# Talk:Health issues in American football

"fatalities are uncommon in football"
"catastrophic injuries are rare"
"Catastrophic injuries are not common in American football"
"Fatalities in football are rare"
These strike me as weasel words. What counts as common? Rare compared to what? We have the specific numbers at other points in the article. As far as I can tell, these words only serve to slant towards a particular conclusion without adding any real information or context.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonas42 (talk • contribs) 05:03, 21 January 2017 (UTC) 

Since nutritional standards and weight-training technique were already quite advanced even in the 1960's"
This is wrong, beside how would you define "quite advanced". in the 1960's people thought the sun healed diseases, that eating banana's made you strong and that smoking cigarettes helped you relax and sleep better with no negative side effects. in the last 5 years alone nutritional information has grown rapidly and weight-training "technique" however irrelevant to gaining mass in this sense was virtualy the same, weight training routines were not.
perhaps you should reasearch body building and body building nutrition, start with other wiki's then go to forums and websites. It's non factual, thats for sure, you're in disagreement but thats because you've been stubborn ever since i never met you, fix it or i'll delete it. 
Also "Contemporary football players are larger than their predecessors of only 30 or 40 years ago. It is quite normal, for instance, for all the members of the offensive line of a major college or professional team to weigh more than 300 pounds (136 kg.), whereas in the 1960s linemen who weighed only 270 pounds were common."
"only" 30 or 40 years ago? firstly which is it, 30 or 40? secondly thats a very long time, do you have any idea what has happened since then? you do also realize that in the early 1990's children began hitting puberty at much younger ages, the suspect being anti-biotics fed to cows and it was not uncommon, for instance, for 9 year old males to masturbate and 11 year old girls to begin menstration and get pregnant, whereas 30 "or" 40 years ago the children would have taken several more years to develop. you emphasize 300+ like its huge, like it HAS to be steroids, like theres no other explanation but then say "only 270 pounds were common".. "only" 270 pounds? A mod needs to put a higher standard message on this page at the very least, I wont stop bitching until this article is written from a neutral point of view, representing only facts and none of your bias.
(sigh) one more go " Such drugs are widely available even to little tiny babies" this has to be the absolute dumbest statement I have ever heard, incase you didn't know body building supplements (glutamine, creatine, amino acids, ect,ect) , pro-hormonces 
and phytonutrients are NOT steroids, synthetic anabolic steroids are about as easy to get in america as a fully automatic AK-47, possible? yes. widespread? what country, or world for that matter do you live in? 
I pray for somebody with sense, logic and knowledge - preferably a mod as well to come and fix this. Mithotyn

I know this isn't directed at me, but Mithotyn, the general policy on wikipedia is that if you have something against a specific person's views on the article, you name that person when you talk about it (instead of that ridiculously vague "you" and "your"). Really, this rant of yours shouldn't be here at all, and should be on the "offending" user's talk page, but whatever. If you think there are still serious problems with the article, try improving it yourself instead of merely demanding that others do it. Please. Matt Yeager 04:32, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
I have a handicap with scripting articles, a terrible one otherwise I would. I'll leave it alone but somebody needs to put up a "the neutrality of this article is disputed" or the "conform to higher standards" message or something on it (whichever is best) so OTHER people, perhaps more talented writers than me that are interested in the subject can recongize it and do what I cannot and re-write it. Mithotyn
Apparently nobody gives a shit about this article, I know your position on deletions matt but if somebody doesen't re-write this soon I will feel compelled to delete it, its supplying false and biased (mis)information to people that might regard this information as being true when it is only speculation written as if it were to state fact.  misinformation is dangerous and doesen't belong on the internet, its nearly everything thats wrong with the internet and shouldn't be on wikipedia. Mithotyn

