24 Year Old Local Kid With CTE

[Newell]

The bad thing is some coaches - you can do the research on this guy - will run a player off the team if he has concussion problems so either you play when you shouldn't and make it worse or you are out of a scholarship.


Near the end of his life he told his wife, Cassandra, he wanted to donate his brain to Boston University so pathologists could look for CTE. In the researchers' report, published Monday in JAMA Neurology, doctors found clumps of abnormal tau protein scattered throughout his brain in a pattern researchers say is one of the hallmarks of CTE.

"It was the worst CTE I've seen in an individual this young" said study coauthor Dr. Ann McKee. "It was quite widespread," said McKee, chief of neuropathology at the Bedford Veterans Administration and a professor of neurology and pathology at the Boston University School of Medicine.

Keck had played tackle football since he was age 6 and had sustained more than 10 concussions by the time he was a junior in college. The jolt to the brain had left him with excruciating headaches and unable to play. He became so sensitive to light that he placed heavy blankets over the windows.
By the time Keck was 25, he had lost the ability to work and had become completely dependent on his wife.

Following Michael's wishes, his wife, Cassandra, asked doctors to send his brain off to BU. Researchers there discovered that Keck not only had CTE, but also that it was as severe as what had been found in the brain of 43-year-old Seau.

 

[AuH2O]

Participation by kids is more of a reflection on society's changes over the last few years. It has nothing to do with understanding or relating to the concussion/CTE medical facts. Parents are sad and kids are becoming wimps. What, my son failed his math test? I am setting up a meeting with the Principal and teacher to see why they can't teach. My daughter didn't make the A volleyball squad? She's quitting to get away from all of the political bs where coaches only choose their kids to play. Well if my kid isn't good enough to start in football, no reason for him to be out there with his teammates. Tackle football ball at 3rd grade? Oh my god, what a scary travesty.

Sorry for the rant, but our country needs an attitude check. Football caused CTE is about the lowest concern on the radar as it relates to the physical and mental health well-being of our nation.

Actually "organized" tackle football in 3rd grade is a travesty, even outside of CTE. I have coached in the past and talked to many coaches about this and without exception they were adamant against playing football with pads until 6th or 7th grade. My kids, daughter included, play tackle football in the yard with each other, cousins, and friends. I encourage that. When kids put pads on bad technique is the default. Some random dad, or anybody else is going to have a tough time correcting that. Some of the things you raise may be happening but it has absolutely nothing to do with my post.

 

[CloneinWDSM]

Being from small town Iowa, we didn't have tackle until 7th grade. There was a flag football league that you could play in before but nothing for tackle.

I could see maybe 5th or 6th grade being okay to learn tackle but 3rd grade is crazy.

 

[AuH2O]

They don't have enough data to make long term assumptions at this point. It's just extrapolation. Now it may be true in the end, but there are so many people who played football in this country, if it were such a prevalent problem then we would see FAR more issues with people everywhere.

My high school football coach has CTE or something related and its very sad. He has degenerated mentally and barely remembers members of his own family. He sometimes wanders out in the middle of the night and doesn't come home for hours with no memory of what has occurred.

Now I tell you this because he was an old school hard knock kind of football coach, and even he was taking fairly drastic measures to make football safer during his practices. This was a top notch program btw, so this process was perfected over years of use.

His own career went through his college years. He played with little regard for his health. Now does he deserve his condition? Absolutely not, but if you're going to sit here and tell me that people didn't know repetitive head traumas or mini jars to the brain were going to cause problems then I would have to call you a fool. You sign a waiver to play football, its dangerous. Everyone knows this. What makes me angry is the giant out cry to try and make people not want to play football any longer.

Educate the players and parents. Limit the amount of contact in practices. There are many drills that can teach a player to tackle with correct form, that can be just as effective half speed as they are full speed. The knee jerk reactions are what anger me, and yes I'm sorry but our country is becoming the quit if its hard country. We're wimps. My parents were/are both teachers, I have to hear about it all the time.

TLDR:

If you choose to have your child not play football, great. But don't go around trying to talk everyone out of doing what they want and act like its some kind of brilliant epiphany that hitting your head 10,000 times causes long term brain problems.

End rant. Flame on.

I think people have known for a LONG time about the long term effects, with some prominent cases in boxing. What's changed is the evidence that it may take much less trauma to create problems.
Plus despite cases like Mike Webster and others, there are so many long-time ex-players on TV that show no effects it's easy to think a kid playing HS shouldn't have a problem.
I do think parents are turning kids into wimps, but I don't think this applies to CTE. There's a difference between dealing with pain and CTE.

