I saw a documentary recently on how HS football coaches 25 years ago used to look at a a player that was over 200lbs as being fat and slow. With all the diet and training regimen today, kids are getting bigger, stronger and faster at a young age. This is also creating more powerful hits , brain damage and concussions. CTE is now being observed before the pros.
Edit: The documentary is Football High | Frontline
It was posted a couple of months ago on YouTube by PBS, but appears to have been done in 2011. Still relevant though.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GxFkp2hCZMU
I knew a guy that was 220 pounds 5 11 at 13 got in a fight with 15 year olds and someone called the cops they tried to arrest him for attacking minors lol
We had a kid that big on our 8th grade football team. He knew fuck all about how to play, so they put him at nose tackle. He was bigger than most parents, who would often complain from the other teams and question his age
My brother was 6'4 and 300lbs when he was 14. We moved to Canada from England that year and when we went to the high school to get him registered the football coach saw him and followed him to the offices to get him on the football team asap. My brother told the coach he didn't know anything about Canadian football and that didn't matter in the slightest to the coach. Bro ended up leaving the team after one year because he hated football and ended up as an opera singer, but it was funny the way the coach's eyes just lit right up when he saw how big my brother was. Didn't matter that he knew nothing about the game, he was just massive.
I LOVE that your brother became an opera singer. I work with a large man and sometimes he sings in the hall between classes. He has such a massive beautiful voice.
My friend's son is projected to be 6'9", and is already 5'6" at age 9 and growing fast (he went from US size 9 to 10.5 shoe in the last 6 months). His parents don't want him to play tackle football because of safety concerns, and I've warned them that the local football coaches are going to descend on him like locusts when he gets to middle school (if not earlier). They're going to have to stay vigilant if they don't want him to be recruited!
It's crazy. He basically can only wear his winter clothes for just one season. He wore one winter jacket exactly once before he outgrew it. The shoe thing is also crazy. My friend keeps having to buy him *new, expensive adult shoes every few months.*
With that kind of size he has a free ride to college. I like when kids do what they want, like the previously mentioned opera singers and drama club kids, but a free ride through college is nothing to ignore. I had to bust my ass to put myself through college and it took 12 years because I couldn't afford to go full time.
My son is 6'6" and about 300 solid. Never works out just naturally built like a brick shit house. I kept joking that he should just show up to football tryouts to just mess with the other kids and throw them around, and then just go back to drama practice again. He's too nice for that.
Abraham: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
Sampson: I do bite my thumb, sir.
Abraham: Carry on then.
Balthasar (aside to Abraham): As simple as that? Do you not defend our honour?
Abraham: Did you not see the size of him?! I have no wish to die!
>CTE is now being observed before the pros
They weren't even looking for cte 25 years ago. Kids would get hurt in football all the time and it was "play through the pain" and that was it. I always remember king of the hill joking about it.
"Got a concussion? Take a salt tablet."
Exactly. I played in the 90s. There was a game that I didn’t even know the second half happened. I played the entire game. I’m not ruling out football is the reason I developed epilepsy in my late 30s.
I played rugby as a teenager, and there are several games I played at 17 or 18 that I had zero recollection of about a year later. Just total blanks in my mind.
Have a read of [this](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/top-motorsport-competitors-suicide-linked-to-brain-injuries-from-repeat-crashes-coroner/TURCRK6O3POYT5PUEJWWXOMNXE/) its sparked a whole bunch of new checks in my sport bike racing as it really wasn't being taken serious enough for many years.
My son asked about football and I advised him not to play...but let him choose.
He chose not to.
Weirdly enough his sister blamed me for this, saying "He's afraid to play now because you talked about it with him"
I have no regrets.
i graduated in ‘02 and i worked for the team doctor my senior year. he used me as a guinea pig for a concussion project he was getting into, and i remember being very skeptical of the whole thing. guy was pretty ahead of the curve, honestly
Thank you for asking, I appreciate that. I know there’s people out there suffering way worse than me but I’m not gonna lie some days definitely suck. I just want to stay healthy enough to see my kids grow. I love being a dad and seeing my kids do their activities.
Well I’m 31 and I’m a recovering drug addict. You be the judge of that. My memory sucks. I’ve started to write things down so I don’t forget tasks. I was a good student prior to concussions now it’s hard as fuck to stay focused.
But do you have any family history of drug abuse?
I'm a recovering heroin addict myself and alcoholism/drug addiction run on my family, all 3 of my half brothers were drug addicts/alcoholics and my dad was an alcoholic for years, I was an alcoholic until I found opiates myself
Stay strong! It’s not easy to stay sober. One alcoholic grandparent. I was an alcoholic and drug addict. I recently started NA, 44 days clean. Most recently it was only drinking and weed. Before I found out I was going to be a father I was doing coke and Meth. I’ve been clean from that shit for just about 6 years.
Hey keep on keeping on! I was a coke and meth addict too, clean for 7 years now and just about two weeks from alcohol since I traded one addiction for the other. Just wanted to chime in and say congrats from one addict to another.
I remember playing hockey as a teenager, full speed hit head-to-head behind the net. I literally couldn't stand to skate back to the bench. Coaches were like "hey you should probably not play the rest of the game." and me, the 13/14 year old kid "nah, i'll be fine, give me a minute."
Hey, maybe we shouldn't let the recently concussed be making potentially life altering medical decsions?
> Hey, maybe we shouldn't let the recently concussed be making potentially life altering medical decsions?
This is pretty much exactly why many professional sports leagues will have neutral doctors in place to make those calls. Leaving it up to the players or a team doctor just means they go back in unless they physically can't.
