Saf(er) Football

For decades I have been an advocate of better safety in American Football. I can talk from experience, as a fast but underweight player who had to make contact with players much bigger than me, as well as being a professional physical therapist with an understanding of the effects of bodily contact within the game.

Specifically, I have called for no contact above the shoulders or below the hips. The little-known American 7s Football League (A7FL) was started in 2015 and has rules very close to my recommendations. Click here for a brief look at it in action.

Frankly, I see the excitement of American Football in this league without as much danger to the players. I challenge the NCAA and the NFL to seriously consider this way of playing the game.

https://www.a7fl.com/

https://www.a7fl.com/

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy: More Evidence Needed

"A YEAR AGO, as more than 6,000 media representatives descended on Arizona for Super Bowl LVII, Boston University's Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center issued a news release with the headline: 'Researchers find CTE in 345 of 376 former NFL players studied.' It emphasized that two of the brains dissected in the previous year and found to have the neurodegenerative disease tied to football came from men who once played for the very teams that would be vying for the Lombardi Trophy, the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs.

"The release had no new information about CTE itself, nor was it tied to fresh research produced by BU. Still, it had the desired effect: It put the topic back on the radar on the eve of football's biggest event. The idea to issue the release had come from Chris Nowinski, a BU researcher and the co-founder of the CTE Center's education and advocacy partner, the Concussion Legacy Foundation.

"Sometimes 'people need to be exposed to certain ideas and information multiple times to understand, you know, to learn them,' Nowinski told ESPN recently.

"What we've learned about CTE and its connections to football has been shaped largely by the research produced by BU over the past 15 years. That work has led to a revolution in the way America considers its most popular sport: instilling a deeper understanding that repetitive hits to the head can lead to cognitive problems later in life, prompting reforms at all levels of the sport, sparking a decline in participation and spawning legislative debates in some states, most recently California, about whether youth tackle football should be banned altogether.

"But the narrative about CTE has outpaced the science. Fueled by the publicizing of several high-profile cases and data that even the BU researchers acknowledge is limited, the result is a heightened level of fear in players and families, from the pros down to pee wee. That fear has led some NFL players, teenagers, and weekend warriors to conclude -- fatalistically -- that whatever cognitive or emotional troubles they're enduring must be rooted in CTE; and it has created tensions within the research community that the story has become far too simplified."

Click here for more.

Barefoot Running Shoes: Unsupported By Science

"All doctrines have demons, some more literal than others. What I mean by this is that ideologies tend to endure because they have a common antagonist against whom proponents can rally. For example, the Abrahamic religions brandish the Devil; politicians demonize members and policies of the opposing party; athletes and supporters unite against an opposing sports team; homeopaths fuel fear of “big pharma”; and proponents of the keto diet denounce carbohydrates, or “big carb,” for their role in diabetes, inflammation, and cardiovascular disease. In the world of barefoot running, it’s the modern sneaker industry, condemned for supplying generations of runners with highly cushioned soles that have weakened their leg muscles, collapsed the arches of their feet, and predisposed them to high rates of injury. Fringes of the movement even dabble in conspiracy theory, asserting that we’ve been poisoned against our “natural running gait” and become dependent on expensive modern shoes. The oxymoronic 'barefoot running shoe' is proposed as the panacea."

Click on the link below for the problems with this fad:

Barefoot Running: Conspiracies and Controversies

College Sports Have Mutated From Their Purpose

"The excitement March Madness routinely generates casts a shadow over a deeper fundamental problem in the NCAA — namely, that the performance of its roughly half a million young athletes earns them no salaried compensation. Former Defense Sec. Robert Gates joins Chuck to detail how he's tried to fix college basketball in his new role as the top person in charge of rewriting the association's constitution."

Click on the link below for a podcast presenting an in-depth look at college sports and their issues:

Robert Gates: The former Defense secretary's mission to fix the NCAA

Sports And Pseudoscience

"Earlier this year, the world’s most successful male tennis player, Novak Djokovic, was deported from Australia—not for misconduct on the court or for doping, but for violating Australia’s border policy that mandated COVID-19 vaccinations.1 Djokovic is one of many professional athletes who have refused the vaccine, a list that includes Czech tennis player Renata Voráčová; NBA players Kyrie Irving and Jonathan Isaac; American golfer Bryson DeChambeau; and professional footballers Aaron Rodgers, Cole Beasley, Vernon Butler, and Star Lotulelei."

Anti-vaccination is only the tip of the iceberg of athletes and so-called sports medicine going rogue against science. Click on the link below for the details. If you think this is an isolated article, Google "sports pseudoscience" and you will get an eyeful:

Is Sports A Breeding Ground for Pseudoscience?

