Physical Activity and Academic Performance

Here are two articles discussing the relationship between physical activity and academic performance.  Highlighting is mine.

http://psychcentral.com/news/2012/06/16/childhood-obesity-linked-to-poor-math-performance/40203.html

Childhood Obesity Linked to Poor Math Performance

By TRACI PEDERSEN Associate News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on June 16, 2012

Childhood obesity affects math performance in school, as well as social skills and wellbeing, according to new research from the University of Missouri.

Researchers looked at data from over 6,000 children enrolled in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort, which gathered information from children beginning in kindergarten and followed them through the fifth grade.

On five different occasions, parents gave feedback regarding family dynamics, and teachers also reported on the children’s social skills and emotional wellbeing. Researchers then administered academic tests to the children and measured their height and weight.

Results showed that children who were obese throughout the study period had lower math scores in the first through fifth grades than children who were not obese.

“Obesity that persists across the elementary school years has the potential to compromise several areas of children’s development, including their social and emotional wellbeing and academic performance,” said Sara Gable, associate professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri and lead author of the study.

Not only did obesity affect math performance, but overweight children also reported feeling sadder, lonelier and more anxious than kids of more average weights. Researchers said this negative emotional state could be contributing to the poor math performances.

Although weight may indeed add to poor school performance, there is likely a variety of factors that also contribute to an obese child’s overall wellbeing, experts said.

“Obesity does not prevent kids from doing math, but obesity develops in families where there may be less oversight, less education, fewer resources,” said Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale Prevention Center.

Although obesity has been tied to poor school performance in past research, this study looks at the connection between the timing of obesity onset and factors such as behavior, relationships and academic performance.

The research strives to fill in the blank space that connects the weight dot to the academic performance dot, said Katz.

Although it is hard to determine whether obesity actually affects cognition, “we certainly can say that obesity affects everything fromself-esteem to social standing to mood and even hormonal balance, so the likelihood that there would be a whole cascade of effects between weight and math test scores is very high,” said Katz.

The study is published in the journal Child Development.

Source:  University of Missouri

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http://www.jssm.org/vol11/n2/4/v11n2-4abst.php

JOURNAL OF SPORTS SCIENCE & MEDICINE

Research article

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCHOOL PERFORMANCE AND THE NUMBER OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION CLASSES ATTENDED BY KOREAN ADOLESCENT STUDENTS

Sang-Yeob Kim1 and Wi-Young So2

1Division of Physical Education, College of Education, Sungkyul University, Anyang-si, Kyounggi-do, Korea 2Department of Human Movement Science, Seoul Women's University, Seoul, Korea

Received 03 November 2011 Accepted 01 February 2012 Published 01 June 2012

© Journal of Sports Science and Medicine (2012) 11, 226 - 230

ABSTRACT

Increased physical activity (PA) is the relationship with improved cognitive and memory functions of the brain. The physical education (PE) classes held in school comprise a type of PA. However, there is no epidemiological evidence showing a relationship between school performance and the number of PE classes attended per week in adolescent students. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine whether the number of PE classes attended per week is related with school performance in Korean adolescent students. In 2009, 75,066 adolescent students from middle school first grade to high school third grade participated in the 5th Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey (KYRBWS-V) project. The relationship between school performance and the number of PE classes attended per week was assessed using multivariate logistic regression analysis after adjusting for covariate variables such as gender, age, body mass index, parents' education level, family's economic status, vigorous and moderate PA, and muscle strengthening exercises. The odds ratio (OR) for attending <3 PE classes per week and school performance was 1.125 for good school performance, 1.147 for average school performance, 1.146 for poor school performance, and 1.191 for very poor school performance, when compared to very good school performance. It was concluded that attending >3 PE classes per week was positively correlated with improved school performance and that attending <3 PE classes per week was negatively correlated with school performance in Korean adolescent students. Key words: Adolescent, Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey, physical education classes, school performance.

