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Association Between Playing Football in the NFL and Long-term Mortality in Retirement
I'm sure this is going to be misinterpreted all over the internet soon enough, because that's what happens with any scientific research on the risks of playing in the NFL, so I figured I'd preempt it and make a thread.
What they did was compared mortality rates for 'real' NFL players whose careers began between 1982 and 1992 (i.e. a cohort largely born between 1960 and 1970 or so, now in their 40s and 50s) and the mortality rates for scabs who played during the strike in 1987 (i.e. a cohort largely born in the early to mid-1960s, now in their 50s). They found there was no significant difference between the two, with the 95% confidence interval showing a hazard level between 0.95 and 2.0. It includes 1.0 in the interval, so this means you can't rule out the null hypothesis (i.e. that observed differences are due to statistical error rather than 'real').
The way this is going to be reported is that playing football doesn't lead to a significantly higher risk of mortality, even though the researchers them are careful to constantly reiterate that is not their finding. But you know the NFL and Roger Goodell need this, so they're going to pay their patsy PR firms like ESPN to write exonerating garbage.
For background, most men who live to age 18 don't die until they're in their 70s (at least). Most mortality events between those years are accidental or self-inflicted; the rest are the result of unfortunate outlier conditions. It's worth noting that NFL players are more prone to the latter than the general population because they tend to be massive men and therefore more at risk of cardiometabolic events.
And indeed that's what the paper bears out. The oldest person in the study is likely around 60 years old, or would be if they had survived. Again, most people don't die by that age if they already lived to 18, so any differences in mortality from the general population would be marginal (if alarming). The majority of mortality events for both the scab and real NFL samples are first from cardiometabolic disease and second from transportation accidents and suicide. It's possible, but this is outside the scope of the paper, that if you fast forwarded thirty years when you can expect most of these players will have died and therefore provided more completely mortality data, that differences would be significant.
In any case, a confidence interval ranging from 0.95 to 2 means that the 'best guess' for risk of death based on having an NFL career is anywhere from 'about the same' to 'twice as bad.' Yeah, you can't publish that as a finding because it includes 1.0, but it's worth noting. It does 'approach significance' in the weedy parlance of statistics.
Also worth noting is that the scabs had all played high school and college football, so the only thing being tested here is 'normal NFL career' (which is short in any case) versus 'three NFL games during the strike.' Everyone involved had played football for at least the better part of a decade before. And NFL players likely had higher earnings and therefore higher socioeconomic status than replacement players, which is associated with better health across lifetimes, so there are possible confounding factors in play.
Credit to the researchers, who acknowledge all of this. It's an interesting study nonetheless. But I'm sure it's going to be histrionically reported by the NFL's mouthpieces and I wanted to get ahead of that on this forum. You're welcome for the long thread.
tl;dr Interesting but limited research about NFL player mortality will be willfully misinterpreted by sports media
I'm sure this is going to be misinterpreted all over the internet soon enough, because that's what happens with any scientific research on the risks of playing in the NFL, so I figured I'd preempt it and make a thread.
What they did was compared mortality rates for 'real' NFL players whose careers began between 1982 and 1992 (i.e. a cohort largely born between 1960 and 1970 or so, now in their 40s and 50s) and the mortality rates for scabs who played during the strike in 1987 (i.e. a cohort largely born in the early to mid-1960s, now in their 50s). They found there was no significant difference between the two, with the 95% confidence interval showing a hazard level between 0.95 and 2.0. It includes 1.0 in the interval, so this means you can't rule out the null hypothesis (i.e. that observed differences are due to statistical error rather than 'real').
The way this is going to be reported is that playing football doesn't lead to a significantly higher risk of mortality, even though the researchers them are careful to constantly reiterate that is not their finding. But you know the NFL and Roger Goodell need this, so they're going to pay their patsy PR firms like ESPN to write exonerating garbage.
For background, most men who live to age 18 don't die until they're in their 70s (at least). Most mortality events between those years are accidental or self-inflicted; the rest are the result of unfortunate outlier conditions. It's worth noting that NFL players are more prone to the latter than the general population because they tend to be massive men and therefore more at risk of cardiometabolic events.
And indeed that's what the paper bears out. The oldest person in the study is likely around 60 years old, or would be if they had survived. Again, most people don't die by that age if they already lived to 18, so any differences in mortality from the general population would be marginal (if alarming). The majority of mortality events for both the scab and real NFL samples are first from cardiometabolic disease and second from transportation accidents and suicide. It's possible, but this is outside the scope of the paper, that if you fast forwarded thirty years when you can expect most of these players will have died and therefore provided more completely mortality data, that differences would be significant.
In any case, a confidence interval ranging from 0.95 to 2 means that the 'best guess' for risk of death based on having an NFL career is anywhere from 'about the same' to 'twice as bad.' Yeah, you can't publish that as a finding because it includes 1.0, but it's worth noting. It does 'approach significance' in the weedy parlance of statistics.
Also worth noting is that the scabs had all played high school and college football, so the only thing being tested here is 'normal NFL career' (which is short in any case) versus 'three NFL games during the strike.' Everyone involved had played football for at least the better part of a decade before. And NFL players likely had higher earnings and therefore higher socioeconomic status than replacement players, which is associated with better health across lifetimes, so there are possible confounding factors in play.
Credit to the researchers, who acknowledge all of this. It's an interesting study nonetheless. But I'm sure it's going to be histrionically reported by the NFL's mouthpieces and I wanted to get ahead of that on this forum. You're welcome for the long thread.
tl;dr Interesting but limited research about NFL player mortality will be willfully misinterpreted by sports media