 

[cyfanatic13]

Being from small town Iowa, we didn't have tackle until 7th grade. There was a flag football league that you could play in before but nothing for tackle.

I could see maybe 5th or 6th grade being okay to learn tackle but 3rd grade is crazy.

Yup. Flag football started in 4th grade, tackle started in 7th. Playing football with my best friends made for some of my favorite memories from high school that I sure as heck wouldn't have made sitting in the stands. It makes me cringe seeing all the parents saying no way is their kid playing football. If they don't want to, sure, but like Janny said, if they have a passion for it I think it's pretty dumb to hold them back. I definitely think there needs to be rules in place for "retiring" from football once you've had multiple concussions. But I can't think of anyone I ever played with that had multiple concussions because we learned how to block/tackle correctly. Another thing I wouldn't hate seeing is limiting contact at practice. A lot of colleges now are pretty much only hitting one day a week and even then it's not full contact.

 

[AuH2O]

Yup. Flag football started in 4th grade, tackle started in 7th. Playing football with my best friends made for some of my favorite memories from high school that I sure as heck wouldn't have made sitting in the stands. It makes me cringe seeing all the parents saying no way is their kid playing football. If they don't want to, sure, but like Janny said, if they have a passion for it I think it's pretty dumb to hold them back. I definitely think there needs to be rules in place for "retiring" from football once you've had multiple concussions. But I can't think of anyone I ever played with that had multiple concussions because we learned how to block/tackle correctly. Another thing I wouldn't hate seeing is limiting contact at practice. A lot of colleges now are pretty much only hitting one day a week and even then it's not full contact.

It's a tough balance. It's tough to keep technique sharp. I remember my last year in HS we went our last 2 reg season games plus 4 playoff games and went full contact once or twice. Definitely helped with injuries. I certainly loved playing and wouldnt trade the experience for anything, but I dont think I took many, if any major shots. Granted 20 years ago in small school Iowa the average player was pretty small and slow.

 

[acgclone]

26 years old and I still play. Wouldn't give it up for the world. Sad that not everyone feels that way, but I understand. It's a violent game and certainly not for everyone.

You're 26. Wait until you're 40 with kids. You may think differently when you struggle to remember their friend's names or your kid's birthdays.

 

[khardbored]

Yup. Flag football started in 4th grade, tackle started in 7th. Playing football with my best friends made for some of my favorite memories from high school that I sure as heck wouldn't have made sitting in the stands. It makes me cringe seeing all the parents saying no way is their kid playing football. If they don't want to, sure, but like Janny said, if they have a passion for it I think it's pretty dumb to hold them back. I definitely think there needs to be rules in place for "retiring" from football once you've had multiple concussions. But I can't think of anyone I ever played with that had multiple concussions because we learned how to block/tackle correctly. Another thing I wouldn't hate seeing is limiting contact at practice. A lot of colleges now are pretty much only hitting one day a week and even then it's not full contact.

The Iowa High School association has started limiting the amount of pre-season contract drills pretty substantially in the last couple years. No idea how it's enforced, but it's there.

 

[Clark]

I dont think it will die, but in 10-15 years, the quality will be way down, and I would not doubt it will be a much different game.

No disrespect intended to you or anyone else who has posted in this thread but the likelihood of your children being major college players is fairly close to zero. I chuckle whewhen I read upper middle class white people say they won't let their children play football and that will lead to less quality players. It really won't. We'll see the same types of kids we generally see: mostly black and mostly middle class or poor .

 

[CloneinWDSM]

No disrespect intended to you or anyone else who has posted in this thread but the likelihood of your children being major college players is fairly close to zero. I chuckle whewhen I read upper middle class white people say they won't let their children play football and that will lead to less quality players. It really won't. We'll see the same types of kids we generally see: mostly black and mostly middle class or poor .

Correct. You worded better than I was thinking about.

Quality of play may go down in these smaller communities as the number of players may drop due to parents being concerned about concussions.

Im sure there are cases of high school kids developing CTE but I don't see kids getting multiple concussions in smaller class football in Iowa.

 

[AuH2O]

No disrespect intended to you or anyone else who has posted in this thread but the likelihood of your children being major college players is fairly close to zero. I chuckle whewhen I read upper middle class white people say they won't let their children play football and that will lead to less quality players. It really won't. We'll see the same types of kids we generally see: mostly black and mostly middle class or poor .