PDF (198KB) ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION METHODS RESULTS DISCUSSION CONCLUSION AUTHORS BIOGRAPHY REFERENCES (in a separate window) KEY POINTS TABLE 1 TABLE 2

INTRODUCTION
Regular physical activity (PA) improves the health of many bodily systems, including the cardiovascular and musculoskeletal systems (Di Stasi et al., 2010; Leung et al., 2008), whereas factors such as physical inactivity lead to a sedentary lifestyle that in turn leads to increased weight (Canoy and Bundred, 2011; Park et al., 2004; Thomas and Albert, 2002) and adverse health effects such as musculoskeletal disorders, cardiac diseases, hypertension, stroke, type II diabetes, obesity, some types of cancers, and metabolic syndrome (Eckel et al., 2005; World Health Organization, 2011). Therefore, increasing PA is considered as an important approach for preventing adult diseases. Many studies have reported that increasing PA is beneficial for improving health outcomes (Baker et al., 2011; Daniels et al., 2005; Keteyian, 2011). Recently, several studies have reported that increased PA is associated with improved cognitive and memory functions of the brain (Flöel et al., 2010; Ploughman, 2008). The precise mechanisms underlying this association are unclear and inadequately understood. However, there are 3 hypotheses that can explain how PA affects brain function. The first hypothesis is that PA increases oxygen saturation and angiogenesis in the brain areas essential for performing tasks (Kleim et al., 2002; Kramer et al., 1999). The second hypothesis is that PA also increases the activity of brain neurotransmitters such as serotonin and norepinephrine, thereby facilitating information processing (Kubesch et al., 2003; McMorris et al., 2008; Winter et al., 2007). The third hypothesis is that PA upregulates neurotrophins such as brain-derived neurotrophic factor, insulin-like growth factor-I, and basic fibroblast growth factor. These neurotrophins support neuronal survival and differentiation in the developing brain (Schinder and Poo, 2000). These studies indicated that because PA is related to brain function, increasing PA may improve school performance and academic achievements in adolescent students. However, although PA has been shown to increase brain function and some practical evidence exists on the association between PA and academic performance (Sibley and Etnier, 2003), there is no epidemiological evidence supporting this finding in the literature on adolescent students. Furthermore, although a physical education (PE) class represents a type of PA in school, there is no epidemiological evidence showing that such classes are beneficial for adolescent students. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine whether the number of PE classes attended per week is related to school performance in Korean adolescent students. The results will be used to further assess the differences in the school performance of Korean adolescent students according to the frequency of PE classes per week and will then be used to recommend increased PA as an approach for enhancing school performance and achievements.	PDF (198KB) ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION METHODS RESULTS DISCUSSION CONCLUSION AUTHORS BIOGRAPHY REFERENCES (in a separate window) KEY POINTS TABLE 1 TABLE 2

