I hate Politicians!!! (NRC)

Wow, yes folks with murders in the city at staggering levels, the way to protect your kids is to BAN HEADERS. My good lord. If they pass that I want an immediate ban on Pop Warner football league kids sacking the quarterback or young hockey league kids checking.

 

No more Suarez's please, let them play.

 

This lady has been trying to get this done for quite some time now...she has very little support!

A good friend of mine is a state rep, I've talked with him about this and voiced my concerns....He assured me that this bill will NEVER pass! It is in hearings and committee's and will never even come out for a vote....

If it does come before the house, I've been told it would be voted down overwhelmingly

I also told my buddy that if this bill were to somehow pass, I'm going to be running against him in the next election!!!


The rule that really drives me crazy as a coach is the mouthguard rule! I've seen many players sent off for not having one....And when they're wearing them it virtually eliminates verbal communication between the players on the pitch and the talk you do get is a garbled mess....

 

Yea!!!! I've got a helmet too!!! Yea!!!!! I've got politicians!!! Yea!!!! Welcome to Nerf World!!!! Yea!!!! We are the laughingstock of the world!!!! I think I pooped...

 

Hi there.

 

no, I'm annoyed by it too. they tried to do this with little league base ball, banning aluminum bats and trying to get tem to use softer balls (med desity compresssed foams and rubbers). that disappeared. hopefull this will too.

total 90 (the compay that makes thouse stupid headgears (you know the ones only suarez wears ... and he still gets concussions even with it) has made a huge push. I bet they are going to legislators all over, going to them with the reports and then showing thier product. if it becomes mandatory, they will make a fortune. and older players hate those things. it's a conspiracy?
I do like your bubble wrap idea. that sounds like fun.

 

And I love this quote from the article.....

"With strong evidence of long-term neurological damage among a portion of veteran soccer players, some soccer officials, parents, and physicians around the nation have recently been pushing for more safety measures for young players, including an outright ban on heading, an integral part of the world's most popular sport."

At least the authors understood that heading is an integral part of the sport.

Maybe they should ban changing directions in women's basketball- think of all the ACL injuries that would prevent. Or eliminate jumping in volleyball- players break ankles and tear ligaments all the time from landing wrong. Or hockey sticks from ice hockey- those are *really* dangerous weapons. The ice is kind of slippery, too, for that matter....

OTOH, I'd like to keep an open mind on the topic, and consider the studies and criticisms of the same, especially compared with other sports. It's rational to consider change when there is overwhelming evidence supporting change. (Global warming, anyone?)

It's just when you're talking about health and safety of your child, this becomes an emotional decision based on fear. Business knows this, too- consider all the infomercials promoting the fear while touting soccer headgear.

From what little I have read of these studies, there are far more questions than answers. And contrary to the suggestion to require headgear for players aged 14 and younger, I would think head injuries are more common and dangerous at the high school level. This is when play is most aggressive and reckless, and the forces are a magnitude higher.

Now how can we get rid of the high school mouthguard rule?

With mouthguards / Without
mmmphhhh! = "man on!"
mmmphhhh! = "square pass!"
mmmphhhh! = "support!"
mmmphhhh! = "1-2!"
mmmphhhh! = "keeper!"

 

Well it's one thing if Adin Brown decides that since he gets a concussion a week, perhaps he should take some (voluntary) precautions.

It's completely different for some yahoos up on Beacon Hill to decide that they and some random soccer mom know the sport better than the millions who play it around the world. If you ban heading because it's dangerous, why not ban tackling? Why not make a rule that 50/50 balls stop play and you flip a coin to decide who gets it, instead of risking a challenge? You have to draw the line between safety and the integrity of the sport somewhere.

Another beef I have is that soccer has decided to draw this line taking safety into account MUCH more than other sports, such as American football, boxing, rugby, racecar driving, etc. <b>edit</b> (forgot to finish my thought) Why aren't legislators going after these sports, instead of soccer which is magnitudes safer than football?

 

I can definately vouch for the mouthguard comment... they're horrible and completely unnecessary. As a goalie, I'd only put it in when the other team crossed half field because I had to communicate with my defenders all the time. Now basketball players have to wear them for the MIAA...

... at least in college if you do have to wear mouthguards you can fool the refs when a really tiny one. I hate how in high school it has to cover all your molers too. ugh

 

LISTEN,

I 've bedded plenty of halls and I is ferfectly pine

 

I have three kids and have coached them all at various times. I agree with you 100% - this is the stupidist thing I've heard in a long while.

 

The subject of headed balls came up at the Academy of Neurology annual meeting's course on head injury this past spring. The faculty's consensus opinion was that headed balls are not a threat based on currently available evidence. The anti-soccer studies quoted in today's Globe are largely garbage. The real danger, mentioned deep in the article, is head-to-head, head-to-elbow, and head-to-foot contact.