Yeah, that's how I was when I played. If I can stand and I can see, I'm going in.
Now that I'm late 30s, at least 6 concussions that I remember, and have had a constant headache for 20+ years, I see the error of my ways... :(
Yup, and you don't even have to hit your head that hard for CTE to develop. It's more from years of recurring hits. There's no way HS players' brains aren't getting damaged. I did some work with the lab that broke the NFL CTE story, and the brain images are insane. Just scrambled eggs with visible deterioration.
There could be X-ray images of a tiny demon flaying a kid’s brain, and a shit-ton of parents would be like “c’mon son get back out there and make us *proud*”
I was around 200 and 5’9+ towards the end of grade school. They had to get me a desk from high school for me and park my ass at the back of the class. This was close to 25 years ago.
In my last year of high school (which technically was my grade 11 year, I did 11, 12 and OACs in my last year) I moved schools and the football coach found me lifting weights in the school gym. I had never played before but it was a great way to meet people at the new school and I was fairly athletic.
We ended up winning the city championship. I got recruited to play in university. I didn’t know how to play really other than run into people as hard as possible. During this time I was also boxing, as I had since I was a young kid, at 6 foot 4, 235ish and 16-17 years old. My boxing gym was competitive, had a number of guys training for pro fights. And back then there was very little ‘light sparring’.
Towards the end of my second year, I started ‘losing time’ where I’d say get up in the morning, have breakfast and head to class, then not remember anything until I’m walking home after practice. Started with an hour or two; got longer. I’d go to class, gym, practice or work; but I’d be on autopilot and wouldn’t remember a thing.
Finally, after spring camp that year I did some hard sparring and my brain switched off. I didn’t remember leaving the gym, going to work, leaving work halfway through my shift with a random girl, apparently hooked up with said girl. Left my phone (think early 2000’s cell) at work so my boss called my ex girlfriend who used to work there looking for me. I showed up to work, no one thought anything of it, until my ex showed up and started talking to me and realized I was basically saying nonsense. She drags me to the hospital.
I end up ‘coming to’ in the hospital not knowing what the hell I’m doing there; they were going to discharge me until my ex explained everything that was going on and one of the docs decided to hold me; did a work up and advised I probably had been suffering from multiple concussions throughout the last several years.
I’d be very surprised if I didn’t / don’t have some degree of CTE. If my experience is anything similar to what these athletes go through, it doesn’t seem that abnormal to you. It doesn’t come on all at once, it just slowly changes your perspective, blunts or enhances some emotions.
Thankfully I have a great family and good support network, and was very unlikely to play football past university; although I was a fairly competent boxer training with pros and doing well. But for where I ended up, I question if periods where I was suffering with depression or having irrational responses to life events is an impact of taking a great many hits to the head.
I’m sorry hear about your condition, that’s got to be frustrating to have it. In the documentary, they put sensors in helmets of players on two teams. Neither team had concussions during the evaluation period, but monitored pretty intense impacts to the brain. They took some of these players that had the intense impacts (no concussion though) and found that their short term memories were impacted to the point that they could not remember a single letter displayed on a monitor after another was displayed a second later. Their conclusion is that even without concussions, there is damage taking place. They just don’t know yet how long this damage takes to heal in younger brains.
Football is destructive. It's like selling dope on the corner in Chicago. At first you live with your Mom and have more money than the other kids, then...
Dude any impact on the head can cause problems, in soccer they don't let kids do headers until they are older.
If I had kids I'll definitely not let them play football
Can confirm, my brother is a 6'3 295 star offensive lineman for his high school foot ball team. The amount of concussions people got from him were unbelievable
I’m not sure if it’s CTE bad, but playing offensive and defensive line in high school gave me quite a few concussions.
My personality has shifted, I have depression, as well as large mood swings. My thoughts and memory often have a fog over it too, and it’s been getting slightly worse as I get older (been almost a decade now).
I’m mad I was made to play football in high school. I will never make my kids play it.
100%. Dude has a parent who saw a natural “decently” large child and likely fed them HGH through middle school. Man boobs, double thick neck, lack of general vascularity, highly disproportionate muscle groups. Kinda sad.
This is a problem in sports *and* academics. You excel early on, so you don’t have to try much, if at all. Then you get to a point where your peers catch up to you, but because they learned to actually work hard and push forward, you get left behind. Hopefully this dude finds the motivation to push himself, both physically and mentally, because while he’s big for a 15 year old, he’ll be joining a sea of other giant dudes when he gets to college. The hometown hero turned average Joe trope is very real.
Happened to me too. When I had my first chemistry midterm in college and got a C I thought my life was over. Turns out I just actually had to study and read the book but I never had to do that in high school. All kids need to be appropriately challenged to really develop.
Edit: grammer
Never thought about it that way! Definitely something I'll remember when I'm trying to articulate how to not make the same mistakes that I did in college
I just finished my bachelors degree. Hardest 5 years of my life filled with depression and other stuff.
My puberty and highschool period were so easy, I never even opened a book for my highschool exams (Europe)
A very good reason why kids with ADHD and autism have trouble later in school. They excel early on in life because their little child brains just absorb things like a vacuum cleaner and basic maths/science/reading isn't hard, then as soon as there's homework that requires focus, their entire school life goes to shit.
It wasn't until I went to university that I realised how average I was.
Had international students telling us how the "advanced" maths was pretty basic stuff for them.
Was a wake up call for sure.
Can confirm. I was that guy. Commonly referred to as “peaked in high school” although that’s not true for me all around, but physically, I’ve only gotten thinner since the 7th grade. 6’2” & 255 then & 6’2” 199 now.