You edit talk pages just fine. You delete stuff just fine. What's the handicap? Matt Yeager 01:37, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Heres afew links that prove nothing of my point but may help bring a better point of view regarding the topic to whoever wishes to re-write it. 
My point of course being that this article should not be written from a point of view that beleives a majority of athletes who play American football take or have taken steroids, the percentage of players that do are and have been incredibly low, beleived to be less than 3%. The part of this article I deleted also stated an assumption/theory that players who are 40-50 pounds heavier at the offensive line position are so due to steroids, the article at that point leaving no sources or factual information, written as if the author beleived it and is trying to make others beleive it. This edit should not be reverted without being fixed or without me being proven wrong regarding the "non factual" statements or wrong regarding my beleif that the article does not represent a NPOV. If problems continue long enough, we'll probably have to RFC because it seems as if only two people are reading this discussion page and that includes me.
[[1]], [[2]], [[3]] [[4]]  
Also I cant say I agree with the "Problems in football" section of the american football section, but just so we (the we is probably as ridiculous as the "you" but guess what? I don't know who i'm talking to) can try to get on the same page I will give a decent example of a statement I don't like and why. "Fans and critics actively debate the role of steroids in professional and amateur football." 

I have never been in a debate over the role of steroids in professional and/or amateur football nor have I ever known anyone who has, the only debate I've been in regarding steroids and football has been to the theory that some football players may use anabolic steroids. now baseball and body building, thats another story.
So with that statement, what are you trying to say? (whoever wrote it)  it sounds as if you're stating that FANS and CRITICS actively debate the ROLE (circumstances regarding a teams win/loss record? wether a player makes "the cut" or not? what "role"?) of steroids in football. if re-worded it could  be right but not with a high enough level of participants to be very relevant unless you are refering to the people, social groups and organazations that debate the topic of steroids and sport, the only relevant sport in this case being American football.  
I found a second statement I cant agree with. "Deaths and long-term disability attributed to illegal use of anabolic steroids have become a new factor in this picture, starting in about the 1990s."

Are there any sources that can verify this? testimonials from steroid injured football players? what deaths and when and how was the investigation conducted to "attribute" the use of steroids to either the deaths or long term injuries? what social faction beleives this, because currently it is not popular opinion and there exists no factual evidence that i have seen to support that statement and should only exist as a opinion or in regards to that ever so elusive social faction that beleives it, or you could prove it - making it more than just a opinion by citing some credibal sources to support that statement. Mithotyn 21:42, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

No. Just... no.
No freaking way.
There's no way to resolve it. Mithotyn wants to remove almost all references to steroids, and our anonymous friend wants to put them back in (with no matching note in the talk page). I'm stuck in the middle (and stuck in the unfortunate position of not caring nearly as much about this as you two do). There's absolutely no way to resolve this.
Wikipedia:Accuracy_dispute, here we come. Matt Yeager 17:08, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't mind references to steroids on this page, I fully supported the article you wrote regarding the subject, although not fully complete with all the information it should have, it was a unbiased start. The previous article on the other hand, I shouldn't have to keep repeating this, is biased and not written from a NPOV, suggesting claims with no credibal sources and stating false/unproven information. Don't worry matt, It'll get taken care of. Mithotyn 19:05, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
PS: I thought of that template before Matt - as well as afew others - it would do no good if he's not cooperating. 
I just thought I should take each peice I don't agree with and state why.

"Contemporary football players are larger than their predecessors of only 30 or 40 years ago. It is quite normal, for instance, for all the members of the offensive line of a major college or professional team to weigh more than 300 pounds (136 kg.), whereas in the 1960s linemen who weighed only 270 pounds were common."
Irrelevant

"Since nutritional standards and weight-training technique were already quite advanced even in the 1960's"
False

"Such drugs are widely available even to high school players"
False, Although Pytonutrients and pro-hormones, which can convert to testosterone in the body are legaly availiable to purchase at any health store, they are not drugs nor categorized as anabolic steroids.

