My kid is 9 and plays flag football so I figured he’d be somewhat safe. Then I read an article in the WSJ that there are more injuries in flag than tackle football which I found a little surprising but I guess it makes sense considering they don’t wear any pads in flag.
MMA as well, it's absurd they always tried to claim they won't/don't have the CTE issues boxing and football do.
| Sport | % of concussion-related injuries |
|---|---|
| Hockey | 12% |
| Snowboarding | 10% |
| Water tubing | 9% |
| Football | 8% |
| Lacrosse | 8% |
| Horseback riding | 7% |
| Wrestling | 7% |
| Rugby | 7% |
| Soccer | 6% |
| Cheerleading | 6% |
| Baseball | 5% |
| Volleyball | 4% |
| Basketball | 3% |
Now do CTE statistics
My post above wasn't meant to be judgey. I know perfectly rational parents and kids that love the sport.
Did a double take on tubing. But as it turns out, towed water tubing is indeed the cause of many head injuries to children. Regular old river tubing is fine.
What does "% of concussion-related injuries" mean? If it means percentage of injuries from that activity that include a concussion, then it's a pretty meaningless number. A more relevant statistic would be "concussions per 100 hours of participation" or something like that.
I didn't mean to come across as a challenge. I agree with you and Tua has a tough decision ahead about playing again. Just wanted to demonstrate that there are risk/rewards in everything.
Since the only way to determine CTE, currently, is to study brain tissue after you are dead*, I don't think there are a lot of meaningful statistics pertaining to youth sports.
They're not
I wouldn't be concerned with flag football. Injuries are going to happen in every sport. Virtually everyone who played sports growing up faced injuries at some point. The concern with contact football is head collisions, not specifically concussions. Sure, what happened to Tua is awful. That's certainly a concern with football. But the real concern is the repeated knocks to the head over and over again, and less the major blows that cause concussions. Those repeated knocks are what result in CTE. Whenever I watch a football game the linemen knock heads on basically every play. That's the concern. I wouldn't expect that to be happening in flag football.
Girls soccer is one many don't know about. Daughter's friend across the street had 3. Her parents are our friends and we thought they were crazy to let her keep playing.
He 100% shouldn’t have played
I didn't watch. Now I don't want to. But you are ahead of the curve. Talking heads are all over this today.
I score 3/13....4/14 if there's an "other" category, what about you?...o wait that's not what we're doing here?...I'll go lie down
Even if he wasn't concussed from Sunday (he was), he should have been benched because of his "back injury". I'm a dolphins fan and I'm about done watching the NFL now. Tua could have legit died out there.
Played the position and on a Turkey Day morning I got the same hit he took last week two plays in a row. I woke up on the bench with smelling sauce and coaches around me. Went back in next series…that’s what happened then. Couldnt untie my cleats before getting on the bus. shoulders hitting first and then the head is horrible. I cringe every time it happens.
The shoulder then the whip of the neck and impact of the head is always so scary. Back of the head is so dangerous.
It just pissed me off when MMA was in it's mainstream infancy and Dana White and all the other people marketing the sport were bashing boxing while saying their sport was safe and wouldn't have CTE problems. Now that the sport has been around for a bit you see the athletes losing their minds and having trouble speaking as they get older. 90% of them are juiced to the gills and a bunch of them have CTE.
Today's paper
nypost.com
Yes.