You guys see the Kevin Ware injury?

Yeah, worst sports injury I've seen since Theisman back in the '80s. I've never seen players and coaches, both from his team and the opposition, so upset and horrified.

-Ray
 
I was thinking about Tim Krumrie's broken leg in the Cincinnati vs SF Super Bowl, too. Not that these injuries are worse than what happened to guys like Eric LeGrand or Mike Utley, but the visuals are so explicit.
 
I honestly don't see how this happend. He must have just had so much torque on his leg that it broke. I've seen some nasty one's over the years. Marcus Lattimore's for S.C. was pretty bad, but it was just a knee tear. I think this is second behind Tyrone Prothro's from Alabama a few years ago. That one was a little bit more disturbing. He never cambe back to play football because of all the pins and rods needed.
 
Oh yeah, I remember that after seeing the video clip. How stupid can you be, having metal carts behind the end zone?!?!

Could be Kevin Ware already had a stress fracture in his tibia, and this leap-and-landing was the straw that broke the camel's back. Happily, it seems that his surgery last night went well and he is "resting comfortably".

Like Ray said, I've never seen other players react in such a horrified manner. I'm glad CBS didn't barrage us with a million replays.
 
Oh yeah, I remember that after seeing the video clip. How stupid can you be, having metal carts behind the end zone?!?!

Could be Kevin Ware already had a stress fracture in his tibia, and this leap-and-landing was the straw that broke the camel's back. Happily, it seems that his surgery last night went well and he is "resting comfortably".

Like Ray said, I've never seen other players react in such a horrified manner. I'm glad CBS didn't barrage us with a million replays.

When I was a ski bum about 30+ years ago, I had a good friend who had a catastrophic break not too different than this one. To hear him talk about it a year or so later, there was no such thing as "resting comfortably" in the early days and weeks after the injury/surgery. You were either out or so drugged you were barely conscious or you were uncomfortable as hell. I've had a couple fo FAR FAR FAR less serious broken bones than what he went through and even with those the first week or two was just incredibly painful. ANY small movement hurt like hell. I can't even begin to imagine the pain involved in something that catastrophic. Unless you just go into such a deep level of shock that you just don't feel it for a while.

From what I read in this morning's paper, some docs were speculating that he had stress fractures that made these breaks that much more likely. And evidently he not only landed with a lot of force, but also a twisting motion and the bones just never had a chance.

-Ray
 
It was something you'd run into at a horrible traffic accident or battlefield. I hope he recovers. I've never broken a major bone, just little stuff like fingers and toes ... the stuff you just tape up and keep on going. That pain must have been horrific. At the instance of contact the pain must have shot through his entire body like a lightning strike ... then his nervous system most likely shut down and he went into some level of shock. I really feel for him ... as an athletic with pro potential his mental anguish must be greater than his physical pain ... and his physical pain, on a scale of 1-10 must be around 20.

Gary
 
I broke my wrist playing backyard football as a kid. Broke the growth plate. The radius was protruding into the skin, but did not tear the skin. The ulna had shifted up. It looked pretty bad. I didn't feel pain until about 20 minutes later. What was even more painful was having it set a few days later. Luckily no surgery.

I feel for anyone who ends up with these aweful injuries. It is apart of playing sports, sadly. One thing to note is that it appears that basketball in general has become much more physical and more contact over ther years, in both pro and in college.
 
One thing to note is that it appears that basketball in general has become much more physical and more contact over ther years, in both pro and in college.

I think that athletes in all sports are now training at such a high level, often with the use of allowed (+/- banned) substances, that they're able to do things with the body that the body isn't able to withstand. Just seems like more guys than ever are blowing out knees, etc. I know a lot of NFL players complain about the changes to football, but when you consider how freakishly tall, fast, and strong those guys are now, it's amazing we don't see more guys with spine fractures after getting hit.

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For years I've been a proponent of increasing the size of (American) football and basketball courts. The participants are so much larger/faster/stronger now than when these sports were originally envisioned that larger playing areas would seem a "back to our roots" move. And, I'll hypothesize that less player congestion would lead to reduced injuries.
 
For years I've been a proponent of increasing the size of (American) football and basketball courts. The participants are so much larger/faster/stronger now than when these sports were originally envisioned that larger playing areas would seem a "back to our roots" move. And, I'll hypothesize that less player congestion would lead to reduced injuries.

That is interesting ... dunno how it would lessen injuries ... but it is interesting nonetheless. Or, we could just play baseball where most of the injuries are self-inflicted. Go Dodgers!
 
