http://news.yahoo.com/george-dangers-football-cant-fixed-155236546--abc-news-politics.html "As millions watch and celebrate the success of America's athletes in the Olympic Games in London, ABC News' George Will turned his attention to the beginning of the NFL season and the ongoing debate over traumatic brain injuries suffered on the football field. In his Washington Post column this morning, George Will writes powerfully about the long-term problems facing the sport, saying, "Football is entertainment in which the audience is expected to delight in gladiatorial action that a growing portion of the audience knows may cause the players degenerative brain disease." He spoke about the issue this morning on the "This Week" roundtable: STEPHANOPOULOS: George, I know it's hard for you to watch Olympics during baseball season, but I think all of us were actually struck by what you wrote this week about so far - your column this morning, pretty simple but staggering conclusion. You write that football just can't be fixed. WILL: The human body is no longer built for the kinetic energy of the National Football League and even further down to high school. In 1980, George, there were three NFL players over 300 pounds. Today there are three over 350 pounds, and 352 people on the 2011 rosters weighed more than 300 pounds. WILL: Over 20 yards, which is where a lot of football is played, these guys are as fast as cats, fast as running backs, and the kinetic energy is producing what is called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, CTE, get used to that, because it's going to be the subject of lawsuits and other things. The crucial word is chronic. Repeated, small but repeated blows to the head, the brain floating in the pan in the skull, now we know causes early dementia and other problems. STEPHANOPOULOS: So what's to be done about it? Because right now, there's no evidence that the American public is ready to turn away. WILL: It will start down below. It will start at the small level of kids playing football in grade school and then in high school. We now in our hyper-cautious parenting put crash helmets on children riding tricycles. How many of these parents are going to let their children go out and play football once they learn, again the chronic, the cumulative effect of small brain trauma?" Now let me explain what plays out next. Over the next couple years they will blast out more stories and reports like this one. It will not be long to members of the left start to note that the majority of players are black and they are the ones experiencing the brunt of the injuries from football. Once this starts, the left will run a full court press and they will try to get football banned.
Now let me explain what is playing out now.A prominent conservative (George Will) is starting the attempt to ban football
IF it did happen will it be a complete ban or just a ban on organized football leagues? IOW would I go to jail for just playing with friends in the back yard? So many issues to discuss.
There will be a fifteen minute conversation among the chattering classes that the average man/woman on the street couldn't care less about.... and then this conversation will go away. Every once in a while, we will have this fifteen minute conversation again... Nobody will give a damn... And then it will go away... again. Nothing will change unless fans stop going to games and stop watching games on TV. The likelyhood of that happening is zero.
Well its hard to say. I am not saying it will be banned, I am saying there is going to be a serious concerted effort to ban it.
No one in the government has seriously considered it. Stop making shit up. If we looked at all of the things that made it past the ideation stage of the govenment, we'd be far more shocked than this.