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  • It's hard to imagine today, but about 100 years ago, boxing was one of the most popular

  • sports in the U.S. More people went to some championship bouts than could fit into any

  • NFL stadium today. But for boxing, it was all downhill from there. There are a lot of

  • reasons why, but one of them is that a lot of people see the sport as barbaric because

  • it causes brain damage. "After the most murderous beating a man ever took in the ring. And there's

  • the bell." After years of getting hit in the head, many boxers developed dementia and depression

  • as part of a disease called dementia pugilistica. Nowadays, dementia pugilistica has a new name:

  • CTE. And it's not just found in boxers, but in increasing numbers of football players,

  • even causing some people to question the future of the NFL. So people have always known that

  • playing tackle football causes injuries. Ok i'm going to play football and maybe I'm going

  • to break my legs, maybe I won't be able to run when I'm 50. Players have known that forever.

  • But what we didn't know is that tackle football can cause really long-term brain injuries.

  • There's something a lot less sad about a 50-year-old who can't run versus a 50-year-old who can't

  • think. "The things we do to one another.... ok ..... uh ... hell I don't know what I'm

  • saying. I'm just tired and confused right now. That's why I say I can't really -- I

  • can't say it the way I want to say it." Over the past few years, a number of former players

  • have committed suicide after battling depression. Afterwards, they gave their brains to science

  • and upon examination, they showed telltale signs of CTE. Scientists don't yet have a

  • way of diagnosing CTE for sure, besides doing an autopsy. So apart from the 50 deceased

  • former players confirmed to have it, they can only suspect that hundreds more are living

  • with it right now. "9-7-8-4-3-2... 9-7-8......"

  • For a while the NFL was completely repressing

  • research. They were telling players that concussions were a relatively safe type of injury to suffer.

  • But with pressure mounting, the league changed course, settling a class-action suit for $765

  • million and pouring money into CTE research. The issue hasn't gone away at all. The NFL's

  • been trying to solve it, and it seems like they're putting genuine efforts into it, but

  • it just might not be possible. In theory, concussed players are no longer allowed to

  • enter games. They've moved the kickoff 5 yards down the field so a lot more kickoffs become

  • touchbacks, so you don't have the high-speed impacts happen when the kicking team is trying

  • to cover the kick and tackle the player. They've changed the rules in terms of head-to-head

  • hits. On defense, you can't use your head or your helmet as a weapon. If you're a running

  • back, you also can't lead with your head to hit other players' heads. Those are the easiest

  • things to target, they're kind of the lowest-hanging fruit. They can't get rid of concussions entirely

  • - those rule changes. Some concussions happen on the most random, incidental plays. I mean

  • you have these huge, fast guys running at high speed so even if you ban specific types

  • of hits, we're still seeing concussions happen with alarming frequency. There's another problem

  • - even if they got rid of concussions completely, some of the scientists think that subcuncussive

  • hits, so even milder type of hits that we might not even notice watching on tv, also

  • lead to CTE over time. They're still trying to figure that out, but if that were true,

  • that would basically mean that the game of football as we know it is fundamentally unsafe.

  • The NFL is more popular than ever. The Superbowl gets over 100 million people, so that's a

  • third of the country, watching it. And just on a week-to-week basis, you know, more people

  • watch football than any other sport. It's more popular by an order of magnitude. But

  • lots of parents are worried about the safety of the sport. A lot of people have come out

  • and said they wouldn't let their kids play football because of the health risks. "If

  • I had a son, I would be real leery of him playing." The number of kids under 16 playing

  • tackle football nationwide seems to be declining. And some state lawmakers have even considered

  • banning it for kids under 14 entirely. It's unlikely that people are just going to turn

  • off the TV because they realize the sport is unethical. What's going to kill football,

  • if it dies, would be parents not letting the next generation of players put on a helmet.

  • "We've got to find a way in this game to help eliminate that play right there. And I don't

  • know how you do it."

It's hard to imagine today, but about 100 years ago, boxing was one of the most popular

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