"However, it has recently emerged that new varieties of steroids are being developed in clandestine laboratories, which elude existing drug tests. Hence there is a kind of "arms race" between the scientists who develop new kinds of illegal steroids and those who develop tests to detect them."
Like the entire bulk of that section this is suggestive and would need to be re-written from a neutral point of view.
It's not the topic that I disagree with, its the (mis)information and suggestive attitude being supplied regarding it. Mithotyn 19:07, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

So many edits in one day. Anyhow I don't think this has as much to do with the article as it does 86.IP guy's disposition of me, I was arrogant, aggressive and very un-wikipedian like when I first objected to the article, and even later. I'm new here but thats no excuse I should have done my research regarding policy and conduct before-hand and even now I still have quite abit to learn - or get out of the habbit of doing. 
Steroids and sport is always a controversial subject because theres too many POV's that have to be considered and too many of them are arguable, therefor that particular section, I beleive should consist of nothing but fact, otherwise there will never be any benefit for somebody who writes a long and well researched article if people keep slamming their opinions or perspectives of the topic in there. I told you I had a handicap scripting articles, what I meant is that i'm not a hypocrite and I truly beleive, because of the controversial nature of the topic that the article must be written from a neutral point of view representing only facts and including sources to verify those facts. I cannot do that, because I am biased on the subject and might inadvertently add some suggestiveness myself. For now as a start your contribution, Matt, to it is great and until somebody can make it even better I will protect it from the 86.IP guy. It seems we also have a NPOV observer considering he doesen't have any contribs to anything sports or steroid related, He reverted the 86.IP guy's last edit. I dunno if he'll ever be back but we can always RfC So don't worry about it Matt and don't get discouraged. Mithotyn 00:24, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Alright. After looking this over, I've come to agree with your point. Wholesale deletion is rarely a good idea, but I think I finally agree with what you're saying, or at least am willing to let it go. I think you're right here. If we could get our anonymous friend to drop a line here to try and explain himself... well, that would just be too easy and wonderful, wouldn't it? Matt Yeager 06:53, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm concerned at the contention in the article that American Football has seen a higher injury and death rate than any other major American professional sport.
Since 1931, 1002 people have died directly from the sport.  In addition, the death rate per 100,000 participants is relaively low.  I am not sure how this compares to other sports, but at this time the statement is conjecture.  Someone has added the citation needed comment - but my feeling is that it should be removed altogether until the statement can be validated. Londonblitz 11:05, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I changed the section so that the statistics are not related.
If statistics are integrated (new or current), they need to be written so that there is a relationship between them.Curb Chain (talk) 02:49, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Oppose -- Concussions are certainly the major health issue in American football right now, and the events of the last several years relating to NFL concussions and brain damage in retired players make that an article-worthy topic. However, concussions specifically and brain damage generally are hardly the only health concern, nor even the most significant when the entire history of the sport is considered. Consider the deaths from the mass formations of the 1890s and early 1900s that led to significant rule changes and the formation of the NCAA. More recently consider steriod related injury (and death!) since the 1990s and heat-related death that received much attention in the early 2000s. Therefore I oppose such an article merge. cmadler (talk) 14:27, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
You know, I was originally planning to merge this into a "Player safety in American football" sort of article, but hearing your side, I'll remove the template. ZappaOMati 14:43, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Hello, I've been working along with my colleague, User:WWB Too, on behalf of the NFL Players Association to improve a number of football-related articles here on Wikipedia. They've asked that we take a look at this article, since it suffers from a few issues, especially a lack of solid sources.
I'd like to propose a rewrite of the first section of this article, Injuries, which is currently rather poorly sourced, although much of the information is correct. You can see the language I'd like to propose below, where I've added in citations and expanded on some of the information where it seemed relevant.

One query here—in looking at the article, there's currently a Statistics section, which seems like it mostly contains information that could be rolled into Injuries and the Brain Injury section. We could then get rid of Statistics entirely, since it's just a bulleted list without context. What do other editors think? Should we try to work the details from Statistics, where relevant, into the rest of the article?
And while we're on the topic, there's a paragraph at the end of the Statistics section under the heading Statistics on injuries other then concussions that's poorly formatted, unsourced, and doesn't seem horribly relevant to the section that it occurs in nor the article as a whole. I'd like to propose that that paragraph be deleted.
Because of my financial COI, I won't make any edits here directly. Instead, I'm hoping that volunteer editors can take a look at my suggestions—both the redrafting of the Injuries section and removal of the last paragraph under Statistics—and, if they seem okay, go ahead and implement them in the article. If you have any questions or concerns, though, I'm all ears! Cheers, ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 19:51, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

