Bernard Pollard "The NFL won't exist in 20-30 years"

[NEGoldenAge]

It is past time for the NFL to start investing some serious money in developing better protective gear.

 

[BradyMossWelker]

Goddell must be on panic after hearing the great mind of the teacher Bernard Pollard.

Guys like this talking and actually thinking they have a point is what makes parents not letting their kids play.

 

[Raymond]

In 20-30 years I very well may be dead.

As far as I'm concerned, that would mean the NFL didn't exist.

 

[Bella*chick]

Goddell must be on panic after hearing the great mind of the teacher Bernard Pollard.

Guys like this talking and actually thinking they have a point is what makes parents not letting their kids play.

But they DO have a point. And what's more troubling.....it's not just football, it's all contact sports. Sure, you could be seriously hurt doing anything but with football, it's starting to look like a guarantee.

I was never planning on letting my son play, but he's shorter and slight, same physique as his da, who DID play football in high school and hurt his neck. So it was never in the cards here, we don't have the body type.

 

[Fencer]

It is past time for the NFL to start investing some serious money in developing better protective gear.

Protective gear can only do so much. If people hit each other, they hit each other, and the best gear in the world can only less the impact a little bit.

 

[QuantumMechanic]

As much of an idiot and a**h**e Pollard is, I actually think he's right about this. And people far, far more intelligent than he have been saying the same thing.

The potential massive wave of lawsuits against the NFL is one thing, but the real problem is going to be parents not letting their kids play football in the first place.

I know -- you think I'm crazy for saying something like that could ever happen and I'm not saying it's a given. But if more and more evidence of concussion damage mounts, especially if it can be shown that there's a real effect on high school and college kids, you're going to see parents not letting their kids play and schools getting very antsy about football especially if their insurers start putting pressure on them.

 

[Raymond]

That is correct fencer.

I do believe concussions happen when the brain inside the head crashes into the skull.

Just as in an auto accident, it's not the speed that kills, but the sudden stop.

 

[NEGoldenAge]

and the best gear in the world can only less the impact a little bit.

That's why you need to make the best gear in the world much better. Injuries and head trauma shorten NFL careers and will cost million in lawsuits. If they took 20% off the top each year and dedicate it to developing better equipment it would not take long to have dramatically better gear. That would show that the NFL is serious about dealing with player health and dramatically reduce major injuries. The new technology developed would be the new standard and the NFL could generate serious revenue distributing the new gearto colleges and high schools. Over time the investment would pay for itself, player careers would be longer and far fewer players would suffer major long term health problems from pro football careers.

 

[NEGoldenAge]

That is correct fencer.

I do believe concussions happen when the brain inside the head crashes into the skull.

Just as in an auto accident, it's not the speed that kills, but the sudden stop.

So you must cushion the impact to slow the change in direction. It can be done, it will just be very expensive.

 

[ausbacker]

So you must cushion the impact to slow the change in direction. It can be done, it will just be very expensive.

The technology has been around for years.

 

[PATSNUTme]

Looks like Bernard went to ancestry.com and thinks that he is related to Nostradamus.

 

[fgssand]

So you must cushion the impact to slow the change in direction. It can be done, it will just be very expensive.

OR....just take off the helmet all together. Rugby is a contact sport, with issues for sure, but at least the try with training and rules.

I promise you, head to head contact will be reduced greatly with no protection for the head in the first place.

Or maybe remove the facemask and outlaw head to head contact, alltogether.



http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2027053,00.html
Just a thought.

 

[Nikolai]

OR....just take off the helmet all together. Rugby is a contact sport, with issues for sure, but at least the try with training and rules.

I promise you, head to head contact will be reduced greatly with no protection for the head in the first place.

Or maybe remove the facemask and outlaw head to head contact, alltogether.



NFL Football's Concussion Problem: Take Helmets out of Hits? - TIME
Just a thought.

This is the answer here. More robust equipment is just going to encourage violent hits. Hockey is going through the same thing now, and it's because the protective equipment is so advanced and rigid that it can become a weapon, encouraging players to hit others with greater speed and ferocity.

 

[Wolfpack]

It is past time for the NFL to start investing some serious money in developing better protective gear.

Such money is already being invested. Not necessarily by the NFL directly, but by the gear manufacturers themselves, not to mention what I am sure are countless amateur inventors looking to make some serious money by building a better mousetrap. We've actually seen some innovation over the past 10-15 years. But as I said in a previous post, the laws of physics dictate that only so much can be done. All the technology in the world can do nothing to alter those laws.

 

[QuantumMechanic]

The rugby comparison is invalid. In rugby all that matters is that the ballcarrier goes down. It doesn't matter too much that he drags the tackler for a while first.

Football is all about yardage, so it matters a great deal that the ballcarrier not drag the tackler. So the kind of hits that are necessary to football are very different than the kind of hits that suffice in rugby.

The very nature of football requires the hard, momentum-killing hit, because yardage counts.

 

[Jackson 2]

If there's a god in the universe, Pollard will not exist in the next 20-30 weeks...

 

[Jimke]

What Pollard is referring to is a change in nomenclature by the NFL in
the next few years from NFL to NFFL, National Flag Football League.

 

[Mike in 333]

Identifying when a player has suffered a concussion and taking him off the field until he has recovered will likely reduce some of the long term effects. Previously some guys were just suffering repeated damage in the same game and, as I understand it, that is the cause of some of the most severe long term problems. There will also be some guys who will never see the field because they are particularly susceptible to concussions and some careers will be cut short.
A lot of these lawsuits are being brought because for a very long time the official position of the NFL was that the effects of concussions were only a short term problem; they didn't lead to chronic deterioration of the brain.

 

[Wolfpack]

Identifying when a player has suffered a concussion and taking him off the field until he has recovered will likely reduce some of the long term effects.

Problem with that is, despite paying lip service to taking guys with concussions out of games, the teams don't actually do that. You need look no further than the final month of this past season when Colt McCoy got drilled by James Harrison. About 70,000 people in the stadium, plus a couple million watching on TV, could tell McCoy was concussed. But what happened? He was back on the field a couple plays later and he arguably is being punished because his dad spoke out about that. And there have been no consequences for the Browns for letting him back out there.

It's incidents like that which make me think the ex-players filing lawsuits have a good chance of making the case that the league and the teams are grossly negligent.

 

[Avenger]

I think the rosters should be expanded to 60, with 53 game day active. With more players you can afford to take one out if he gets a concussion.