METHODS
Participants The 5th Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey (KYRBWS-V) was conducted in 2009 as a cross-sectional epidemiological study with a complex sample design that included multistage sampling, clustering, and stratification. The KYRBWS-V consisted of questions about PA based on the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) of the World Health Organization (Craig et al., 2003). It was a national school-based survey conducted by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDCP) to determine the prevalence of health risk behavior in Korean adolescent students (Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). A representative sample of students from middle school first to high school third (age, 13-18 years) was selected; this sample included 76,937 students from 24,000 classrooms (secondary sampling units) of 800 middle and high schools (primary sampling units) and from 192 strata that were identified using the stratified multistage cluster sampling method. After sample determination, classroom teachers assigned each participating student a unique identification number that was used by the students to access the survey web page. On the web page, the students were first asked about their willingness to participate in the survey. Students who were willing to participate in the survey were asked to answer a self-administered questionnaire, which they completed anonymously in school. Students who did not wish to participate were not asked to answer the questionnaire. Furthermore, because private information was not collected by the KYRBWS-V, ethical approval was not required for this study. All the details pertaining to data collection procedures have been reported by the KCDCP (Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010), and the reliability and validity of the data obtained using the questionnaire have been evaluated in other studies (Bae et al.,2010a; 2010b). The present study obtained data from the KYRBWS-V to evaluate the association between the number of PE classes attended per week and school performance, taking into consideration potential covariate variables such as gender, age, body mass index (BMI), parents' education level, family's economic status, vigorous and moderate PA, and muscle strengthening exercises. Thus, 75,066 adolescent students (39,612 boys and 35,454 girls) participated in the study, and the response rate was 97.6%. The characteristics of the subjects are shown in Table 1. Independent variables To determine the number of PE classes attended per week by all the subjects, the following question was asked in the KYRBWS-V survey: "(Q1) How many PE classes do you attend per week in school?," with the following response options: (1) no PE class, (2) once per week, (3) twice per week, and (4) >3 times per week. Next, these responses were classified into the following 2 groups for multivariate logistic regression analyses: (1) >3 PE classes per week and (2) <3 PE classes per week. Dependent variables Self-reported school performances were evaluated for each adolescent student by asking 1 question: "(Q2) In the past 12 months, how has your average school performance been?" The response options were (1) very good, (2) good, (3) average, (4) poor, and (5) very poor. Covariate variables The covariate variables were as follows: 1. Gender: The 2 response options were (1) male and (2) female. 2. Age: Data pertaining to the ages of the students, as defined by the KYRBWS-V, were used without any modifications. 3. BMI: The students were asked to self-record their height and weight. BMI (kg/m2) was calculated from the data recorded by each student. 4. Parents' education level: The 4 response options were (1) unknown, (2) middle school or lower, (3) high school and (4) college or higher. 5. Family's economic status: The 5 responses ranged from (1) very rich, (2) rich, (3) average, (4) poor, and (5) very poor. 6. Frequency of vigorous PAs such as digging, aerobics, heavy lifting, or fast cycling during the week: The 6 responses ranged from (1) no, (2) once per week, (3) twice per week, (4) thrice per week, (5) 4 times per week, and (6) over 5 times per week. 7. Frequency of moderate PAs such as bicycling at a regular pace, carrying light loads, or playing doubles tennis during the week: The 6 responses ranged from (1) no, (2) once per week, (3) twice per week, (4) thrice per week, (5) 4 times per week, and (6) over 5 times per week. 8. Frequency of muscle strengthening exercises such as sit-ups, push-ups, and weight lifting or weight training during the week: The 6 responses ranged from (1) no, (2) once per week, (3) twice per week, (4) thrice per week, (5) 4 times per week, and (6) over 5 times per week. Statistical analysis All the results are presented in terms of mean ± standard deviation values. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to determine whether the number of PE classes attended per week was related to school performance in the participants of this study, after adjusting for the covariate variables. Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05, and all the analyses were performed using SPSS ver. 12.0 (SPSS, Chicago, IL, USA).	PDF (198KB) ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION METHODS RESULTS DISCUSSION CONCLUSION AUTHORS BIOGRAPHY REFERENCES (in a separate window) KEY POINTS TABLE 1 TABLE 2

RESULTS
The results of the multivariate logistic regression analyses of school performance for the groups of Korean adolescents participating in >3 and <3 PE classes per week are shown inTable 2. This table compares the information about the Korean adolescents who attended <3 PE classes per week to that of Korean adolescents who attended >3 PE classes per week, according to school performances that ranged from (1) very good to (5) very poor after adjusting for covariate variables such as gender, age, BMI, parents' education level, family's economic status, vigorous and moderate PA, and muscle strengthening exercises. Results show that for students attending <3 PE classes per week, good school performance increased by 12.5%, average school performance increased by 14.7%, poor school performance increased by 14.6%, and very poor school performance increased by 19.1% as compared to very good school performance.

