Could concussions actually kill football?

Yahoo Sports ^ | 2-14-2012 | Doug Farrar

[Colonel Kangaroo]

If the sport of football ever dies, it will die from the outside in. -- Jonah Lehrer

If an increasing number of economists and trend analysts are to be believed, we may one day look back at something like Colt McCoy's concussion against the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2011 as one of many galvanic events that blew football apart, and reduced the country's most popular sport to a marginal pastime. It's unlikely that such a colossal financial concern as football could be killed off entirely, but as Malcolm Gladwell first wrote in the New Yorker in 2009, it's not crazy to think that an increasing number of player concussions -- and the NFL's real lack of concern about those injuries despite its public face -- could have Americans looking at football very differently down the road.

Gladwell's article, which compared football to dogfighting and revealed some truly horrifying information about the effects of concussions on the minds and bodies of football players...

[Lakeshark]

I remember the Mayberry stuff, FR Hurricane fans were a lot of fun, the schtick was great.

I think the overtime win simply took it our of the Canes, I'm not sure they were good enough (yet) to beat that Wings team even if they had won that game. Carolina did not seem to have the depth, nor the chemistry that the Wings did (not saying they were bad, they just didn't seem quite as good).

Igor Larionov. The Professor. The Russian five. Stevie Y. All those great team mates.

We are now on the fourth resurrection (rebuilding) of a great team since then. It's been an amazing run. I don't see how they keep finding great pieces to reinvent the team every few years. Heck, they have the best salary cap situation of any team going in to the trade deadline. I sure hope the goalie comes back from his recent injury, if he does, they are in for another deep run.

If the Canes have a miracle come back, we'll try to join you if they both get to the final.......

[wardaddy]

Football...and Hockey...are for men....more crybabies today than ever...and lawyers...

you're old enough to remember when they played hurt and the quarterback was not so protected and you could tackle with anything but the faceguard

le good old days

YA

Frank

Namaths Knees

Getting hit by any of these three..whew

or this one...arguably the most feared ever

..or the monster finger eater

or these three monsters...Nitschke, Lambert and Greene...

I swear...I'm tearing up...I know why I watch so little of it anymore...just looking how it used to be...did enjoy the Super Bowl though...and btw...Gisele was right...and I say that as someone who knew Archie a bit in my youth and shared his alma mater and always pull for any of them...btw....Lily, Randy W, Jack Youngblood, LT, Bruce, Deacon deserve a nod too...and maybe the toughest runner ever...Jim Brown...it just ain't what it was...never will be ...the glory days of late 50s till the end of the Cowboys and Steelers rivalry...early 80s

[Colonel Kangaroo]

I agree that they don't make them like that any more. But I wouldn't say that soccer is necessarily a game for the unmanly and sissies as this picture of England soccer player Terry Butcher at the end of a game in 1990 shows:

[Alberta's Child]

I'm not sure how well this would translate to soccer, but some hockey leagues that expermented with eliminating offsides rules found that it actually had the exact opposite of the desired effect. Scoring -- and scoring chances -- declined.

One advantage of an offsides rule is that it offers some measure of protection for a defensive player who gets involved in the offense. That's why defensemen in hockey consistently play inside the opposite blue line when their own team has possession of the puck in that offensive zone. If an offensive player was permitted to position himself ten feet in front of the opposing team's goalie without any need to be concerned about an offsides rule, the opposing team would have to keep a player back to cover him as long as he stood there.

My biggest complaint about the offsides rule in soccer is that it's based entirely on the position of the players on the field rather than on field markings (I think the old NASL used an offsides rule similar to hockey). It's ludicrous that a team with the ball can be offside even in its own end of the field. I can't imagine what that is supposed to accomplish.

[C. Edmund Wright]

I agree, if soccer wants to change their offsides, do it with a “blue line” concept like hockey - as you mentioned the old NASL rule - which I was not familiar with. And with hockey, their widening of the line really was a big help too (due to the speed of the skaters and with a wide line, a skater can be a couple feet offside without being officially offsides...)

