Steelers' Dr. Maroon claims that CTE is rare, youth football less dangerous than playground

I just always figured it's because he has a future so bright.

 

Ouch! That's extremely dangerous to hit your head around a pool. That's my fear of when Ben is around a pool. He's old enough to run really good now and my wife has talked about wanting to put a pool in for a while now but I'm just too scared to do it while the kids are so little.

 

I can honestly say in 40 years I don't think I have ever had one. However since I was diagnosed with migraines at 5 and during my early years any type of bump to my head caused a horrible migraine I tried to avoid having any type of hit to the head.

 

he did not say that playing football is comparable to playing on a playground or riding a bike. he said more kids are injured as a result of riding a bike or playing on a playground then happens playing football. that's where everyone is missing what he said.

 

I dont think that anyone is missing that, they just realize that without being expressed as a percentage of participants, is a weak point to make.

Its like saying that (SLIGHTLY exaggerated for effect of course ) "more Americans died last year on the golf course than at the hands of ISIS, so it is safer to travel to the Middle East and take up arms against them than to go play a round of golf."

 

Exactly. In the best of all possible lights, cutting him every inch of slack imaginable, he is telling a truth from which all that can be extracted is a lie. And I don't cut him slack. I think this is intentional BS to help the league, at the expense of children (who obviously won't be reading his words, but aren't the ones that decide if they're allowed to play football, either). If he's as great a doctor as everyone says, there's no way he's stupid enough to make this mistake by accident.

Your example is spot on, and although it's more serious, the real one pretty serious too. Intentionally misleading families about the safety of football could have real consequences, and given how many people read what he said, I'm sure that it will. I'm not saying football should be canceled, but people should have accurate information to form their decisions, and not be fed a bunch of BS by those that benefit from the game appearing to be healthier than it is. Not everyone out there is smart enough to tell the difference between a doctor that's trying to help your health and a doctor towing the company line at the expense of your health.

I want to say I'm surprised that the league would intentionally endanger kids to make a buck, but look who I'm talking about.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if more team doctors follow suit though snack as this starts to set up protection as the process starts to gain more attention and can open up civil suits against not only teams but the doctors as well.

 

33,000 deaths a year driving a car occur, so if he said driving was safe, he's just backing the car industry?

 

Dude, tell her not to feel bad. We took a hike at Cades Cove one day to a waterfall called Abram's Falls. It's a 5 mile roundtrip hike way back in to the mountains. It was me and the wife and my buddy and his wife. So we get all the way back there and there are quite a bit of people playing in the river and taking pictures of the waterfall and I saw this older couple that had on shirts saying they were from a baptist church so naturally I just struck up a conversation with them. Well me and this older guy got to talking about preaching and I was literally just standing on a rock and all of a sudden I just fell and I mean face planted HARD and BARELY missed a huge rock! LOL!!! My wife and our friends started DYING laughing and even that older couple did once they realized I was fine. There's a hilarious picture of me standing soaked in a Ducktales shirt. So then I got to hike back 2.5 miles soaking wet and ohhhhhh the chaffing! Also these little bugs kept swarming around me. I looked like Pigpen. LOL. So it happens to the best of us.

 

LOL!!! I know what you're talking about with that accident prone stuff. This family that goes where I pastor had accident problems with their son to where he was constantly getting hurt as a kid and had to get a lot of stitches and spending time in the ER. She said finally when he busted his mouth on the little gears in those vinyl lawn chairs she took him to the ER and the nurse said "what happened?" and she started to explain and the nurse scoled her and stopped her and said "I'M TALKING TO HIM!" She thought they had been like abusing their kid or something. LOL!

 

I repeat what I said earlier. What is lost in all of this discussion of football vs bike riding or playing on a playground, is the nature of the activities. Riding a bike or swinging on a swingset your intent is not to have physical contact which could possibly lead to head trauma. Sure it happens but is largely due to being accidental or careless. Physical contact is woven into the fabric of the sport of football. You can ride a bike for hundreds of miles on end and not have any jarring and potentially damaging physical contact. In fact you SHOULDN'T. But you cannot play a single game of football and not have it. It is part of the game. So from that perspective, it's a flawed comparison.

 

Game On!

 

If he worked for the auto industry and said riding in a car is safer than eating a popsicle due to all his brain freeze data, then yes. Exactly.

 

What are the stats for say boxers or mma guys or rugby players? Those are really big contact sports too ya know? Ted Dibiase said that now even Vince McMahon has a really strict protocol for concussions because wrestlers get them a lot.

 

That's what I figured but it seems you never really hear too much about it. I know it's not EXACTLY the same because fighters don't fight with the frequency that NFL players play. BUT the main target is the other guys' head and seems like they would be even more prone to concussions because they really don't have anything protecting their head except for the little bit of padding on their opponents gloves. A lot of people really believe that if Ali wouldn't have agreed to fight Holmes that he might not have wound up as bad as he did. That was one of the most brutal fights ever and almost to the point of being inhumane that it wasn't stopped really quickly. Holmes even tried to lay off.