DISCUSSION
The aim of this study is to investigate the association between school performance and attending <3 PE classes per week in Korean adolescents. The results of our study show that attending <3 PE classes per week was associated with poor school performance in Korean adolescent students, despite adjusting for school performance-related covariate variables. Several cross-sectional studies have shown that less PA is associated with poor cognitive function and memory functions of the brain (Flöel et al., 2010; Ploughman, 2008). Thus, the results of our epidemiological study indicate that PE classes represent PA, which may increase the cognitive and memory functions of the brain. Furthermore, they indicate that increasing the frequency of PE classes positively affects school performance in Korean adolescent students. School performance may be highly associated with the reading, speaking, writing, and understanding levels of individuals, which in turn are related to brain activities and functioning. Here, our cross-sectional study showed that school performance was associated with the frequency of attending PE classes. Limitations and future research This study has several limitations. First, the KYRBWS-V was conducted using online methods; consequently, the parents' education level and the family's economic status were recorded by the students themselves, and these data may therefore be inaccurate. Second, this study was a cross-sectional epidemiology study. Therefore, we could not elucidate the cause-and-effect relationship but could only assess the interrelationship between school performance and the frequency of attending PE classes. However, because our study sample comprised 75,066 students from all parts of Korea and was thus highly representative of the Korean adolescent population, the relationship between school performance and the number of PE classes attended per week could be generalized to all Korean adolescents. However, in the future, better-designed studies should be performed to determine the extent to which these variables, including the covariate variables, affect the school performance of Korean adolescents.	PDF (198KB) ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION METHODS RESULTS DISCUSSION CONCLUSION AUTHORS BIOGRAPHY REFERENCES (in a separate window) KEY POINTS TABLE 1 TABLE 2

CONCLUSION
It was concluded that in Korean adolescents, attending >3 PE classes per week was positively correlated with school performance; in contrast, attending <3 PE classes per week was negatively correlated with school performance.

KEY POINTS
Korean adolescents, attending >3 PE classes per week was positively correlated with school performance. Korean adolescents, attending <3 PE classes per week was negatively correlated with school performance.

AUTHORS BIOGRAPHY
Sang-Yeob KIM Employment: Adjunct Professor, Division of Physical Education, College of Education, Sungkyul University Degree: PhD E-mail: 100sprinter@hanmail.net

A One Minute Look at the Scenery of San Diego

Longboard Skateboards

I bet these guys aren't worried about foam rolling, mobility WODs, caloric intake or what to do to have fun!

Will Power Makes a Man

A lack of will power is one the biggest problems in our society, our educational system and in our personal lives.  When we continue to take the path of least resistance, we will always lead ourselves down the road to lesser versions-of-ourselves.  

http://artofmanliness.com/2012/01/01/willpower/

Willpower Part I: The Force of Greatness

by BRETT & KATE MCKAY on JANUARY 1, 2012 · 77 COMMENTS

in A MAN'S LIFE, PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

What are your regrets from last year?

Failing to stick with an exercise program?

Losing a girlfriend because you strayed?

Failing a class?

Hurting a loved one with your temper?

What resolutions have you made for the new year?

Losing 20 pounds?

Getting up earlier in the morning?

Reining in your spending?

Wasting less time mindlessly surfing the internet?

Regrets and resolutions. What do they have in common? Willpower. A lack of and a need for.

But what is willpower anyway? You’ve heard the term before, but it probably seems like an awfully abstract force. You might feel as those it’s something innate, and that some men were born with a larger portion of it than others. It’s something you likely wish you had more of yourself, but don’t have any idea of how to go about it.

Happily, the truth is that willpower is a very real energy–a power source that can be depleted, strengthened, and conserved. And the man who learns how to tap into this fuel and harness his willpower gains some of the most vital knowledge one can possess: how to make of himself and his life anything he wants them to be.

The History of Willpower

“Self-control is self-mastery. It is kingship over all life. At the center of your being sits yourself. Your seat ought to be a throne. If you are not in control, if there are any forces in your nature that are unruly, that do not acknowledge your sway, you are not the king you should be. Part of your kingdom is in insurrection. The strength of your life is divided. The strong man is he whose whole being is subject to him.” -James Russell Miller, The Beauty of Self-Control, 1911

Like many great truths, the nature and importance of willpower was understood by our forbearers, lost in time, and then rediscovered and refined by modern science.