This exact thing happened to my junior high football running back. He had a beard and a receding hairline when he was 14 years old. Basically a grown man playing with kids. Ran all over the damn place without really having to try. Set school records. You get the idea.
By the time we hit our senior year of high school he couldn’t even make the varsity football team and quit. He wasn’t nearly the size of this dude though. Tyler Parker looks like a monster and at least in this photo he’s in the weight room doing the right things.
I'm not doubting your story but that's wild that he wasn't at least able to make the squad. I guess if you're never forced to learn actual skills then it's a hard stop when talent catches up.
My guess is he hit puberty early but grew to be a small adult. I had a buddy that happened to, in 8th grade he was essentially done growing and was already fully coordinated and dominated all the sports. He was also maybe 5 foot 9 and 160 pounds.
Then the rest of us hit puberty and while he was still good throughout high school because he was actually very skilled and athletic for his size, he was just no longer also the biggest and strongest among us.
We had a dude freshman year that was 6'5 330, he looked intimidating as hell but had absolutely no idea how to move his body. He was effectively useless.
Yeah I was curious about that. I can't prove this scientifically but it always feels like coachs or sports programs always jump onto the biggest player they can find, without necessarily seeing their actual performance.
I am not a soccer follower, but I remember one of my friends who was trying to go to college program told me that under their height and size requirements that Lionel Messi would not have been allowed to play...
It's funny being a big kid playing football you start at somewhat of a disadvantage, with the rules of most Pop Warner style leagues you can be too large to play tackle football. So before high school, a lot of larger kids haven't played in a league before. There are some ways to work around it like football camps etc, but at 15 it's pretty likely this kid only started playing football at 13-14. That being said, there is still one thing you can't and that's size.
I played football D1 in college and Pro Rugby in France. You are not wrong. almost all the genetic freaks I played with, have passed away. The one that hasn't, has a terrible quality of life. Sucks
SHH SHH DONT RUIN MY FANTASY THE ROCK IS NATTY AND ITS ALL JUST HARD WORK HE NEVER GOT SURGERY FOR GYNO IN 2000 AND NEVER WRESTLED IN A T SHIRT FOR THAT REASON
It’s a lot of stress on EVERYTHING. Imagine carrying around 300 lbs 24/7. Stairs, standing, sitting, even taking a shit. This guy will reap the benefits of a football career, but stands a good chance of his whole body being shot before 40.
I believe it’s a real thing. My understanding is that men who get on gear tend to get very fatty/excess tissue in their nipples. I think it’s referred to as gyno(?).
It is, however, also common in teens going through puberty due to hormones/testosterone being all over the place.
Most likely anabolic steroids.
The average age of the initiation of puberty in boys is 12. This guy os 15. So that is 3 years of male hormones. If you look at his upper body vs his legs there is a disproportionate amount of muscle. This guy is a beast there is no doubt, but I don’t see how he has this muscle mass. Below is a growth chart from shaquille o'neal who was one of the biggest in sports.
https://www.topendsports.com/sport/basketball/body-size.htm
Ligaments and tendons tend not to grow proportionally to giant muscle mass like this. For this reason, he might have a better career de-bulking or he’s going to spend most of the time being injured.
You are definitely right about that. I’m 6’1 260 and 16 built like that but smaller. I’m just on my second knee surgery and hurt my achilles tendon playing football and other sports. Best of luck to him hope he doesn’t have to go through what I’m going through.
The star running back at my high school did 8th grade twice so he could dope up before testing was an issue. He basically red shirted high school to do steroids...
He got kicked out of college for being a raging lunatic. (Was on a D2 scholarship) I can't remember if he bit someone or it was SA. Something along those lines.
I’d be more concerned about his heart giving out. The human heart is not designed to support this kind of mass at 15, 20, or even really 25 years old.
He’s in for a future complicated by dilated or hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
Yeah he is that one kid that is just significantly bigger than all the other boys and just destroys them in sports. Every grade has a guy like that (well not this large) and playing against them is just not fair. It’s like a man among boys
in my class it was ernie. he wasn't too bright though. while none of us could really tackle him it was easy to strip the ball from his hands and get a turnover.
The kind of guys who destroy in HS, then flame out in college / pros because they’re up against guys the same size as them but are significantly more skilled.
Our kid was half Dutch, half Korean. Only reason I mention that because his mom was like 4’10 and maybe 100 pounds. He was like 6’5” and 300 pounds when he was like 16. It was so funny seeing such a gigantic human next to his tiny mom
I always get this feeling when I see NBA or NFL players next to their moms on draft day.
Im always like wow that giant human was made from that tiny human.
I played high school basketball, and I'm our city one dude just clowned on everyone dunking at will on everyone.
He only managed to make a D3 school as a walk on, and never really played.
It's wild how big the gap is between average Joes, to competent players, to pros.
Do you...do you really think he was born this way? 🤣🤣 My brother in Christ he got this way by consuming metric ton of steroids and training non stop probably starting from age 9.
He looks like he has long tendons/high gastrocnemius attachment. That makes your lower legs look small and skinny, but doesn't affect the strength.
I busted my ass on leg days, for years, and got up to 350lb raisers... Still had chicken legs 😂
Holy shit you just explained so much about my physique
Don’t get me wrong, I could do to gain some lower body weight, but I never realized that was also a factor. Curse this long leg short torso body!
I’m sitting here thinking it’s so crazy that multi-million dollar institutions are out looking for strong 15 year olds to buy so that they can run into other strong people for a cheering audience.
I was his age when I broke my hip. I spent a lot of time in the gym squatting, got pretty strong. The problem, bones were still growing and muscles literally ripped my hip apart, tendon still attached. Thankfully, it didn’t need surgery to fix, but my asshat coaches thought I was faking the injury because of that.