Because concussion in soccer is not a trivial problem, it would be reasonable, IMO, to collect data over a long (many year) period of time on soccer players, accounting for variables like age, sex, medical health, drug and alcohol intake, position played (!) etc. There could be an arm of the study in which risk-matched players were randomized to wearing Total-90 headgear or not. This study would be very expensive, but would be less expensive than the cost to parents and players forced to buy the headgear by statute.

The idea that soccer is comparable to American-rules football in head injury risk is ludicrous. There was a clever study done in the early 80's by a nurse named Becky Rimel, who did a quick IQ check before and after full contact football practiccs which raised concerns, but was discontinued by the university at the request of the football coach.

There is technology for dentists to make small, snugly fitting mouthguards to the tune of hundreds of $s. If there are ultrasound techs making prenatal baby pictures at the mall, why isn't some entrepreneur making top shelf mouthguards for $20?

 

This is a correct statement of the issue.
There are a lot of concussions in soccer but not from "headers".
The overall injury rate in soccer is far below most other major sports.

My Bottom Line: the greatest risk happens when you get out of bed in the morning---it's called----LIFE.

 

Adin Brown never headed a ball in his life - yet had serious career risk from concussions.

It's the people-to-people contact, stupid. Can you say, elbows? Heading a soccer ball is only very slightly risky in a concussion sense, if you don't know how to do it properly.

(I can hear rev-0ke running to his keyboard now to rebuff me in my knowledge of heading.)

 

Yeah, this is kind of ridiculous. I saw an infomercial for those "helmets" that Suarez and AdIn wear. The youth players wearing them looked ridiculous. Also, the headgear looks like it would interfere with a clean header based on it's shape. Overall, it's just a bad idea.

When it comes to mouthguards, I also find this ridiculous. I played for my high school team last year and was forced to wear one. They suck...a lot. First off, they are very uncomfortable to wear. And most importantly, they make communication between players almost non-existant. No one can ever make out what anyone is saying. Thank god they don't require them in intramurals in college (yet slide tackling at any point is punished by a penalty kick).

 

IMO, this law would effectively kill off youth soccer in this state past a certain age. Soccer players already have to put up with enough crap from the soccer haters (I'm gonna assume the one who proposed this is one) who think playing soccer is uncool. Do this and the ridicule would be unbearable.

 

honestly, this just goes to show people how worthless politicians are. give someone money and an issue and they'll beat a dead horse with it. if this is what politicians do all day... a worthless job for worthless people

 

I agree with you.

who peed in your coffee?
(I can here Patfan1 running to his keyboard now to fellate tony)

 

Adin had the misfortune to come into contact with the hardest substance known to man. No, not diamond - Joey Franchino's knee.

As with pwykes, I've coached three different y.s. teams for a combined 20 years or so and have NEVER seen a head injury, on our teams or our opponents. For that matter, I've never seen anyone knock out or chip a tooth either (although I chipped mine played tackle football).

What bugs me most (after the potential horror of soccer fans worldwide laughing at Mass. as hysterically as anyone who can spell the word science laughs at Kansas) is that it seems like no one has learned the lesson of "American" football - the more equipment you add, the more severe the injuries become.

Instead of dealing with abrasions and lacerations and the like, football deals with shattered kneecaps, multiple torn knee ligaments, shoulder seperations and CONCUSSIONS. I'm still waiting for someone to notice that pro football players have a life expectancy similiar to someone from a poverty-stricken, non-industrialized country.

I wonder if anyone has given any thought to what would happen when two kids go up for a ball and one's helmet catches the other in the face? Mandate face-masks next?

 

It seemed from the article that even the sponsor doesn't really expect anything to come this, so I'm not going to worry too much about it.

This was the first thing I thought of as I was reading. It is human nature to take more risks if you think you're safer. There is evidence to suggest that people who wear seatbelts tend to drive more aggressively, which results in more accidents, although the lower death rates that also result outweigh the higher accident rates. A more ambiguous case is the one involving ice hockey. I have seen the argument made that spinal cord injuries in hockey are actually more common since helmets were made mandatory because players don't try as hard to remain upright or avoid collisions.

Unless head to head or head to knee contact is a lot more common in youth soccer than I think it is, it seems that the tradeoff would not necessarily be a good one.

On the other hand, I think banning headers in youth soccer (but not by legislative means) would be a good thing. It would place more emphasis on foot skills and reduce the accidental advantage that large kids have.

 

I never want to see something like this in MLS. Alan Mayer of the California Surf in an ’81 NASL playoff game against Seattle.