Common symptoms of CTE include memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse control problems, aggression, depression and eventually progressive dementia.
Its not just pros that face risk. The study said 21 percent of high school players and 90 percent of college players tested suffer from CTE...
With football, you could change some of the rules to make it something no one would pay to watch.
Youth leagues could forgo tackle football.
Teen and adult leagues could outlaw the most punishing types of tackling.
Football could eliminate kickoffs, where players run the full length of the field at full speed just to smash into someone running full speed in the opposite direction.
Those ideas wont make football more exciting, but they would make it safer.
It would also make it less profitable...
The National Football League, the richest sports organization in the U.S., rakes in about $14 billion a year in revenue.
The non-profit NCAA, which regulates college sports, pulls down only $1 billion per year but doesnt have to pay the players absorbing the abuse.
At the University of Georgia in 2016, football revenue outpaced expenses $87 million to $39 million. Profit from football subsidizes almost every other sports program.
Can education exist without athletics? Should a sport be abandoned, or fundamentally changed, because its dangerous?
