rather give up their guns and their religions before they gave up football.

It would be fun to watch the fall out of such a move!

Yo..yo..If football players get brain damaged from playing football? How did NBA players get brain damaged? Maybe something is the water?

Working a physical labor job for 40-50 years can lead to chronic back and knee pain too but nobody seems to care about that.

Less steroids = less injuries