First off, thanks for being honest about the COI stuff. Your edits are fantastic and I applaud you for going through the proper channels.
As to this edit, looks great. I'd be happy to add it, and I think I have some information I could expand upon it with:

Football is a full-contact sport, and injuries are relatively common. Most injuries occur during training sessions, particularly ones that involve contact between players.[53] To try and prevent injuries, players are required to wear a set of equipment. At a minimum players must wear a football helmet and a set of shoulder pads, but individual leagues may require additional padding such as thigh pads and guards, knee pads, chest protectors, and mouthguards.[54][55][56] Most injuries occur in the lower extremities, particularly in the knee, but a significant number also affect the upper extremities. The most common types of injuries are strains, sprains, bruises, fractures, dislocations, and concussions.[53] Concussions are particularly concerning,[57] as repeated concussions can increase a person's risk in later life for chronic traumatic encephalopathy and mental health issues such as dementia, Parkinson's disease, and depression.[58] Concussions are often caused by helmet-to-helmet or upper-body contact between opposing players, although helmets have prevented more serious injuries such as skull fractures.[59] Various programs are aiming to reduce concussions by reducing the frequency of helmet-to-helmet hits; USA Football's "Heads Up Football" program is aiming to reduce concussions in youth football by teaching coaches and players about the signs of a concussion, the proper way to wear football equipment and ensure it fits, and proper tackling methods that avoid helmet-to-helmet contact.[60]
This is taken verbatim from an article I work a lot on, American football. If we could add some of the information here (like most common injuries) as well as more information from these citations, like that most injuries happen in practice, we could have a fantastic section here. What do you think? Toa Nidhiki05 19:40, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
Hey Toa, thanks so much for your comments! Give me take a bit to look through your paragraph and the sources there and I'll get back to you tomorrow. Sound good? Cheers! ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 20:20, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
Hey again Toa, sorry for the delay in getting back to you about this. I've now taken a look through the paragraph you copied over and the sources, and I think working in details from these sources where appropriate makes a ton of sense.
My plan for this article was to work through a few paragraphs at a time, posting suggested revisions as I go. Would you be willing to take a look at the sections as I post them? You could flesh things out by adding in information from the sources you've been using, and then incorporate the new language into the article—what do you think? We can start with this section on injuries generally since that's posted, then move into concussions, prevention, etc.
In some cases, maybe we can work more collaboratively, too—the "Prevention to injuries" section, for example, needs quite a bit of help, both in terms of detail and tone, and could probably use a few passes and a few sets of eyeballs. Likewise, I'm thinking that working the information from the "Statistics" section into the rest of the article where the information has context, and then removing that section, also makes sense.
Anyway, just some initial thoughts about where to go with this. If this sounds like a plan to you, do you want to go ahead and take a stab at adding in info to those two paragraphs while I get started on working on the next section?
I'm super excited about this—I think we can work to make this article really good! Cheers, ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 15:08, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
No problem, I have plenty of time. I'd certainly be willing to look at them and then add more information I have. There's a whole lot to work on but if we can get through this piece-by-piece, it can certainly be doable. I'll go ahead and see what I can do in terms of adding the information to the paragraphs, and hopefully I'll have those ready before you get done with the next one. It'd be fantastic if we could get this article to a high-quality. Toa Nidhiki05 15:29, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and added the info about injuries... I figured an overall section would be a good start, and also added a template which lists the most common injuries and their frequency. It's a short section which will branch into individual leagues like the NFL - which I added the overhauled section you made with very minor alterations (ie. changing template dates to American standard, adding acronyms, minor CE, etc.). If I have the time I might look up studies on NCAA and NFHS injuries to make two more sections, but for now we've got the NFL section and Injury header overhauled. Toa Nidhiki05 16:06, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
Awesome, looks great! I'm afraid to say, though, that you beat me, as I don't have the next section ready just yet. I should have something ready by the end of the week or early next week, though. Cheers, and thanks again! Can't wait to get this article in shape. ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 22:21, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Please find below some improvements that I'd like to propose for the "Brain injuries" subsection of this article. As mentioned above, I'm currently working on behalf of the NFLPA in order to improve football-related articles on Wikipedia, so I won't make any edits myself.
As a quick overview of what I've changed:

Added information about the NFL's settlement with former players this summer
Expanded information in a few other places as well (for example, regarding Goodell)
Added references and standardized citation templates
Cut lines that seemed like editorializing or WP:OR based on the sources
Removed plagiarized language from this source, replacing it with summaries where appropriate
Finally, the last two paragraphs of this section in the current article relate to injury prevention, so I haven't addressed them in these revisions. I'm thinking we should move those to the Prevention to Injuries section for now, and deal with it when we look at that section.
Here's the language I'd like to propose:

I'm definitely open to comments and questions, but if everything looks okay here, could someone move this over into the article? Thanks! ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 19:03, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Very good start! I've gone ahead and moved this over, with a slight copyedit and change of date format to American conventions. I've also added one bit already - a study from the National Academy of Sciences that, among other things, notes the reported concussion rate per 10,000 "athletic exposures" (any practice session or game) for high school athletes - I've added a sortable wiki table showing the reported rate for football alongside other sports, as said by the study, to give a visual comparison with other sports. I'll be looking for more material to add. Toa Nidhiki05 20:01, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
Hey Toa—excellent, thanks, looks good! I'm just looking at what's left on this article, and I think we have two major things (and two smaller ones) remaining: we need to deal with Prevention to Injuries (which probably needs a complete rewrite, honestly) and Effects on post-career life, which is a bit better, but still needs a decent amount of work. Once we've done that, we should probably look at moving the information from the Statistics section into other parts of the article where it can be presented with context, as well as restructuring the article—I'm not sure it makes sense to have everything as a subsection of the main section Injuries (maybe break out the prevention and post-career subsections and make them main sections?).
For the big things, would you be willing to take on drafting a new section about prevention? I don't have any notes on this section from the NFLPA, and I'm certainly not an expert, so I think you might be better suited to address writing that section. I do have notes from the NFLPA on the Effects on post-career life, so I'm happy to dig into that and propose a rewrite there, though it will probably take me a week or two.
What do you think? Cheers, and thanks again! ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 17:17, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Agreed - I think the remaining sections need a ton of improvement. It might be a good idea to get the sections cleared up before we advance further. I like your idea on sections - I think the 'injuries' section (which I'm still working on finding info to craft a college/high school subsection similar to the NFL one) could be cut off after the section on brain injuries, and from there, we could have a section of 'Effects of injuries', which would include the improved 'Statistics' and 'Post-career effects' sections. The final section could be a newly-created 'Prevention' section, which I'd be more than happy to work on. Once that's taken care of the lede can be easily improved and we can see about taking this to peer review or GA. Toa Nidhiki05 18:02, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
All sounds good to me! I'll be in touch again when I've gotten the language for the new post-career effects drafted. Cheers! ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 18:38, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Well, it doesn't look like it got any comments. Looks like a good article nomination should be up next IMO. Toa Nidhiki05 14:44, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
Fine by me; have at it! ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 16:59, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello, I've been taking a look at the Effects on post-career life section, and the last two paragraphs here aren't about post-career effects at all. The last one is about rules to prevent certain kinds of injuries—should we look at rolling that into the Prevention section?
The next-to-last paragraph is actually about heat-related injuries. I can take a look at shoring it up and adding citations, but where to put it? Maybe as a section paragraph right under "Injuries"? What do people think? Let me know and I can work on revising and sourcing it.
Finally, here's the slightly tweaked paragraph for the new post-career effects section. It was pretty solid in the first place, so I've only made a few changes to wording here. Note that the section previously had two references—a peer-reviewed study, and the other a blog post about the study. Since the blog post is a less strong source and unneeded, I've gone ahead and removed it.
Also, since the section is shorter, I moved the image to be right-aligned, which seems like it will cause fewer alignment issues, but not tied to that by any means—whatever looks best when the change is made good by me.