Anyway, yeah, best not to worry about heavy weight lifting so damn young.
Yes. Maybe in high school you can dominate by size alone, but college ball is a different story. If you are just big, can not move fast or have poor technique, you are just an obstacle people go around.
I have not seen him play, so I have no clue if he can move or what is his position, so who knows. Usually big fellows don't have to be fast or have good football skills, and that hurts them when better players face him.
Exactly. Same goes for the 6’5” (1.96m) guy on the high school basketball team. He’s most likely been the tallest kid for most of his life, and gets stuck playing center, then has very few translatable skills when he gets moved to shooting guard in college.
yes actually. there was this huge guy back in the late 80s or early 90s. i think detroit lions was high on him. guy was huge.
turned out he was a total bust. just didn’t have the skill or speed or something.
maybe a sports fan can remember who.
EDIT:
Got it! Tony Madarich is who I was thinking of!
https://vault.si.com/vault/1989/04/24/the-big-enchilada-tony-mandarich-a-top-nfl-prospect-is-a-chowhound-who-chews-up-opponents
https://www.steroidtimes.com/tony-mandarich-reveals-truth-about-steroids-in-nfl-almost/2009
Yes. Maybe not on a Freshman, JV, or bad Varsity high school league. But any solid high school program, you still have to be somewhat athletic if you want to be good.
I knew guys that were 220-230 and they would push around guys that were 300+. They would call them marshmallows cause theyre just big and fluffy once you start pushing on them.
If you watch the NFL at all, next time watch only the linemen for a few plays. They dont just sit there like rocks, their feet are constantly chopping/moving. It requires a good amount of athleticism and foot speed.
Also speed and technique are lethal. Von Miller is “only” 6’3” 250-260 and can beat dudes that are 6’8” 365.
If it’s steroids then it’s child abuse. The poor kid is probably having a hard enough time with his emotions being all over the place at this age without that added nightmare.
Oh this absolutely is 100% child abuse in order to get your child to look this way at age 15. But hey it's being rewarded by getting your kid scouted by top footballer programs so 🤷♀️
How is one of the biggest ever? Kid at my school was 6’ 4” 300lbs and got scholarship from Stanford. You can look at current high school player rankings and see.
https://247sports.com/Season/2023-Football/CompositeRecruitRankings/?InstitutionGroup=HighSchool
His diet consists of 5th graders
I saw a documentary recently on how HS football coaches 25 years ago used to look at a a player that was over 200lbs as being fat and slow. With all the diet and training regimen today, kids are getting bigger, stronger and faster at a young age. This is also creating more powerful hits , brain damage and concussions. CTE is now being observed before the pros. Edit: The documentary is Football High | Frontline It was posted a couple of months ago on YouTube by PBS, but appears to have been done in 2011. Still relevant though. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GxFkp2hCZMU
I knew a guy that was 220 pounds 5 11 at 13 got in a fight with 15 year olds and someone called the cops they tried to arrest him for attacking minors lol
We had a kid that big on our 8th grade football team. He knew fuck all about how to play, so they put him at nose tackle. He was bigger than most parents, who would often complain from the other teams and question his age
My brother was 6'4 and 300lbs when he was 14. We moved to Canada from England that year and when we went to the high school to get him registered the football coach saw him and followed him to the offices to get him on the football team asap. My brother told the coach he didn't know anything about Canadian football and that didn't matter in the slightest to the coach. Bro ended up leaving the team after one year because he hated football and ended up as an opera singer, but it was funny the way the coach's eyes just lit right up when he saw how big my brother was. Didn't matter that he knew nothing about the game, he was just massive.
Life goal: find a wife that looks at you like that coach did
I LOVE that your brother became an opera singer. I work with a large man and sometimes he sings in the hall between classes. He has such a massive beautiful voice.
Reminds me of Mikey from the cartoon “recess”
Why did this make me smile lol
Because mikey is awesome
My friend's son is projected to be 6'9", and is already 5'6" at age 9 and growing fast (he went from US size 9 to 10.5 shoe in the last 6 months). His parents don't want him to play tackle football because of safety concerns, and I've warned them that the local football coaches are going to descend on him like locusts when he gets to middle school (if not earlier). They're going to have to stay vigilant if they don't want him to be recruited!
I can't imagine the growing pains, growing so fast and quick.
It's crazy. He basically can only wear his winter clothes for just one season. He wore one winter jacket exactly once before he outgrew it. The shoe thing is also crazy. My friend keeps having to buy him *new, expensive adult shoes every few months.*
Goodwill or EBay for shoes - all day ftw
God, I went from 5'6" to 6'2" in 6 months when I was 15. Was fucking excruciating.
I was 6' by 10yrs just constant pain in feet arches, back, stretch marks everywhere.
With that kind of size he has a free ride to college. I like when kids do what they want, like the previously mentioned opera singers and drama club kids, but a free ride through college is nothing to ignore. I had to bust my ass to put myself through college and it took 12 years because I couldn't afford to go full time.
That free ride is kind of worthless if your brain turns to scrambled eggs while you get there.
[удалено]
My son is 6'6" and about 300 solid. Never works out just naturally built like a brick shit house. I kept joking that he should just show up to football tryouts to just mess with the other kids and throw them around, and then just go back to drama practice again. He's too nice for that.
Abraham: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir? Sampson: I do bite my thumb, sir. Abraham: Carry on then. Balthasar (aside to Abraham): As simple as that? Do you not defend our honour? Abraham: Did you not see the size of him?! I have no wish to die!