A focus on willpower originated in the 19^th century, around the time of the Industrial Revolution. As people observed the way in which steam could be harnessed and turned into productive energy, their thoughts turned to contemplating the great feats the human machine might be capable of by channeling a different kind of fuel source: willpower.  In a time when a successful life was measured by the pursuit of character and virtue, a man’s “strength of will” or “moral resistance” was seen as the most vital quality for achieving those ends. Regardless of the temptations he was beset with, a man of iron-clad self-control never veered from his purpose and code of honor.  As the captain of his fate, he steered his own course, come what may. No accomplishment in position or wealth could be measured next to the greatest conquest of all…mastery of one’s self.

This celebration of willpower was weakened by the Progressive movement of the early 20^thcentury, which focused on people’s external environment as opposed to their personal qualities as determining their fate. Poverty and crime could be traced to a person’s deficient upbringing and squalid surroundings, progressives argued, not their lack of self-control.

During World War II the term picked up some negative baggage from the release of the Nazi propaganda film, Triumph of the Will. And in post-war America, willpower was relegated to the background by the rising consumer culture—after all, self-control is bad for business. The hippies of the 1960s heralded the maxim of “if it feels good, do it” as a guiding principle for life. And the philosophy of self-help gurus like Norman Vincent Peale and Napoleon Hill, who emphasized positive thinking as the way to success, remained popular throughout the 20^thcentury.

In the present time, this year has seen the release of a bevy of books that question how much free will and agency we really have after all. Psychologists and philosophers point to research and studies to argue that humans are highly irrational beings whose behaviors are largely controlled by their unconscious minds.

Yet at the same time, other psychologists have been launching a revival of interest in the concept of willpower and demonstrating in studies that not only does it constitute a real and enormously vital energy, but that one’s belief in it need not involve invariably blaming the victim for their misfortunes (an understanding of willpower can illuminate just how external factors effect the downtrodden), nor put you in the ranks of the cruel goose stepper (having strong self-control is linked to greater levels of empathy and altruism, not less).

The Importance of Willpower

“That majestic endowment [the Will] constitutes the high privilege granted to each man apparently to test how much the man will make of himself. It is clothed with powers which will enable him to obtain the greatest of all possessions — self-possession. Self-possession implies the capacity for self-restraint, self-compulsion and self-direction; and he who has these, if he live long enough, can have any other possession that he wants.” -William Hanna Thompson, Brain and Personality, 1906

Psychologists have always been keen to find the personal characteristics that correlate to positive life outcomes. While they’ve turned over hundreds of rocks in this search, they’ve only found two factors that consistently lead people to greater levels of happiness, health, and success: willpower and intelligence.

Unfortunately, researchers have yet to discover ways of increasing a person’s intelligence in the long-term; it is an aptitude that is largely genetic and innate.

So when it comes to bettering our lives, that leaves willpower as the only tool within our control.

But what a powerful tool it is.

By now you’ve probably heard about the oft-cited marshmallow experiment in which four-year-old children were left alone in a room with a marshmallow in front of them. The children were told they could eat the marshmallow right away, or wait 15 minutes to receive an additional marshmallow. The children with the highest self-control, those who were able to wait in order to double their white gelatinous booty—grew up to become fitter adults who got better test scores and grades and enjoyed healthier relationships.

In another study which examined 36 different personality traits of a group of children, only one, willpower, later correlated to their college GPA. In fact the correlation between willpower and college GPA was stronger than that between future grades and IQ or SAT scores.

Other studies have shown that people with higher levels of self-control are more emotionally stable and struggle less with anger, anxiety, depression, and drug and alcohol abuse. They also make more popular bosses, have more friends, and are more likely to be in a stable marriage and less likely to get divorced. And all of these benefits hold true even when the results are controlled for things like class, race, and intelligence. The same outcomes were also found when siblings who were raised in the same household were studied. The siblings with more self-control fared better in life than their willpower-lacking brothers and sisters.

“The strength of your life is measured by the strength of your will.”—Henry Van Dyke

It is easy to see why such a high correlation between your level of willpower and how far you reach in life exists. All success, happiness, and satisfaction are achieved by minimizing your screw ups and maximizing your positive decisions and habits. And the energy that drives your ability to produce both outcomes is willpower. The man with more willpower takes five steps forward and one step back, while the man with less willpower takes two steps forward and then one step back. Thus, it is not an overstatement to describe willpower as the absolute linchpin quality in determining the outcome of your life—whether you’ll be superhuman or ordinary, king or slave, man or mouse.