Let me know if you have any questions here! Cheers, ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 12:55, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Great work! Looks very good IMO, much better than the current one. The only thing I would note is there are other post-career effects besides head injuries - there's a good SI article on it ([5]) that lists a number of former players and post-career injuries they have. I might go ahead and this here in a bit, with some added info from the article on physical ailments. Toa Nidhiki05 15:28, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Sure, sounds good—if you run out of time and want me to take a look at the article and write up a sentence or two, just let me know! Cheers, ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 19:41, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Awesome, that paragraph looks great! It looks like our next step is to deal with moving the information from the "Statistics" section into the relevant parts of the article, rather than having them as a list. Do you want me to take a go and where to put them, or do you want to do it? Cheers, ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 18:21, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
That seems like a good idea to me. I think the 'Effects on post-career life' section could easily be converted into a stand-alone section and we spread the statistics stuff throughout. That would mean there would be three main sections: 'injuries', 'effects on post-career life', and 'prevention'. The stats on football-related deaths and spine injuries could easily be transferred into either of the first two - if there is enough research on fatalities, that could possibly be a subsection under 'injury'. I think we could get that done pretty quickly if one of us researches on fatal injuries and the other on catastrophic injuries, which is basically all the statistics section covers. Toa Nidhiki05 18:45, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Sounds like a plan—how about I take fatalities, you take catastrophic injuries? ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 15:24, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Sounds fine to me. Toa Nidhiki05 16:34, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Hey Toa, I'm still working on this, but haven't had a chance to actually draft language about fatalities yet. I'll have something to you early next week, though. Cheers! ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 18:52, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
Hey again Toa! Sorry again for the delay here, but I finally put together a short blurb about fatalities in high school and college football, based on a journal article:

What do you think? Cheers, ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 19:38, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

No prob, this is a busy time of year. That should work... we could probably merge this with the table and leave it as that. I'll work on improving the fatalities table and moving it to the merged fatalities/catastrophic injuries section. Once that's done I think we could advance this to peer review or go straight for a good article nomination. Toa Nidhiki05 19:46, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
Awesome, thanks so much! This is looking really good! I'm fine with either soliciting peer review, or diving straight in—whatever you think! Cheers, ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 16:53, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
Personally I'd like to start with a peer review and see how that goes. If we nail out the big issues there it should be easier to get it through GA quicker, and possibly FA as well. If you're fine with it I can go ahead and start a peer review and get the ball rolling on that.
Works for me! I have a few other things I'm working on for the NFLPA, but I'll try to help out with any comments here as I can. Cheers! ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 18:03, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I thought I'd go over the copy on this as an outside editor while you were waiting on the GAN. Something from the lead is rather striking off the top, however:

"Catastrophic injuries and fatalities are uncommon in football; both have become less and less common since the 1970s..."
"Severe injuries have become more common, in part due to the increasing size and speed of players..."
These two sentences clearly don't jibe, unless you want to make a weird semantic distinction between "catastrophic" and "severe." I understand citations in the lead are annoying, but in this case I think it worthwhile to look at the sources again and decide whether injuries are going up or down and cite accordingly at first mention. Dontreadalone (talk) 04:55, 10 January 2014 

There actualy is a difference. Severe injuries are things like ACL tears or broken bones, while catastrophic injuries are major brain, spinal cord or spinal injuries (think paralysis and spine fractures).. the term is even linked there to help with that. I could rephrase it but they are two distinct groups of injury. Toa Nidhiki05 05:03, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
Yes I followed that link but it still doesn't hold up logically. Not all severe injuries are catastrophic but all catastrophic injuries are necessarily severe. At least a word or two of explanation should be there. Which severe injuries are up if the most severe injuries are down? Injuries to the extremities? In the body of the article you don't actually define "severe" as far as I can see.
The copy looks quite good, by the way. There are a couple monster paragraphs that might be broken up. Dontreadalone (talk) 21:37, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
I see at the end of "Effects on post-career life" what you were thinking of when drafting the lead. This is quite workable. I'll make a suggestion on it soon. Dontreadalone (talk) 21:55, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
I shuffled the intro a bit to link the two points. I'm going based of the SI article in describing increased major injuries. Does this work? I also have some comments on the body when that's settled. Dontreadalone (talk) 05:13, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, I'm not sure who's still watching as I got no reply to my last but I did want to detail some feedback on the main Injuries section. First off, the four subsections don't thematically match—does it make sense to have subsections on leagues under the heading "Injuries"? And aren't brain injuries actually a type of catastrophic injury? I find it unfocused. In a similar vein, I find the switch between a solely NFL focus to high school/college data a bit disorienting. The Brain subsection is all about the NFL; the next section doesn't even mention the league. I think most everything you need is here but the compartmentalization is off. Dontreadalone (talk) 02:23, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