I see the quality of player slipping very slowly and gradually. The white suburban demo makes up a decent chunk of college players, so it may have minor effect. But i agree most that opt out are fringe players.
We may also see elite multi-sport athletes focus on other sports.
Also, having so many fewer kids play is likely to reduce interest, viewership and ultimately revenue. If the schools start paying total cost of attendance or additional stipends while it looks like TV contracts have peaked, it could spell trouble. While I think it's highly unlikely, conditions are possible to see a big drop in popularity.

 

[Clones8686]

No disrespect intended to you or anyone else who has posted in this thread but the likelihood of your children being major college players is fairly close to zero. I chuckle whewhen I read upper middle class white people say they won't let their children play football and that will lead to less quality players. It really won't. We'll see the same types of kids we generally see: mostly black and mostly middle class or poor .

While this is true, we could also see the money dry up in the NFL if tv ratings, tv contracts and ad revenue etc. plummet. Then those kids you are talking about would be less inclined to play football and more inclined to play whatever sport or sports are gaining popularity in it's place.

 

[awd4cy]

No disrespect intended to you or anyone else who has posted in this thread but the likelihood of your children being major college players is fairly close to zero. I chuckle whewhen I read upper middle class white people say they won't let their children play football and that will lead to less quality players. It really won't. We'll see the same types of kids we generally see: mostly black and mostly middle class or poor .

You are exaggerating it big time. There are all sorts of players in the NFL that came from rich, middle class, and poor. I don't know what your watching, but there are a lot of white players in the college game and NFL.

 

[Mtowncyclone13]

One of my favorite Twins of all time, torii hunter, said his kid is quitting Notre Dame football next year to play baseball because way less risk for serious injury. he even said in an interview he hates watching his kid pkay football .

 

[Cyclonepride]

Your rant fails hard when it comes up against the evidence that the NFL went out of its way to discredit the link to CTE for years. Their narrative was that football had no impact on brain health. The NFL was the gold standard for influencing lower leagues and in turn parents. We were all lied to. What do you expect the reaction to that would be?

To your other point, how exactly do you justify your call that people shouldn't go around telling people they shouldn't play football, when you attempt to influence folks yourself by saying that everyone who doesn't want their kids to play is a despicable wimp?
You seem to be talking out of both sides of your mouth.

I'm not forgiving the NFL's stances in the past, but how stupid would you have to be to not realize that repeated blows to the head are a bad thing? Almost everyone knows this intuitively, but like to blame others for their own bad decisions.

 

[Mr Janny]

I'm not forgiving the NFL's stances in the past, but how stupid would you have to be to not realize that repeated blows to the head are a bad thing? Almost everyone knows this intuitively, but like to blame others for their own bad decisions.

If everyone knew that, and it was such a given, why would the NFL ever go to such lengths to say there's no correlation? You're speaking in a hindsight perspective, where of course it seems obvious that concussions are very serious, but think back to football in the 80s and 90s and concussions were not something that guys missed many plays over, let alone games like they do today. The league went to great effort to support the narrative that concussions didn't have long term effects and the game was safe. If everybody already knew that wasn't true, they wouldn't have bothered with the propaganda.

 

[Rabbuk]

If everyone knew that, and it was such a given, why would the NFL ever go to such lengths to say there's no correlation? You're speaking in a hindsight perspective, where of course it seems obvious that concussions are very serious, but think back to football in the 80s and 90s and concussions were not something that guys missed many plays over, let alone games like they do today. The league went to great effort to support the narrative that concussions didn't have long term effects and the game was safe. If everybody already knew that wasn't true, they wouldn't have bothered with the propaganda.

Muhammed ali doe.

 

[Mr Janny]

Muhammed ali doe.

NFL: "Muhammed Ali never wore a football helmet. If he would have, the champ would still be floating like a butterfly. Our sport is safe, as this scientific report we've commissioned clearly states. Next question?"

 

[Rabbuk]

They supported the narrative for a long time for deniable plausibility today in court cases.

 

[Mr Janny]

They supported the narrative for a long time for deniable plausibility today in court cases.

but why do that if, as it has been argued, everybody already knew that concussions were so dangerous? I mean, if everybody already knows then there's no plausible deniability, is there? It would be a huge waste of time and money to support an alternate narrative, if the danger of concussions was already common knowledge, right?

The fact is that the dangers of concussions weren't widely known at the time the NFL was suppressing alternate viewpoints. It might have been commonly thought that getting hit in the head could result in longterm damage, like Muhammed Ali, but boxing is a sport without much in the way of safety equipment like the NFL has. It would have been easily dismissed as a comparison at the time.