Rome's Gladiators = today's Football players?

[question everything]

"60 Minutes" had a story about concussions and brain injury for football players that often lead to dementia.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/09/60minutes/main5371686.shtml?tag=currentVideoInfo;segmentUtilities

You can't separate violence from football - it's part of the thrill of the game. Players know what they're risking when they hit the field, including injuries such as torn ligaments and broken bones. But what about a blow to the brain? According to the Centers for Disease Control, concussions from sports are an epidemic in this country.

As many as three million sports related concussions happen every year.

And new research shows that their effects can be frighteningly long-lasting, even leading to permanent brain damage and the early onset of dementia. While concussions happen in many sports, most happen in football. They can happen to kids, to the pros, and as we saw recently, to one of today's top college players.

=====

And, of course, the program started 40 min late because of.... football games. Two of them.

Here in town, the only news that all local media outlets have been reporting are ball games - baseball, football, college and coming soon - girls high school basketball. Players and coaches, tax supported new stadiums - all "above the fold" of the newspaper.

And after all the stories about Michael Jackson, is it any wonder that anyone actually bothers to find the truth about access to health care or sending more troops overseas, or the state of the economy, housing, and unemployment?

[BumRushDaShow]

1. Bread and Circuses. n/t

[gwsuperfan]

18. That about sums it up

n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Some kids die every year

and a few more suffer life changing injuries, ranging from paralysis to those torn ligaments that mean no more playing.

I would not quite compare them to gladiators... Mixed Martial Arts is closer... but they are part of the ahem, circus to keep the masses distracted.

[paulsby]

3. more kids die from school sports

than school shootings.

but that doesn't mean i am against sports. life carries a risk. as far as kids go, it's up to the parents whether they play football. as for adults, it's their decision too.

personally, i'm a competitive athlete. it's a risk i knowingly take. it's not football, but the sport has dangers. i am currently on disability due to a severe injury i suffered in a competition. c'est la vie.

as for mixed martial arts, yes there are concussions, but all the stuff i have read said the danger of brain damage is LESS than in a comparable sport of boxing. this is due to a # of factors.

[question everything]

7. There is a difference if you are an athlete doing own things

or if you are part of a spectator sport where the pressure, I think, is stronger.

On occasions we have coaches and team owners in court for pushing their players to the point of death.

On the same program they had a story about "birdman" people who jump from a cliff and "fly" downward, in some cases, very close to a rock.

Now, that's extreme, but no coach or a parent or friends are pushing them to do so.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5377317n

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. There are risks and there are risks

I know that if I had kids they would NOT play American Football...

The risk of paralysis is VERY REAL.

But to each their own...

[Posteritatis]

10. Perspective and sanity for the win!

Glad to see there's some folks out there with a basic understanding of risk that comes from something other than news hysteria.

[paulsby]

12. thx

i think i have a quant somewhere inside me.

he's begging to get out. he looks JUST like the nerd on robot chicken!

[Posteritatis]

13. Hee. (nt)

[exboyfil]

5. I don't watch much network TV

but the Simpsons took on Mixed Martial Arts tonight with an episode that had a reference to Roman gladiators and the fate of Roman empire. It was a pretty funny joke.

[paulsby]

9. CNBC iirc

had a pretty good and pretty fair hour long special investigation on MMA.

imo, as an admittedly biased pro-MMA person, i thought it was even handed.

i think it's a great sport. the ground game is almost like chess, and the boxing game - well, they don't call boxing the "sweet science" for nothing.

[napi21]

6. I don't agree that sports are a distraction from what's real.

I watch the Steelkers (when I can...not brodcast in Ga. very often!) and listen to their game on the internet but I try not to miss ANYTHING that's gping on in Wash. Very little happens of a material nature on Sunday!

[redqueen]

27. Same here... it's just one option in a myriad of distractions.

Eliminating distractions isn't plausible (or desirable IMO)... educating children about choices is.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

30. More cheerleaders die than football players.

[valerief]

4. Football is not even interesting to watch. Chess is less dangerous. nt

[Posteritatis]

11. Clearly the solution is more dangerous chess matches. (nt)

[Cid_B]

14. Ever see "Balls of Fury?"

Ping Pong table that shocks you to death after you are losing by three.

