{"id":5749,"date":"2015-01-25T09:00:39","date_gmt":"2015-01-25T14:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/busm\/?p=5749"},"modified":"2015-01-25T09:00:39","modified_gmt":"2015-01-25T14:00:39","slug":"nfls-modern-day-gladiators-pay-the-price-as-the-crowd-roars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/2015\/01\/25\/nfls-modern-day-gladiators-pay-the-price-as-the-crowd-roars\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL\u2019s Modern-Day Gladiators Pay the Price as the Crowd Roars"},"content":{"rendered":"

LA Times<\/h3>\n

Boston University’s CTE Center<\/a><\/h4>\n

On\u00a0a cloudless, gentle Sunday afternoon in America’s newest football palace, fans gathered on a patio behind the San Francisco 49ers bench to compare jewelry and sip margaritas.<\/p>\n

Ten yards away, helmets collided with a sickening thwack and a giant body groaned in agony as it was flattened into the grass.<\/p>\n

Everyone cheered. Next play.<\/p>\n

After a game at Levi’s Stadium ended with the St. Louis Rams beating the San Francisco 49ers earlier this season, disappointed fans became window shoppers, departing wide-eyed through a maze of gleaming restaurants, museum exhibitions and stadium stores that sell souvenir 49ers jerseys.<\/p>\n

Far below the concourse, limping players tore off real 49ers jerseys, bloodied and grass-stained. One corner of their locker room was filled with piles of sweat-soaked pads and red-tinged tape. In another corner, a 350-pound man winced and puffed as he struggled to pull his blue jeans over his battered hips. A teammate was wearing a designer business shirt that bulged all over because of the bags of ice taped underneath. As the locker room emptied, someone in a back room shouted as if in terrible pain, yet no one even turned his head.<\/p>\n

Welcome to our paradoxical national pastime.<\/p>\n

Research:<\/h3>\n

Studies have predicted that nearly 30% of NFL players will develop a serious cognitive issue such as Alzheimer’s disease, ALS, Parkinson’s or dementia in their lifetimes. There is also a chance that players could have the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is thought to be linked to repetitive brain trauma. According to research at Boston University’s CTE Center, evidence of CTE was found in the brains of 76 of 79 deceased players.<\/p>\n

Read the full article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LA Times Boston University’s CTE Center On\u00a0a cloudless, gentle Sunday afternoon in America’s newest football palace, fans gathered on a patio behind the San Francisco 49ers bench to compare jewelry and sip margaritas. Ten yards away, helmets collided with a sickening thwack and a giant body groaned in agony as it was flattened into the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7398,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[126],"tags":[139],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5749"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7398"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}