Transgendered Athletes: The Nuances

"1. There are many existential threats to the trans community in the United States right now. The question of whether trans women should be able to participate in elite women’s sports is not one of them.

"2. It is possible to be in favor of trans rights and against trans participation in sports.

"3. The central question has been: 'Should transgender women be allowed to compete alongside cisgender women?' That’s the wrong question."

Click on the link below for a well-informed, thoughtful opinion regarding transgendered athletes:

Lia Thomas, Trans Rights, and the Future of Elite Sports: 3 Takeaways From My MIT Panel

Let Professional Sports Pay Their Own Way

"'Pretty much any study done by anyone anywhere that is credible and independent looking at sports stadiums finds that they have next to no impact on the local economy,' said Garofalo, who has done extensive research on subsidies for sports stadiums."

Click on the link below for the true financial picture of the effect of professional sports on communities:

Little Economic Benefit From New Stadiums

Drugs: A Pandemic In Elite Sports

I have been an athlete, a lover of sports of (almost) all kinds, and even majored in physical education as an undergraduate. However, at the higher levels of sports, I no longer have as much interest as I did in the past.

Click on the links below for information concerning the pervasiveness of performance-enhancing drugs in elite sports:

Search: drugs in sports

Drugs in sports: can science stop the cheats?

The Guardian: Drugs in sports

Doping in sport: why it can't be stopped

The Role Of Sports In Youth

When I was growing up and active in athletics, the world of sports was quite a bit different than it is today. For example, the Olympics was truly an amateur event, and even so-called elite sports colleges had strict rules regarding receiving payments outside of scholarships. With the exponential growth of media coverage of not only professional sports events, but elite college and even high school events, athletes at all levels are under tremendous pressure to perform in the face of physical and mental disability, and, in many cases, financial stress. One only has to look at how some misguided people are reacting to Simone Biles' withdrawal from this year's Olympic events to understand how out of proportion to what is really important in life elite sports have become. While this link is looking at the psychology of the Olympic athlete, it puts big-time sports in general in perspective. 

Click on the link below for a podcast expose of the problems within today's culture of the "student-athlete:"

The Myth of the Student-Athlete

Transgender And Sports: The Controversy

Anyone who had a firm opinion regarding the issues involving transgender athletes is not aware of the murkiness of the science in this area (link). There is much cherry-picking of data to support opinions. For example, a biological male who reaches puberty and transitions to a female and takes substances to reduce testosterone down to ANY level still has biological markers for maleness that can affect athletic performance. The link below is one of the better presentations of the science in this area:

Trans-Women in Sport: Reviewing the Science

1/13/20201: UPDATE

Transwomen retain athletic edge after a year of hormone therapy

Children Should Not Specialize In A Sport Too Early

The latest science information on the effects of various approaches to sports experiences.

What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To

 (Wired)

Eye Injuries In Children

"'Eye injuries are the leading cause of blindness in children in the United States and most injuries occurring in school-aged children are sports-related,' states the National Eye Institute. 'Protective eyewear, which is made of ultra-strong polycarbonate, is 10 times more impact resistant than other plastics, and does not reduce vision. All children who play sports should use protective eyewear -- not just those who wear eyeglasses or contact lenses. For children who do wear glasses or contact lenses, most protective eyewear can be made to match their prescriptions.'"

Eye Injuries in Youth Sports, and Where They Come From

Polls Are Not Scientific

"Earlier, we published an article explaining why there is no such thing as a scientific poll. In a nutshell, because polling relies on good but sometimes inaccurate assumptions, it is far more art than science. As we noted, "Tweaking [voter] turnout models is more akin to refining a cake recipe than doing a science experiment." Still, since American pollsters are good at their jobs, polls tend to be correct more often than not."

Nate Silver's 'Chance of Winning' Election Forecasts Are Complete Nonsense

Stress Fractures And Return To Sport

"In our recent paper ‘Taking a holistic approach to managing difficult stress fractures’ in the Journal of Journal of Orthopaedic Surgery and Research, my team at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center presents greater context for a holistic approach, along with criteria athletes should consider before returning to sport. They include:

• Complete resolution of symptoms
• Full return to activities of daily living
• Radiographic evidence of healing
• No tenderness to palpation at the injury site
• Optimization of the athlete’s nutritional, biomechanical, hormonal and psychological status"

Injured Olympian or weekend warrior, you can’t rush a return to sports

Football Decisions Are Not Science-Based

"Massey, Thaler, and Romer's works have been known for more than a decade, but NFL football coaches and owners still show near universal hesitance to adopt their advice. For all its high stakes, pro football is very much a conservative sport. Tradition trumps reason. Football is powerful, irrational, and instinctual, with an almost animal magnetism. Perhaps that's what keeps us watching."

If Football Teams Heeded Science and Reason, They Would Win a Lot More