[Yupster]

20. Google chess boxing

It's the newest thing.

Two minutes of boxing, five minutes of chess, two minutes of boxing.

Winner either mates his opponent or knocks him out.

Seriously. Google it.

[valerief]

21. Oy vey. Next thing it'll be Hangman FOR REAL. nt

[NoPasaran]

23. Isn't it hard to move the pieces wearing boxing gloves?

[Gnosticism]

15. Boxing

I would compare boxing more to the ancient gladiators. And its very well known how dangerous that "sport" can be.

But these kinds of sports appeal to the very base instinct in humanity, namely, violence and the getting off on watching other people hurt each other. And instead of trying to evolve away from that, we make spectacles out of it still, and pay people to perform violence on each other for our amusement.

It also appeals to the violence which is endemic in our own society, and is even promoted by government (when not actually practised by government in the form of corporate wars, again through paying people enough to fight them for us).

It also serves as a way to make people forget about what is really going on, by clogging the airwaves with such nonsense. It also is quite handy for propagandistic purposes, with all the waving of the flag and patriotic babble that always accompanies the sports.

[Johonny]

28. UFC

makes boxing seem humane. It's popularity is soaring while boxing is going the way of horse racing.

Not sure anything compares to the old time gladiators. I mean they wiped out the North African Lion because they gathered so many to use in the games.

[H2O Man]

31. oh, deer

[TicketyBoo]

16. I knew a guy

when I was in high school who ignored kidney damage and died from a football injury which caused his kidneys to shut down. He was determined to make it to college on a football scholarship. It meant everything to him. Literally.

[Maru Kitteh]

17. GO HUSKERS! - I'm from Kearney and a huge Husker fan, actually but

yeah, some kids take it way too far and sometimes it's hard to sort out if it's their own drive or that twinkle in mom and dad's eye when they envision their young son taking the field in Lincoln.

Did his coach know about the kidney damage/injury? You've got two kidneys and can live rather nicely with just one most of the time. Were they both damaged/injured?

[TicketyBoo]

26. No, the coach didn't know.

He was having kidney problems before the season started. There was blood in his urine, and he asked his younger brother to supply a urine sample so he could pass the physical, thinking it was no big deal.

Can you imagine the guilt his cooperative little brother likely carries with him to this day?

It wasn't Mom and Dad in this case. He wasn't the greatest student and saw football as his one and only ticket to the University. His mother had died of cancer a few years earlier. He was one of five kids. His dad remarried a woman with four or five kids, and then they had two or three together, so it definitely wasn't Mom and Dad putting any kind of pressure on him. He was a star football player, and it was just the only way he was going to get a college education.

[The River]

19. Ritualized Combat

to cut down on needless deaths while still
giving young "warriors" the experience of combat.
Where cheerleaders are symbolic temple virgins and
the ball itself is egg shaped, a symbol of fertility
to be controlled for the survival of the State...er Team.

[Orsino]

22. Yes. But also NASCAR...

...and a number of other sports, to a lesser degree.

Until actual gladiating is legalized, we will stare hungrily at any facsimile thereof.

[onenote]

24. from some of the posts, you'd think sports coverage, and sports injuries are a new phenomenon

In fact, of course, the public's fascination with sports and coverage of sports, is neither new, nor is it uniquely American.
Indeed, there are other parts of the world where the public's fanaticism puts American interest in sports to shame. Soccer championships in Europe often draw a share of the television audience in excess of 80 percent. In 1938, during the heart of the great depression, an estimated 40 million tuned in on radio to listen to the race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral -- almost as many people as had voted in the 1936 presidential election.

[question everything]

29. True, and it was always a distraction for one's

miseries in life.

Movies during the Depression, too. But, at least, any injuries and death were "make believe."

[Blue_Tires]

25. wow...really?? next thing they will discover is the debilitating health of former boxers....