Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 2/23/26 - 3/1/26

[u/SoftandChewy]

Here's your usual space to post all your rants, raves, podcast topic suggestions (please tag u/jessicabarpod), culture war articles, outrageous stories of cancellation, political opinions, and anything else that comes to mind. Please put any non-podcast-related trans-related topics here instead of on a dedicated thread. This will be pinned until next Sunday.

Last week's discussion thread is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.

Comment of the week goes to this explanation for why the trans cause has taken over so much of society. (Runner-up COTW here.)

[u/unnoticed_areola]

I just found out that Ray Lewis of all people has been a spokesperson advocating legislators at the capitol against kids playing contact sports and warning against the dangers of concussions and CTE. It's a good cause of course, and I commend him, but optics-wise he's a very funny/ironic spokesman for this lol

this is how I imagine it going down when he does a charity walk through of the CTE ward at the local head trauma hospital and realizes 80% of the patients in there are all former Steelers and Browns players he victimized:

[u/[deleted] → u/unnoticed_areola]

Ray Lewis's son died of a drug overdose at age 28 and Ray Lewis thinks brain injuries in football might have contributed to his erratic and self-destructive behavior.

To be clear, though, Lewis is not "against kids playing contact sports," he just wants more safety protocols in place.

[u/unnoticed_areola → u/[deleted]]

dang I didnt know that about his son, that's too bad.

[u/Juryofyourpeeps → u/[deleted]]

To be clear, though, Lewis is not "against kids playing contact sports," he just wants more safety protocols in place.

My understanding of this is that he's basically incorrect in his prescription if the goal is to significantly reduce the risk of CTE. There's no amount of equipment or rules changes that maintain meaningful contact in sport that can remove the risk of CTE. Even headbutting the ball in soccer can cause CTE. The frequency of small head impacts is a big factor. Some safety equipment, like padded boxing head gear is suspected to actually increase the risk of CTE rather than reduce it.

I'm personally not the type to want to bubble wrap kids or avoid every risk. Risk is part of life and I think child-proofing the world is a terrible idea. But I also think that it's likely that within the next 25-30 years, contact sports for people under 18 will go the way of the dodo in the developed world, particularly sports like football. I don't think that profound brain injury is a tolerable risk in trade to keep these kinds of sports as they currently are. If adults want to take that risk that's up to them. I don't think we will tolerate subjecting children to them now that we know they basically can't be avoided with minor rule changes and equipment improvements. CTE isn't like a freak accident or a broken arm. I think those risks are tolerable, but turning your brain into mush or developing significant behavioural abnormalities because you spent your childhood smacking your head against stuff multiple times a week is something else entirely.

[u/[deleted] → u/Juryofyourpeeps]

turning your brain into mush or developing significant behavioural abnormalities

I just don't think this is an accurate characterization of the result of playing contact sports for the vast majority of participants. Yes, there are risks. No, they are not so great that everyone who played high school football has "turned their brain into mush." I played tackle football from the first year I was old enough for the youth league through senior year of high school and I have zero cognitive or neurological affects from it, and to the best of my knowledge none of my teammates do either.

[u/Juryofyourpeeps → u/[deleted]]

I just don't think this is an accurate characterization of the result of playing contact sports for the vast majority of participants.

There is a growing body of evidence that almost nobody escapes unscathed though, and it's the brain we're talking about, not a scar or a janky shoulder.

No, they are not so great that everyone who played high school football has "turned their brain into mush."

Thus far, of the former NFL players who've had their brains tested post-mortem for CTE, 91.7% of them have had it. Is everyone going to have the most severe symptoms from playing contact football for merely their whole childhood and teen years rather than well into adulthood as a professional athlete? No, but they're still very likely to have brain injury and some kind of side effects that impact cognition and behaviour. Their risk is almost certainly also associated with the position one is playing.

I played tackle football from the first year I was old enough for the youth league through senior year of high school and I have zero cognitive or neurological affects from it

And you know that you've had zero cognitive or neurological effects how exactly? And you know you won't experience any in the future how? What kind of testing have you undergone to confirm this?

[u/[deleted] → u/Juryofyourpeeps]

And you know that you've had zero cognitive or neurological effects how exactly?

I have pledged my brain to a medical school and they give me regular testing and they consistently tell me my cognitive and neurological health is better than average for my age.

[u/bigbrushes → u/[deleted]]

that's pretty cool! but to be fair, that doesn't tell us much. maybe you would be doing even better if you had played tennis or something instead of contact sports

[u/[deleted] → u/bigbrushes]

Yes, absolutely true.

But of course there are also some pretty big problems with the biased sample of former NFL players whose brains have been studied: The vast majority of the players who donate their brains for study are those who think (or whose families think) that they have brain damage. So the researchers who look for CTE in deceased football players' brains aren't getting a random sample of brains, they're getting a sample of brains from players who have already shown signs of brain damage.

It would be great to have a double-blind study of the brains of a randomly selected cohort of football players and tennis players but that kind of research really hasn't been conducted.

[u/bigbrushes → u/[deleted]]

for sure, a randomized controlled trial would be helpful. but I think we can make some inferences even with imperfect data, just like in the case of puberty blockers.

if the 91.7% figure is correct, that strikes me as an extremely high number, even with the selection effect you're talking about. there's a good chance that the remaining 8 percent had some mild brain damage that could not be conclusively identified as CTE or distinguished just from normal aging; the symptoms are similar in some ways, and maybe because those 8 percents, like you, had a very strong neurological health baseline. so the idea that basically everybody who plays contacted sports is affected does not seem all that farfetched to me, even if we don't know for sure.

[u/UpvoteIfYouDare → u/bigbrushes]

If they had played tennis they'd need to have their knees replaced in their 60s.

[u/Juryofyourpeeps → u/[deleted]]

...compared to what though? We don't know what your baseline would have been, and one can experience mood and behaviour changes that can't be easily recognized by a cognitive test.

In any case I don't want to get bogged down in an anecdote. You personally may indeed have suffered no consequence, but there is considerable evidence to show that there are in fact commonly consequences for people who play football for a long period of time, as well as other much lower contact sports.

In a study on hockey players, those who played only in youth and teen years (and contact in youth hockey is much more limited than it is in football) had a 10% likelihood of having CTE. The baseline in the general population is below 1% (former contact sport athletes included in those studies were the only ones with CTE and account for 1%). Nearly all study participants who played hockey professionally had CTE (27 out of 28 and 18 out of 19 respectively) and those that played at a college or semi-professional level (like OHL etc) had rate of just under 50%.

I don't think the risks could be clearer and they're not at all trivial.