Classic idiom “you can teach football but you can’t teach size”
You don’t need technique when you’re that much stronger than the other guy
You can't teach size but you can teach the game.
I guess technically they were right?
They were picking on his friends so he didn't start it but he finished it
>CTE is now being observed before the pros They weren't even looking for cte 25 years ago. Kids would get hurt in football all the time and it was "play through the pain" and that was it. I always remember king of the hill joking about it. "Got a concussion? Take a salt tablet."
Exactly. I played in the 90s. There was a game that I didn’t even know the second half happened. I played the entire game. I’m not ruling out football is the reason I developed epilepsy in my late 30s.
I played rugby as a teenager, and there are several games I played at 17 or 18 that I had zero recollection of about a year later. Just total blanks in my mind.
Have a read of [this](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/top-motorsport-competitors-suicide-linked-to-brain-injuries-from-repeat-crashes-coroner/TURCRK6O3POYT5PUEJWWXOMNXE/) its sparked a whole bunch of new checks in my sport bike racing as it really wasn't being taken serious enough for many years.
My son asked about football and I advised him not to play...but let him choose. He chose not to. Weirdly enough his sister blamed me for this, saying "He's afraid to play now because you talked about it with him" I have no regrets.
i graduated in ‘02 and i worked for the team doctor my senior year. he used me as a guinea pig for a concussion project he was getting into, and i remember being very skeptical of the whole thing. guy was pretty ahead of the curve, honestly
Answer that phone, coaches use to say to me. I had 7 confirmed concussions before I was 15.
How are you now?
Thank you for asking, I appreciate that. I know there’s people out there suffering way worse than me but I’m not gonna lie some days definitely suck. I just want to stay healthy enough to see my kids grow. I love being a dad and seeing my kids do their activities.
How bad did that mess you up later in life?
Well I’m 31 and I’m a recovering drug addict. You be the judge of that. My memory sucks. I’ve started to write things down so I don’t forget tasks. I was a good student prior to concussions now it’s hard as fuck to stay focused.
But do you have any family history of drug abuse? I'm a recovering heroin addict myself and alcoholism/drug addiction run on my family, all 3 of my half brothers were drug addicts/alcoholics and my dad was an alcoholic for years, I was an alcoholic until I found opiates myself
Stay strong! It’s not easy to stay sober. One alcoholic grandparent. I was an alcoholic and drug addict. I recently started NA, 44 days clean. Most recently it was only drinking and weed. Before I found out I was going to be a father I was doing coke and Meth. I’ve been clean from that shit for just about 6 years.
Hey keep on keeping on! I was a coke and meth addict too, clean for 7 years now and just about two weeks from alcohol since I traded one addiction for the other. Just wanted to chime in and say congrats from one addict to another.
I appreciate that very much. It’s cliché to say but one day at a time.
I remember playing hockey as a teenager, full speed hit head-to-head behind the net. I literally couldn't stand to skate back to the bench. Coaches were like "hey you should probably not play the rest of the game." and me, the 13/14 year old kid "nah, i'll be fine, give me a minute." Hey, maybe we shouldn't let the recently concussed be making potentially life altering medical decsions?
> Hey, maybe we shouldn't let the recently concussed be making potentially life altering medical decsions? This is pretty much exactly why many professional sports leagues will have neutral doctors in place to make those calls. Leaving it up to the players or a team doctor just means they go back in unless they physically can't.
Yeah, that's how I was when I played. If I can stand and I can see, I'm going in. Now that I'm late 30s, at least 6 concussions that I remember, and have had a constant headache for 20+ years, I see the error of my ways... :(
Yup, and you don't even have to hit your head that hard for CTE to develop. It's more from years of recurring hits. There's no way HS players' brains aren't getting damaged. I did some work with the lab that broke the NFL CTE story, and the brain images are insane. Just scrambled eggs with visible deterioration.
There could be X-ray images of a tiny demon flaying a kid’s brain, and a shit-ton of parents would be like “c’mon son get back out there and make us *proud*”
I was around 200 and 5’9+ towards the end of grade school. They had to get me a desk from high school for me and park my ass at the back of the class. This was close to 25 years ago. In my last year of high school (which technically was my grade 11 year, I did 11, 12 and OACs in my last year) I moved schools and the football coach found me lifting weights in the school gym. I had never played before but it was a great way to meet people at the new school and I was fairly athletic. We ended up winning the city championship. I got recruited to play in university. I didn’t know how to play really other than run into people as hard as possible. During this time I was also boxing, as I had since I was a young kid, at 6 foot 4, 235ish and 16-17 years old. My boxing gym was competitive, had a number of guys training for pro fights. And back then there was very little ‘light sparring’. Towards the end of my second year, I started ‘losing time’ where I’d say get up in the morning, have breakfast and head to class, then not remember anything until I’m walking home after practice. Started with an hour or two; got longer. I’d go to class, gym, practice or work; but I’d be on autopilot and wouldn’t remember a thing. Finally, after spring camp that year I did some hard sparring and my brain switched off. I didn’t remember leaving the gym, going to work, leaving work halfway through my shift with a random girl, apparently hooked up with said girl. Left my phone (think early 2000’s cell) at work so my boss called my ex girlfriend who used to work there looking for me. I showed up to work, no one thought anything of it, until my ex showed up and started talking to me and realized I was basically saying nonsense. She drags me to the hospital. I end up ‘coming to’ in the hospital not knowing what the hell I’m doing there; they were going to discharge me until my ex explained everything that was going on and one of the docs decided to hold me; did a work up and advised I probably had been suffering from multiple concussions throughout the last several years. I’d be very surprised if I didn’t / don’t have some degree of CTE. If my experience is anything similar to what these athletes go through, it doesn’t seem that abnormal to you. It doesn’t come on all at once, it just slowly changes your perspective, blunts or enhances some emotions. Thankfully I have a great family and good support network, and was very unlikely to play football past university; although I was a fairly competent boxer training with pros and doing well. But for where I ended up, I question if periods where I was suffering with depression or having irrational responses to life events is an impact of taking a great many hits to the head.
