Would You Let Your Son Play Football? I'm a (still relatively) new father, and I'm not sure. Over at Grantland, Jonah Lehrer examined the relatively unexplored area of adolescent concussions:
According to a study published last year in Neurosurgery, high school football players who suffered two or more concussions reported mental problems at much higher rates, including headaches, dizziness, and sleeping issues. The scientists describe these symptoms as "neural precursors," warning signs that something in the head has gone seriously wrong.
This research builds on previous work documenting the hazards of football for the teenage brain. In 2002, a team of neurologists surveying several hundred high school football players concluded that athletes who had suffered three or more concussions were nearly ten times more likely to exhibit multiple "abnormal" responses to head injury, including loss of consciousness and persistent amnesia. A 2004 study, meanwhile, revealed that football players with multiple concussions were 7.7 times more likely to experience a "major drop in memory performance" and that three months after a concussion they continued to experience "persistent deficits in processing complex visual stimuli." What's most disturbing, perhaps, is that these cognitive deficits have a real-world impact: When compared with similar students without a history of concussions, athletes with two or more brain injuries demonstrate statistically significant lower grade-point averages.
And as Lehrer pointed out, the likelihood of teenage football players to receive an NFL payday -- or even a full athletic scholarship -- is miniscule when considering the sheer number of high school football players in America. It's a cost-benefit analysis that has taken on a whole new meaning for me in the past 12 months.
Much more linkage below the jump:
AIRBHG Goes On Vacation, Iowa Running Backs Disappear Anyway. Poor Iowa. Has one position at any school been so routinely and randomly decimated like the Hawkeye running backs? BHGP limps through Angry Iowa Running Back Hating God's reign of terror.
Shocking! Penn State's trustees were informed of the Jerry Sandusky investigation in "May or July", according to PSU President Rodney Erickson, who noted that he was not at the meeting. Tonight is the first of Erickson's "town hall" alumni meetings (in Pittsburgh). If you're going, come back to us with a full report.
Pennsylvania State University trustees were briefed by then-President Graham B. Spanier about a grand-jury investigation of child-sex-abuse allegations against former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky months before his arrest, university president Rodney Erickson said Tuesday.Erickson said he did not attend the briefing, which he said took place in May or July while he was provost, nor was he told it had occurred until after Sandusky's November arrest blew up into a national media firestorm and Spanier resigned.
Well, yeah, they should've known about it considering that members fo the BoT testified and the grand jury investigation was public knowledge as of March, thanks to Sara Ganim at the Patriot-News. This only adds to the anti-legend of Penn State's public relations ability. FWIW, I was told that the gist of Spanier's presentation to the Board ended with a consensus of "this probably won't be a big deal." Just a bit outside.
BSD WORLDWIDE. Junny quoted by Bloomberg News regarding PSU recruiting.
Stolen Without Regret. In the recent podcast, I pilfered a line from somewhere (247?) regarding Rob Bolden's potential fresh start under a new coaching regime. Essentially, he's transferred without transferring. Same goes for a number of other players on the Penn State roster, including Eric Shrive, as Donnie Collins notes.
Compiled. MGoBlog puts together the Big Ten recruiting race, based on the four major scouting services' rankings. Nice feature. Also at MGoBlog, a direct plea for Penn State fans to not RichRod the BOB.
BOB Charisma. ComRadio gets video reaction of some PSU players following BOB's first players' meeting.
B1G 33 Rosters Announced. Skyler Mornhinweg quarterbacks the Pennsylvania squad. Other familiar names include current commits Eugene Lewis and Nyeem Wartman, former commits J.J. Denman and J.P. Holtz, and former/current target DE Noah Spence.
Free Smart Football. We all love Smart Football. It is smarter than us. However, it's been jacked by a Russian mirror site, which is decidedly not cool. A closer look at this dastardly practice. Hope that never happens to Black Shoe Diaries.
I Read The Fanshots. Seems that the Pennsylvania Attorney General's office is re-interviewing former and current coaches about the ongoing Jerry Sandusky investigation. So that's nice.