As to the first two sections, they are included because they relate to how leagues handle injuries - they require teams to report them publicly and offer avenues for teams to reclaim roster spots or eligibility. Where else would sections on that go?
I understand the confusion on 'catastrophic injury', but these are medical terms relating to a medical topic. Concussions are not considered catastrophic injuries because they are not severe injuries - they are called 'mild traumatic brain injuries' for a reason. They cause problems, but strictly speaking it's probably not going to kill you or incapacitate you for an extended period of time. Catastrophic injuries relate to very serious medical problems like skull fractures, spinal fractures, the sort of stuff that could kill you at worst or incapacitate you at best. It might be warranted to just rename the section to 'concussions', though. The Brain injuries section does actually focus on college and high school as well (the last paragraph), but 2/3s of paragraphs are focused on the NFL because they have been the main subjects on litigation and public scrutiny. Toa Nidhiki05 02:52, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
The article defines concussions as catastrophic: "Catastrophic injuries, like concussions, can be caused by helmet-to-helmet collisions as well as illegal actions like spearing." I guess this should be amended.
"Where else would sections on that go?" To a section called "Response" or something similar. Imagine the first section solely dedicated to injury type and incidence rates and a second section dedicated to how the three levels of play have dealt with it. Dontreadalone (talk) 04:36, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
The usage of the word 'like' there is saying that, like concussions, catastrophic injuries can be caused by helmet-to-helmet contact. It's not saying concussions are catastrophic injuries.
As to the rest, that would be mildly confusing in my opinion because there is already a section on Preventing injuries - a topic that could arguably overlap with that of the league injury reports. Toa Nidhiki05 02:59, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
Look up the word 'like.' Obviously the sentence can be read as defining concussions as a type of catastrophic injury. I have reworded.
I find the article mildly confusing as it stands. The "Injuries" section is basically a tossed salad of information without proper compartmentalization. I think if you started with a very concise "Incidence" section the rest would fall in place easily. Dontreadalone (talk) 04:54, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello, I have a few additional suggestions for changes that I think could be made to this article. Most are pretty minor, but there are some thoughts about adding in new information—I'm curious about editors thoughts on these points. As previously indicated, I'm working on this article at the behest of the NFLPA, so I won't be making any edits to this article directly.

First, I'd like to propose some rewrites to the first paragraph of the article. I've edited the language to better reflect the source used later in the article. I've also removed the phrase "in later life" from the fifth sentence, as this source shows that concussion-related risks might potentially occur at any time.

Also in the lead, I'd like to suggest replacing the mention of spearing in the second paragraph with more specific language, as well as indicating that injuries can be caused via contact with things other than helmets.

 
A tiny request for the Injuries section: replace "can" in the first sentence of the third paragraph with "may." As in, "concussions may increase a person's risk."
There's inaccurate information about PUP designation in the National Football League section. Since the rules around the PUP list are too complicated for a simple description, I would like to suggest removing the sentence mentioning PUP. Instead, the sentence before it should read "Injured players may be placed on one of several injured lists, including the Physically Unable to Perform (PUP) list." Linking to the Physically Unable to Perform article will allow readers to find more detailed information there.
The Brain Injuries section currently links to the Concussions in American football article, but what do editors think about summarizing additional information found there? In particular, I'd like to make suggest making mention of the Congressional hearing about the issue in 2009. Perhaps this could be included between the first and second paragraphs?