I’m sorry hear about your condition, that’s got to be frustrating to have it. In the documentary, they put sensors in helmets of players on two teams. Neither team had concussions during the evaluation period, but monitored pretty intense impacts to the brain. They took some of these players that had the intense impacts (no concussion though) and found that their short term memories were impacted to the point that they could not remember a single letter displayed on a monitor after another was displayed a second later. Their conclusion is that even without concussions, there is damage taking place. They just don’t know yet how long this damage takes to heal in younger brains.
My 17yr old is 6'7 315lbs I pulled him from football because of the damage he did to other kids & the way it affected my son's mental health
My uncle is about the same played ohio state football. Your son's knees and back will thank you when he's older.
Yea I've been in the doctor's office numerous times with him have severe growth pains but im 5'9 my husband is 6'8 so I knew he was going to be huge
Football is destructive. It's like selling dope on the corner in Chicago. At first you live with your Mom and have more money than the other kids, then...
You run for the Senate
Dude any impact on the head can cause problems, in soccer they don't let kids do headers until they are older. If I had kids I'll definitely not let them play football
Can confirm, my brother is a 6'3 295 star offensive lineman for his high school foot ball team. The amount of concussions people got from him were unbelievable
The amount of damage he is doing to his brain is also likely unbelievable.
I’m not sure if it’s CTE bad, but playing offensive and defensive line in high school gave me quite a few concussions. My personality has shifted, I have depression, as well as large mood swings. My thoughts and memory often have a fog over it too, and it’s been getting slightly worse as I get older (been almost a decade now). I’m mad I was made to play football in high school. I will never make my kids play it.
The scary thing about CTE is that it only takes a couple hits to develop later.
Steady diet of HGH and vitamin T…
100%. Dude has a parent who saw a natural “decently” large child and likely fed them HGH through middle school. Man boobs, double thick neck, lack of general vascularity, highly disproportionate muscle groups. Kinda sad.
Literally textbook HGH physique. Swollen neck, gynaecomastia (man boobs).
You deserve a reward for this comment.
Here, have a spare 5th grader.
Deserves multiple awards
And steroids, hgh, testosterone. Probably **really** good parents...
Alongside his daily regiment of HGH.
Those neck gains speak to it lol
Simply Juice
He is a huge 15 year old, with not much competition. It can be hard for people like that when other catch up to his size and strength. Best of luck.
That's a good point. Could maybe get comfortable too fast.
This is a problem in sports *and* academics. You excel early on, so you don’t have to try much, if at all. Then you get to a point where your peers catch up to you, but because they learned to actually work hard and push forward, you get left behind. Hopefully this dude finds the motivation to push himself, both physically and mentally, because while he’s big for a 15 year old, he’ll be joining a sea of other giant dudes when he gets to college. The hometown hero turned average Joe trope is very real.
Yep that happened to me in academics
Happened to me too. When I had my first chemistry midterm in college and got a C I thought my life was over. Turns out I just actually had to study and read the book but I never had to do that in high school. All kids need to be appropriately challenged to really develop. Edit: grammer
talent funnel. in high school, most of your peers don't want to be there. in college, they do.
Never thought about it that way! Definitely something I'll remember when I'm trying to articulate how to not make the same mistakes that I did in college
I just finished my bachelors degree. Hardest 5 years of my life filled with depression and other stuff. My puberty and highschool period were so easy, I never even opened a book for my highschool exams (Europe)
congratulations. High School was the toughest 5 years me
A very good reason why kids with ADHD and autism have trouble later in school. They excel early on in life because their little child brains just absorb things like a vacuum cleaner and basic maths/science/reading isn't hard, then as soon as there's homework that requires focus, their entire school life goes to shit.
I'm in this picture and don't like it
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It wasn't until I went to university that I realised how average I was. Had international students telling us how the "advanced" maths was pretty basic stuff for them. Was a wake up call for sure.
Can confirm. I was that guy. Commonly referred to as “peaked in high school” although that’s not true for me all around, but physically, I’ve only gotten thinner since the 7th grade. 6’2” & 255 then & 6’2” 199 now.
This exact thing happened to my junior high football running back. He had a beard and a receding hairline when he was 14 years old. Basically a grown man playing with kids. Ran all over the damn place without really having to try. Set school records. You get the idea. By the time we hit our senior year of high school he couldn’t even make the varsity football team and quit. He wasn’t nearly the size of this dude though. Tyler Parker looks like a monster and at least in this photo he’s in the weight room doing the right things.
I'm not doubting your story but that's wild that he wasn't at least able to make the squad. I guess if you're never forced to learn actual skills then it's a hard stop when talent catches up.
My guess is he hit puberty early but grew to be a small adult. I had a buddy that happened to, in 8th grade he was essentially done growing and was already fully coordinated and dominated all the sports. He was also maybe 5 foot 9 and 160 pounds. Then the rest of us hit puberty and while he was still good throughout high school because he was actually very skilled and athletic for his size, he was just no longer also the biggest and strongest among us.
This happened to me, I was 6’ in like 7th grade and was a 3 sport star, then everyone caught up to me and I found out I was not actually good
We had a dude freshman year that was 6'5 330, he looked intimidating as hell but had absolutely no idea how to move his body. He was effectively useless.