For years I've been a proponent of increasing the size of (American) football and basketball courts. The participants are so much larger/faster/stronger now than when these sports were originally envisioned that larger playing areas would seem a "back to our roots" move. And, I'll hypothesize that less player congestion would lead to reduced injuries.

Not to get too far afield, but I'm not sure how this would reduce injuries. The object in football is still for the defender to hit the offensive player and tackle him. A larger field might lead to slightly fewer hits and somewhat more scoring (since the offensive player would have more room to try to avoid the defender and the defender more area to cover), but the hits that would occur in the open field would be at least at vicious, maybe more, because the players would have the chance to built up more speed. Also, a lot of the worst injuries in football happen in the scrum at or near the line of scrimmage, on defensive linemen hitting a quarterback (Taylor and Theisman), or on crossing patterns over the middle where a receiver is a sitting duck for a hard hit. I don't think a larger field would affect those. Similarly in basketball, most of the worst injuries seem to occur in the scrum for rebounds under the hoop of folks driving the lane. Even on a bigger court, this congested area of the court would be no less congested and the contact opportunities would be very similar. And the injury that occurred to Ware likely wouldn't have been affected - the guy was shooting a three and he was running and jumping to try to disrupt it and just landed badly. Same thing would have happened on a larger court - the shooting range isn't going to get much more than it is now, so I don't think it adds to the opportunity to get an open shot...

Interesting thought, but I don't think it would help much, if at all. I think bigger, faster, stronger athletes just raise the stakes regardless. One thing I think COULD work would be to make football players play with minimal padding, including no facemasks and eiher minimal helmets (like the old leather ones) or no helmets at all. This would discourage these guys from using their bodies, and their heads in particular, as battering rams. Having played in high school, I can tell you that's what we did ALL THE TIME, sometimes intentionally, often not - when you're going full speed and have to hit someone, its just instinctively a very effective way to do it. Fortunately, we were too small, slow, and weak to do each other all that much harm, but that's less and less the case even with high school athletes today, let alone college and pro jocks. I think if these guys had less gladiator like protection, the game might be a lot less rough. You'd still have some busted up knees in the area of the line of scrimmage, but a lot fewer concussions and head impacts.

-Ray
 
That is interesting ... dunno how it would lessen injuries ... but it is interesting nonetheless. Or, we could just play baseball where most of the injuries are self-inflicted. Go Dodgers!

I don't know what they could do to make baseball safer other than to make it softball. Seriously, whadda ya got - guys getting hit by the ball (either brushbacks gone awry or line drives nailing the occasional pitcher or line coach) or the occasional slide or high contact play at the plate. Overall, I don't think there's any real injury crisis in basketball or baseball, but there is in football for sure and hockey seems to have more than enough concussions to look at that sport too.

-Ray
 
Many injuries - particularly in football - occur when the "victim" is engaged with multiple defenders. If the defense and offense are further spread out, there is a possibility that there simply won't be as many defenders at the point of resolution of the offensive play.

The by-product of this is that defenders may be more inclined to wrap-up and tackle, rather than jack the player with a big hit, because there may be fewer teammates nearby in case the offensive player simply bounces off the hit.

In basketball, the majority of on-court injuries seem to occur in traffic. Defenses like Syracuse's 2-3 zone thrive because they have long-armed players and a collegiate-distance 3 pt line.
 
I don't know what they could do to make baseball safer other than to make it softball. Seriously, whadda ya got - guys getting hit by the ball (either brushbacks gone awry or line drives nailing the occasional pitcher or line coach) or the occasional slide or high contact play at the plate. Overall, I don't think there's any real injury crisis in basketball or baseball, but there is in football for sure and hockey seems to have more than enough concussions to look at that sport too.

-Ray

My point is that there are minimal injuries in baseball as compared to other major sports, football, basketball, hockey, soccer. So let's all play baseball.

I played football in HS and a bit in college. In HS i went both ways and I always lead with my head (which probably explains a lot of things about me). Most of the time, my first point of contact for either defense or offense was my helmeted head. Years latter we had this pick-up, jungle football league where we played tackle without pads. Lots of broken collar bones and noses ... but I played completely differently than when I was padded-up and never lead with the head. Ray, you've made an interesting point. My initial thoughts were the opposite, more padding increase the protection and to slow the game down. I envisioned teams all decked out in those inflatable Sumo Wrestling outfits bouncing down an oversized, (thank you Yeats), field.

Gary
 
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