Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Study Indicates High Rate Of Dementia Among NFL Players & More On Tony Romo's Backwards Baseball Cap

Earlier today I blogged about the super shocking disgrace of Dallas Cowboy quarterback Tony Romo's improper use of a baseball cap.

There are Dallas Cowboy fans here in this Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex zone I live in who feel quite strongly about Tony Romo's outrageous fashion faux pas, getting so worked up about it that they send off earnest missives to the local newspaper editors.

And then this afternoon one of my researching corespondents, based here in D/FW, sent me information from the New York Times regarding a study commissioned by the National Football League in which it was learned that Alzheimer's disease and other memory-related problems appear in the league's players at a rate vastly higher than the general population of non-football players.

100s of on-field concussions occur at all levels of football every week, at high school, college and the NFL, there are football players sustaining head injuries. Apparently those silly looking helmets need a serious re-design.

Scrutiny of brain injuries in football players has grown more intense in the past 3 years, with many players and former players coming forward and reporting cognitive problems.

The NFL is currently conducting an in depth study of 120 ex professional football players, doing extensive neurological examinations over the course of the study. This process is expected to take several years.

For dementia related diagnoses, 6.1 percent of NFL players age 50 and above had a dementia rate 5 times higher than the general population. NFL players aged 30 to 49 showed a dementia rate 19 times the national average.

I do not think Tony Romo is quite 30. I heard Tony Romo speak at an event in Dallas a couple years ago. I was quite impressed and found him very likable. I really hope it is not early onslaught of NFL football dementia that is causing Tony to forget which way to point his baseball cap. You add this baseball cap problem to Tony's seemingly irrational dumping of Jessica Simpson and you have some rather strong indications of somewhat slightly demented behavior.

I don't know if Tony Romo is still firing on all cylinders in the football throwing department. Are there signs of diminished capacity there, too? I don't watch football, if I can help it, so I don't know. I think the Dallas Cowboys won their most recent game and there was no rioting of the Party Pass People.

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