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Comment by wdewind

I didn't grow up playing or really understanding sports. I was one of those guys who joked about "sportsball" and stuff like that. When I started really taking weight training seriously I started having a frame of reference for understanding sports and started really appreciating them. Football is a sport that is designed to really allow people to showcase the limits of the human body. The most impressive athletes in any sport in the world are in the NFL and when you think about the things that happen in any single game, they truly are spectacular. OBJ's "The Catch" is one of the most impressive things in the history of sports period. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=818_M8gOnqQ

But the NFL is finding itself in a really tough position. I love this sport, but I find it ethically difficult to watch now. It would be one thing if the NFL was doing everything it could to protect its athletes, but it's absolutely clear they are trying to bury their heads in the sand on this one:

> “We need a couple million of dollars. What is stopping us is the money. We’re ready to roll.”

Think about this: we currently have no way to diagnose CTE in living people, we think we may have a way, the "we" in that is pretty credible as its the person who discovered CTE, and it will cost roughly $2mm, and the NFL isn't tripping over themselves to write the check for some reason. It would cost 12 seconds of superbowl ad revenue to fund this, and in fact the NFL has pledged $100mm to investigate CTE, but basically they just aren't doing it: http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/20509977/nfl-takes-c...

This is kind of shameful, and as a fan of this sport I really hope they figure out how to have a better position on this issue, because what's going on right now is not sustainable.

parent wdewind 8 years ago

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