re: #74 Feline Fearless Leader

There’s also a lot of athletes who are not in a sport that leads to a professional career, and also a lot who never get that far in the system. The blown-out knees, concussions, etc. happen in high school or college. And often with less talented medical care and trainers than the pros have.

Absolutely. We should really take a long hard look at the sports that we encourage kids to play. I mean, right now, the biggest health problem for children in the US is obesity, so now is not really the time to discourage activity of any kind, but really, if you’ve got a kid, don’t encourage them to do soccer, or football, and if they do do baseball, no head-first slides— encourage them to do a sport without the concussion risk. There are all sports where concussions are pretty much inevitable, and concussions are really, really bad for you. There’s a reason our skulls are so damn thick and our flinch reactions are meant to get our head out of the way more than any other part of our body.

I have no idea how much damage I did to myself long-term by being a boxer. I hope it’s not much, I only had a few matches, but I probably took a couple of years off my life and I probably will get dementia or other cognitive problems sooner than I would have if I hadn’t been a boxer. I also got an enormously bad hernia from it, so any health benefits it had really got destroyed by that injury.

Please note I’m not talking about banning anything.