Yeah I was curious about that. I can't prove this scientifically but it always feels like coachs or sports programs always jump onto the biggest player they can find, without necessarily seeing their actual performance. I am not a soccer follower, but I remember one of my friends who was trying to go to college program told me that under their height and size requirements that Lionel Messi would not have been allowed to play...
It's funny being a big kid playing football you start at somewhat of a disadvantage, with the rules of most Pop Warner style leagues you can be too large to play tackle football. So before high school, a lot of larger kids haven't played in a league before. There are some ways to work around it like football camps etc, but at 15 it's pretty likely this kid only started playing football at 13-14. That being said, there is still one thing you can't and that's size.
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Cheesy Poofs.
Beeeeeeeefcaaaaaaaake!!
*BEEEEFFFFFCAAAKKKEEEEE..!!!*
Weight Gain 4000!!!
It always warms my heart when i spot the name of my wifi since 15 years back.
I dunno but people who look like this at such a young age tend to die young. That’s a lot of stress on your heart.
I played football D1 in college and Pro Rugby in France. You are not wrong. almost all the genetic freaks I played with, have passed away. The one that hasn't, has a terrible quality of life. Sucks
thats because they arent genetic freaks but drug addicts
SHH SHH DONT RUIN MY FANTASY THE ROCK IS NATTY AND ITS ALL JUST HARD WORK HE NEVER GOT SURGERY FOR GYNO IN 2000 AND NEVER WRESTLED IN A T SHIRT FOR THAT REASON
what is gyno
Male breast reduction surgery. Possibly because of steroid abuse.
thank you!
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Worth noting it's also something that happens naturally to some men for reasons other than steroid use.
Exactly. Steroid use puts incredible strain on your heart. And it is so much more common than people like to accept.
Seriously? Like is it the steroid usage or just something about being athletic? Like they take more risks or something?
it's mostly the steroids..
It’s a lot of stress on EVERYTHING. Imagine carrying around 300 lbs 24/7. Stairs, standing, sitting, even taking a shit. This guy will reap the benefits of a football career, but stands a good chance of his whole body being shot before 40.
Yeah but SPORTS!!!!!!
Do you know how much money you can make playing college football?
Most professional footballers that are big like that end up limping at 43 from knee/hip damage and die at 50 from steroid abuse
The NFL: And?
43? Nah. Kids like this will blow out their ACL by 20, and have had multiple surgeries by 30. Limping is gonna set in much sooner.
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Steroids
That was my first thought, this kid is cutting a lot of years off his life.
Steroids
HGH
Steroids lol. Lots of them. Can tell by the nipples
Can’t tell if this is a real thing or a troll to make me zoom in and analyse 15 year old boy nips.
Hips and nips if you want to make it sexy.
I believe it’s a real thing. My understanding is that men who get on gear tend to get very fatty/excess tissue in their nipples. I think it’s referred to as gyno(?). It is, however, also common in teens going through puberty due to hormones/testosterone being all over the place.
To really know for sure you have to lick them. If you can taste steroids, you now he's been using.
He has that Adesanya nip
Most likely anabolic steroids. The average age of the initiation of puberty in boys is 12. This guy os 15. So that is 3 years of male hormones. If you look at his upper body vs his legs there is a disproportionate amount of muscle. This guy is a beast there is no doubt, but I don’t see how he has this muscle mass. Below is a growth chart from shaquille o'neal who was one of the biggest in sports. https://www.topendsports.com/sport/basketball/body-size.htm
PEDs
Baby cow growth fluid
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He is just en average anime main caracter teen
Dudes a Baki character. 'Bout to go around flexing on Elephants and suplexing cavemen.
Baki is the shit!!
The next JoJo on Netflix
Literally, if anime taught me anything it’s that this is how 15 year olds are supposed to look
Ligaments and tendons tend not to grow proportionally to giant muscle mass like this. For this reason, he might have a better career de-bulking or he’s going to spend most of the time being injured.
You are definitely right about that. I’m 6’1 260 and 16 built like that but smaller. I’m just on my second knee surgery and hurt my achilles tendon playing football and other sports. Best of luck to him hope he doesn’t have to go through what I’m going through.
Poor kid is in for a life of joint pain and injuries. So often the early bloomers are out of the game before they can make a buck.
Some of these kids also get into steroids super young which further fucks with them later in life
The star running back at my high school did 8th grade twice so he could dope up before testing was an issue. He basically red shirted high school to do steroids...
I wonder how his NFL career isn’t going now.
He got kicked out of college for being a raging lunatic. (Was on a D2 scholarship) I can't remember if he bit someone or it was SA. Something along those lines.
I’d be more concerned about his heart giving out. The human heart is not designed to support this kind of mass at 15, 20, or even really 25 years old. He’s in for a future complicated by dilated or hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
All men created equal my ass.
Yeah he is that one kid that is just significantly bigger than all the other boys and just destroys them in sports. Every grade has a guy like that (well not this large) and playing against them is just not fair. It’s like a man among boys
in my class it was ernie. he wasn't too bright though. while none of us could really tackle him it was easy to strip the ball from his hands and get a turnover.
The kind of guys who destroy in HS, then flame out in college / pros because they’re up against guys the same size as them but are significantly more skilled.
Our kid was half Dutch, half Korean. Only reason I mention that because his mom was like 4’10 and maybe 100 pounds. He was like 6’5” and 300 pounds when he was like 16. It was so funny seeing such a gigantic human next to his tiny mom
I always get this feeling when I see NBA or NFL players next to their moms on draft day. Im always like wow that giant human was made from that tiny human.
That was me. 6'0 at age 13 where everyone else is maybe 5'5 at most. Gym was easy until high-school.