Understanding Willpower

“A better definition of the Will, therefore, is ‘the Power Of Self-direction.’”

“The Will may be now [defined] as a power to choose what the man shall do.”

“THE WILL IS THE MAN.”

-Frank Hadding Chaddock, The Power of Will, 1919

Okay, so the strength of your willpower is incredibly important. But to return to the question posed in the introduction…what exactly is willpower anyway?

Essentially, it is a mental energy that allows you to direct your actions in four categories of behavior:

• Thoughts. Don’t think about a white bear! You just thought about a white bear, didn’t you? Willpower helps you focus on what you want to think about, by keeping unwelcome and intrusive thoughts at bay.
• Emotions. You can’t will yourself to feel happy or sad. But you can decide to take actions to change how you’re feeling—“I feel down. I’m going to go for a run—that always lifts my spirits.” And when you put up a front and fake an emotion, like being the rock for someone else when you feel like falling apart yourself, that takes willpower too.
• Impulses. Impulses are things like: “I want to eat that piece of cake.” “I want to punch that guy.” “I want to check my email instead of working.” While there are ways to minimize the number of impulses like this you get, you don’t have direct control over whether they pop into your head. But willpower does help you regulate how you react to the impulse. Will you ignore it or give in?
• Performance control. This deals with how well you can focus and concentrate on a task, how long you stick with something before giving up, how much effort you expend during different phases of an exercise or task, how well you manage your time, etc.

While willpower regulates all these different categories of potential and actual actions, it’s the same supply of willpower that deals with all of them—you don’t have one willpower supply for emotions and one for performance control.

Basically, whenever you have a desire to do something that conflicts with your long-term goals and your core values, willpower is the thing that kicks in and tries to keep you on track. The stronger your willpower is, the better chance of making a decision in line with your goals. Willpower is what allows you to choose your path and to persevere in that path despite obstacles, resistance, and weakness.

While it’s true that our unconscious minds lead us to make choices and behave in ways we are not always aware of and that are not always rational, the sway of the unconscious is greater when it comes to our short-term decisions. Willpower acts as an executive force that looks for patterns and sees the connection between our present behavior and our long-term goals, and then makes course corrections to keep us heading in the right direction. Or in other words, willpower is the skipper of our ship; despite wind and waves that push the ship around, the skipper constantly consults his compass and adjusts the rudder so we stay on course.

I find it useful to imagine willpower in the context of the old image of the devil and the angel sitting on each of your shoulders, but sans the religious imagery. Instead of an angel, imagine Teddy Roosevelt on one side, and Al Bundy on the other. TR’s saying to you, “Bully! Read that textbook!” while Al is whispering in your ear to grab a beer and plop in front of the television. Who will win? Well that depends on TR’s strength relative to Al at any given moment. What determines that strength? A phenomenon called “ego depletion.”

And that’s what we’ll explore next week in the second part of this three part series, when we discuss the finite nature of our willpower supply. Then we’ll finish up with an article on how to strengthen, and even more importantly, how to conserve your willpower for the most important things in your life.

Source:

Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney

What Would the End of Football Look Like?

Let's hope it doesn't go down this way...


http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7559458/cte-concussion-crisis-economic-look-end-football


February 9, 2012 1:57 PM ET
What Would the End of Football Look Like?

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By Tyler Cowen and Kevin Grier


NFL is done for the year, but it is not pure fantasy to suggest that it may be done for good in the not-too-distant future. How might such a doomsday scenario play out and what would be the economic and social consequences?




By now we're all familiar with the growing phenomenon of head injuries and cognitive problems among football players, even at the high school level. In 2009, Malcolm Gladwell asked whether football might someday come to an end, a concern seconded recently by Jonah Lehrer.


Before you say that football is far too big to ever disappear, consider the history: If you look at the stocks in the Fortune 500 from 1983, for example, 40 percent of those companies no longer exist. The original version of Napster no longer exists, largely because of lawsuits. No matter how well a business matches economic conditions at one point in time, it's not a lock to be a leader in the future, and that is true for the NFL too. 


