{"id":1139,"date":"2013-07-22T16:27:10","date_gmt":"2013-07-22T16:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brainstreams.ca\/is-malcolm-gladwell-right-should-college-football-be-banned-to-save-brains\/"},"modified":"2025-07-04T09:16:58","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T16:16:58","slug":"is-malcolm-gladwell-right-should-college-football-be-banned-to-save-brains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/is-malcolm-gladwell-right-should-college-football-be-banned-to-save-brains\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Malcolm Gladwell Right, Should College Football Be Banned To Save Brains?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"field field-type-link field-field-link-original-article\">Journalist and best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell is an outspoken advocate of banning college football on health grounds, and his appearance on\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com\/2013\/07\/20\/gladwell-why-college-football-is-like-dog-fighting\/\">CNN\u2019s \u2018GPS with Fareed Zakaria<\/a>\u2018 has turned up the volume another notch. Zakaria asked Gladwell to defend his<a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/sports\/intelligence_squared\/2012\/04\/the_next_slate_intelligence_squared_debate_is_may_8_why_malcolm_gladwell_thinks_we_should_ban_college_football_.html\">controversial position<\/a>, and nary a punch was pulled.<\/div>\n<p>Gladwell, author of\u00a0The Tipping Point,\u00a0Blink\u00a0and\u00a0Outliers, references a growing list of research studies suggesting a link between the head-impact injuries football players routinely endure during practice and games, and debilitating neurological disorders.\u00a0 The most troubling of these studies show evidence of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopathy\">chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)<\/a>\u00a0in the brains of former college and professional football players, a disease with similarities to Alzheimer\u2019s. CTE is only diagnosable post-brain death during an autopsy and has also been found in the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/17503873\">brains of boxers<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.medpagetoday.com\/Neurology\/Dementia\/30039\">hockey players<\/a>\u00a0(although medical researchers are\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/pages\/frontline\/sports\/concussion-watch\/new-study-finds-brain-damage-in-living-ex-nfl-players\/\">getting closer<\/a>\u00a0to diagnosing the disease in living adults).<\/p>\n<p>Before the last few years of research, it was commonly thought that only head injuries resulting in a concussion or worse were serious enough to trigger long-term problems. The latest studies are showing that\u2019s not the case\u2014it\u2019s not only the concussive hits that take a toll, but the ongoing subconcussive hits that many players endure multiple times during the course of a game.<\/p>\n<p>A\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.plosone.org\/article\/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0056805\">recent study<\/a>\u00a0of college football players who had experienced subconcussive hits showed evidence of traumatic brain injury hours after a game and, in some cases, six months later. Researchers administered a blood test to players to track a protein called S100B that indicates damage to the blood-brain barrier. When enough of the protein enters the blood stream, the body attacks it as a foreign invader, producing antibodies that can later re-enter the brain and cause long-term damage like epilepsy and dementia.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/daviddisalvo\/2013\/07\/21\/is-malcolm-gladwell-right-should-college-football-be-banned\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read More&gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Journalist and best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell is an outspoken advocate of banning college football on health grounds, and his appearance on\u00a0CNN\u2019s \u2018GPS with Fareed Zakaria\u2018 has turned up the volume [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}