You can’t do away with the entire concept of it without totally changing the game. But a blue line concept takes the ridiculous notion that beating the other team downfield being illegal out of the equation. It removes ruinous defensive strategies like the “offside trap” and other game killing maneuvers that now help teams. AND, it gives the league the way to tweak the game with nuanced changes in the location of the line, etc, til they get it right.

[Alberta's Child]

There's a reason why soccer could never adopt a sudden-death OT rule without making some other major rule changes. Scoring chances in soccer are so few and far between that an overtime game is likely to last the equivalent of an entire additional half of a game -- if not a full 90 minutes.

Remving players from the field one or two at a time in OT -- or making some other rule change that results in more corner kicks -- would probably be a far more effective way to make OT work well in soccer. For that matter, even a rule that prohibits more than 2 or 3 defensive players other than the goalie from being inside the larger box might be worth a try, too.

[C. Edmund Wright]

That day of game 3 with the Mayberry stuff and all the tailgating was a fabulous day. Everybody from Detroit and Raleigh had a lot of fun. Also, the Canes’ arena - due to how its layed out and the steepness of the seating and the college basketball type fans that go - is incredibly loud. The game atmosphere was amazing.

And Detroit was much better than Carolina that year, but if we had gone up 2-1 we might have pulled an upset. Our talent was mediocre, but our chemistry was awesome. Detroit was better, and when you won the real long game (that we led 2-1 with less than two minutes to go in regulation) we were done. We had no chance at that point.

[Reily]

Remember Rugby players eat their dead!

[Alberta's Child]

I believe the average score is higher than it was 10, 20, or 30 years ago. It's been a low scoring game for as long as I've been a fan, yet the average scoring is higher now than ever.

That's not exactly correct. Here's a great link for you:

NHL Scoring Average (Historical)

You can probably discard all of the data before the 1940s because the rules were very different back then (hence the low scoring totals in the late 1920s and through the 1930s). The NHL spent many years tinkering with the rules about forward passing and passing within the zones and across the two blue lines, and the current configuration of the ice wasn't firmly established until the center red line was adopted in the mid-1940s.

The height of the NHL's offensive numbers occurred from the late 1970s through the 1980s. I attribute this to three major factors: (1) the emergence of offensive-minded defensemen as a standard element of an NHL roster after Bobby Orr made his mark on the game; (2) the optimal mix of player talent vs. teams in the NHL (I've long said that an ideal NHL with sufficient talented players to fill the rosters would be somewhere between 16 and 24 teams); and (3) the success of Edmonton's free-wheeling style of play during their dynasty.

In my opinion, scoring has declined since the 1980s for three main reasons: (1) the dilution of talent in an NHL with 30+ teams; (2) the emergence and refinement of goaltending (techniques, coaching, etc.); and (3) the dramatic increase in the size of players in recent decades, which has effectively shrunk the ice and made the game more "confined."

[Lakeshark]

Some great memories for you here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYPHv-TdsXU

[dfwgator]

Scoring chances in soccer are so few and far between that an overtime game is likely to last the equivalent of an entire additional half of a game -- if not a full 90 minutes.

But what about the Stanley Cup Playoffs, where it is not uncommon for games to go 3,4 even 5 overtime periods?

And I think you would only need to institute the unlimited substitution rules in Extra Time in the case of the Finals.

[Alberta's Child]

Keep in mind that the NHL is not happy with these long OT games. For one thing, they don't get much extra revenue from them (there are no TV breaks in OT). And they lose fans (especially on the East Coast) with every passing OT period simply because the games are running so late.

I know the NHL has tinkered with the idea of changing the rules in OT during the playoffs just like they do in the regular season. There have been a number of suggestions over the years about playing 4-on-4 in OT during the playoffs, or maybe even 3-on-3 after 2 OT periods.

[MinorityRepublican]

After 2nd OT, just get rid of the goalie.