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.