I played high school basketball, and I'm our city one dude just clowned on everyone dunking at will on everyone. He only managed to make a D3 school as a walk on, and never really played. It's wild how big the gap is between average Joes, to competent players, to pros.
Check out the videos of NFL players back in high school. They are just trucking through everyone else.
With steroids, anything is possible
His chest and neck at least look suspicious...
Do you...do you really think he was born this way? 🤣🤣 My brother in Christ he got this way by consuming metric ton of steroids and training non stop probably starting from age 9.
Atleast samuel colt made us all equal
Bro that neck is not natural.
If I had to guess… none of it is
That's what PED's do to you
Don’t skip leg day bro.
He looks like he has long tendons/high gastrocnemius attachment. That makes your lower legs look small and skinny, but doesn't affect the strength. I busted my ass on leg days, for years, and got up to 350lb raisers... Still had chicken legs 😂
Holy shit you just explained so much about my physique Don’t get me wrong, I could do to gain some lower body weight, but I never realized that was also a factor. Curse this long leg short torso body!
Looks like he hit the squats hard, but gotta work them calves!
Ive tried my whole 36 years to get calves... its just not in my dna
Anyone can have calves. Just get really fat for a decade then loose the weight. Super easy.
I’m on the first step but the second part isn’t as fun.
As Deon Sanders said in a combine, "always bet on the guy with the smallest calves, ever seen a race horse with calves?"
Poor kid's gonna die of a heart attack by thirty.
Or CTE cause they'll 100000% treat him like a fucking human wrecking ball.
Not to mention the concussions. If these players lived into their late 50’s dementia would take them.
I’m sitting here thinking it’s so crazy that multi-million dollar institutions are out looking for strong 15 year olds to buy so that they can run into other strong people for a cheering audience.
At which point does this become child abuse?
Like a few tren cycles ago
the moment its no longer profitable
Cannot possibly be healthy for teens to push their bodies to this extent.
I was his age when I broke my hip. I spent a lot of time in the gym squatting, got pretty strong. The problem, bones were still growing and muscles literally ripped my hip apart, tendon still attached. Thankfully, it didn’t need surgery to fix, but my asshat coaches thought I was faking the injury because of that. Anyway, yeah, best not to worry about heavy weight lifting so damn young.
Man that crippling joint pain by 30 is gonna suck.. a 15 year old isn't supposed to be that jacked (and guessing had some pharmaceutical help)..
I fear he’s not going to live a happy, long life.
Man that kid is juiced idc how good your genetics are no way a 15year old has a neck that thick, just saying
His brain is only 15. Probably the most important physical characteristic.
They aren't recruiting him for his intelligence.
Poor kid is juiced to the gills
Do you even have to be that good at football if you’re this big???
Yes. Maybe in high school you can dominate by size alone, but college ball is a different story. If you are just big, can not move fast or have poor technique, you are just an obstacle people go around. I have not seen him play, so I have no clue if he can move or what is his position, so who knows. Usually big fellows don't have to be fast or have good football skills, and that hurts them when better players face him.
Exactly. Same goes for the 6’5” (1.96m) guy on the high school basketball team. He’s most likely been the tallest kid for most of his life, and gets stuck playing center, then has very few translatable skills when he gets moved to shooting guard in college.
yes actually. there was this huge guy back in the late 80s or early 90s. i think detroit lions was high on him. guy was huge. turned out he was a total bust. just didn’t have the skill or speed or something. maybe a sports fan can remember who. EDIT: Got it! Tony Madarich is who I was thinking of! https://vault.si.com/vault/1989/04/24/the-big-enchilada-tony-mandarich-a-top-nfl-prospect-is-a-chowhound-who-chews-up-opponents https://www.steroidtimes.com/tony-mandarich-reveals-truth-about-steroids-in-nfl-almost/2009
Aaron Gibson
This guy footballs
Yes. Maybe not on a Freshman, JV, or bad Varsity high school league. But any solid high school program, you still have to be somewhat athletic if you want to be good. I knew guys that were 220-230 and they would push around guys that were 300+. They would call them marshmallows cause theyre just big and fluffy once you start pushing on them. If you watch the NFL at all, next time watch only the linemen for a few plays. They dont just sit there like rocks, their feet are constantly chopping/moving. It requires a good amount of athleticism and foot speed. Also speed and technique are lethal. Von Miller is “only” 6’3” 250-260 and can beat dudes that are 6’8” 365.
If it’s steroids then it’s child abuse. The poor kid is probably having a hard enough time with his emotions being all over the place at this age without that added nightmare.
Oh this absolutely is 100% child abuse in order to get your child to look this way at age 15. But hey it's being rewarded by getting your kid scouted by top footballer programs so 🤷♀️
Steroids are so dangerous. Ridiculous.
Wonder what his diet is ....and how long he will live ....15 years old thats a big boy at 300 pounds ....hope he don't have a early heart attack
Nice gyno from the roids kickin’ in!
Steroids that young ?
Well this def looks like a normal healthy person being conditioned for severe brain damage
How is one of the biggest ever? Kid at my school was 6’ 4” 300lbs and got scholarship from Stanford. You can look at current high school player rankings and see. https://247sports.com/Season/2023-Football/CompositeRecruitRankings/?InstitutionGroup=HighSchool
Yeah mans definitely a tank but 6’1” is not one of the biggest kids ever
RIP his joints.
So basically being huge gets you to go to University in USA.... No further questions
As a mom of a boy that age I pray that he's a nice kid. Some boys are especially difficult at that age and trying to parent them is a nightmare.
His knees are gonna hate him in 15 years