The Silent Devotion

I should probably cite my source, but seeing as it's a comment from ProFootballTalk, I'll just continue on, lol.

Even if you wrap yourself up in foam wrapping from head to toe and run into a brick wall at 30mph, you’ll still induce some trauma to your brain. Excess padding isn’t going to do anything. It’s the immediate deceleration when you hit the wall, that causes your brain (moving at 30mph) to hit the side of your skull (now moving at zero mph). This happens because your brain is encased in CNS fluid inside the skull. This will happen any time the football player gets hit, hard or soft. Furthermore, this will happen even if the impact is in the center of the body and not the head.

Accumulation of these hits over a 10 yr career will eventually cause serious brain damage (even low-impact hits). Football players should either sign waivers before joining the NFL, college, high-school, or even peewee league. Brain damage from high impacts can never be prevented unless you eliminate the game of football itself.

This right here is why I'm worried for the future of sports. Sports like football, boxing, and MMA are all predicated on its players taking tremendous blows to their bodies. We've got to be careful with how we respond to all this knowledge about the effects of multiple blows to the body. If we begin to eliminate these sports because of this newfound knowledge, we find ourself on a slippery slope. Most sports businesses that make any kind of money require contact of some sort. Should we eliminate basketball and soccer because of the occasional dangerous foul? mfekljasfksaj

And the slippery slope argument is arguably a fallacy. Hm. So there's that.