In the  Catastrophic injuries and fatalities section, I'd like to suggest making similar changes as above about players hitting their heads on the ground or other players. Specifically, I think the second sentence of the third paragraph of this section could be changed to:

Currently, there's nothing in the article about about human growth hormone in the article, but I'm thinking we should probably add at least a mention in an article about health issues—what do other editors think?
Let me know if there are any questions or comments. I'd appreciate if any changes that seem ok could be moved over to the article. Cheers! ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 20:22, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

I've added the material to the page, with the following minor adjustments:
With the first change, I removed the citation because it is already in the body and citations aren't needed in the lede unless the information wouldn't be found anywhere in the body.
With the second change, I again removed the citation - since this is a new one, however, I went down to the body and adjusted the relevant part to note that ground impacts and knee impacts can cause concussions.
The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth changes were added with no adjustments, aside from a minor citation fix to make the Belson source use mdy date format as well as fixing the link (it had had the last bit of URL chopped off by accident) and wikilinking the NFLPA mention.
I'd be fine with summarizing information from the concussions article and mentioning HGH, personally. Toa Nidhiki05 16:19, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
These look great, thanks! I'm wondering about where to put discussion of HGH—it seems like not a big enough topic to warrant a full section (compare to head injuries and the like), but I don't see an obvious place to drop in a sentence or two. Any thoughts or ideas? ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 18:18, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
I'm not sure where it would go, honestly. There probably isn't enough to warrant a subsection but it is a topic that could be relevant. Best I can think of is to add information to both the NFL and College/High school sections if it can be found. Toa Nidhiki05 20:00, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
I've drafted a few sentences about HGH and performance-enhancing drugs. After reviewing the article, I think it might make the most sense to include this general information in the Injuries section, just before the breakdown into NFL and high school/college, rather than having it inside those two sections, since much of it applies to both.

What do you think about adding this information into the article? Other input from any other editors who might be watching is also welcome! Cheers ChrisPond (Talk · COI)

Excellent work! I've added it to the injuries section, with just a few slight modifications: a minor copyedit (such as giving an acronym for perfmance-enhancing drugs and adjusting links), noting the use of PEDs in college, elaborating on what players use HGH for (along with the fact none of the uses are proven to work), adding there are no studies on baseline HGH level in NFL players, and converting the access dates to the typical mdy format. Toa Nidhiki05 22:39, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
This looks great! Thanks so much, Toa! ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 14:12, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Health issues in American football/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Wizardman (talk · contribs) 18:29, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

This has been under review for too long, so I'll give this a shot. It may take me a week or two to do the whole article though since my Wiktime is limited. Wizardman 18:29, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
Here are some issues I found to start off, just through the high school injury section so far:

Ref 33 redirects to a main page, so a new url will be needed (orthocenter md)
 Done NFLisAwesome 19:16, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
Ref 27 needs a date, and should have an accessdate too (journalist's resource)
 Done NFLisAwesome 19:16, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
The first paragraph in injuries needs citing.
Fixed. Toa Nidhiki05 19:07, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
"concussions, blunt injuries to the chest such as cardiac contusions, pulmonary contusions, broken ribs, abdominal injuries, splenic lacerations and kidney injuries." - we need cites after each quote used. I'm sure it's the same as the end of the paragraph, but it'll still have to be put there as well.
Understood, fixed. Toa Nidhiki05 19:07, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
Will try to knock out the other half of the article tomorrow, if not it'll probably end up being next weekend. Wizardman 03:08, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Take your time, I won't be available to edit for the next 5-6 days. Toa Nidhiki05 03:31, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
I read through the article a couple more times and, rather than add nitpicks, I just copyedited and made any small changes myself given that you had to wait six months for a review. The article now passes GA status. Wizardman 02:35, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

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Many of the studies and sources of information in this article are at least 5 years old , if not older. Now a days, technology is rapidly changing which means lots of things can change within a 5 year time period. The information and context of the article is great but I think newer sources and studies would make this article more current and better overall. Zakattak13 (talk) 21:51, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

I would like to see a brief (perhaps stub-length) article on the Harvard Football Players Study and on the Boston University (BUSPH) Football Players Health Study. MaynardClark (talk) 20:25, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

 This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 9 January 2023 and 5 May 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Devonte04 (article contribs).
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 This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 13 January 2025 and 4 May 2025. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): LandonJPaul (article contribs).
— Assignment last updated by Wordnerd104 (talk) 16:20, 27 February 2025 (UTC)