Sports are not immune to these pressures. In the first half of the 20th century, the three big sports were baseball, boxing, and horse racing, and today only one of those is still a marquee attraction.


The most plausible route to the death of football starts with liability suits.¹ Precollegiate football is already sustaining 90,000 or more concussions each year. If ex-players start winning judgments, insurance companies might cease to insure colleges and high schools against football-related lawsuits. Coaches, team physicians, and referees would become increasingly nervous about their financial exposure in our litigious society. If you are coaching a high school football team, or refereeing a game as a volunteer, it is sobering to think that you could be hit with a $2 million lawsuit at any point in time. A lot of people will see it as easier to just stay away. More and more modern parents will keep their kids out of playing football, and there tends to be a "contagion effect" with such decisions; once some parents have second thoughts, many others follow suit. We have seen such domino effects with the risks of smoking or driving without seatbelts, two unsafe practices that were common in the 1960s but are much rarer today. The end result is that the NFL's feeder system would dry up and advertisers and networks would shy away from associating with the league, owing to adverse publicity and some chance of being named as co-defendants in future lawsuits.


It may not matter that the losses from these lawsuits are much smaller than the total revenue from the sport as a whole. As our broader health care sector indicates (try buying private insurance when you have a history of cancer treatment), insurers don't like to go where they know they will take a beating. That means just about everyone could be exposed to fear of legal action.


This slow death march could easily take 10 to 15 years. Imagine the timeline. A couple more college players — or worse, high schoolers — commit suicide with autopsies showing CTE. A jury makes a huge award of $20 million to a family. A class-action suit shapes up with real legs, the NFL keeps changing its rules, but it turns out that less than concussion levels of constant head contact still produce CTE. Technological solutions (new helmets, pads) are tried and they fail to solve the problem. Soon high schools decide it isn't worth it. The Ivy League quits football, then California shuts down its participation, busting up the Pac-12. Then the Big Ten calls it quits, followed by the East Coast schools. Now it's mainly a regional sport in the southeast and Texas/Oklahoma. The socioeconomic picture of a football player becomes more homogeneous: poor, weak home life, poorly educated. Ford and Chevy pull their advertising, as does IBM and eventually the beer companies.


There's a lot less money in the sport, and at first it's "the next hockey" and then it's "the next rugby," and finally the franchises start to shutter.


Along the way, you would have an NFL with much lower talent levels, less training, and probably greater player representation from poorer countries, where the demand for money is higher and the demand for safety is lower. Finally, the NFL is marginalized as less-dangerous sports gobble up its market share. People — American people — might actually start calling "soccer" by the moniker of "football."


Despite its undeniable popularity — and the sense that the game is everywhere — the aggregate economic effect of losing the NFL would not actually be that large. League revenues are around $10 billion per year while U.S. GDP is around $15,300 billion. But that doesn't mean everyone would be fine.


Big stadiums will lose a lot of their value and that will drag down neighboring bars and restaurants, causing a lot of them to shut their doors. Cable TV will be less profitable, and this will hasten the movement of TV-watching, if we can still call it that, to the web. Super Bowl Sunday will no longer be the best time to go shopping for a new car at the dealership.


Take Green Bay as a case study: A 2009 study of the economic impact of the Packers' stadium estimated "$282 million in output, 2,560 jobs and $124.3 million in earnings, and $15.2 million in tax revenues." That's small potatoes for the national economy as a whole, but for a small and somewhat remote city of 104,000, it is a big deal indeed.²


Any location where football is the only game in town will suffer. If the Jets and Giants go, New York still has numerous other pro sports teams, Broadway, high-end shopping, skyscrapers, fine dining, and many other cultural activities. If college football dies, Norman, Oklahoma (current home to one of us), has … noodling? And what about Clemson, in South Carolina, which relies on the periodic weekend football surge into town for its restaurant and retail sales? Imagine a small place of 12,000 people that periodically receives a sudden influx of 100,000 visitors or more, most of them eager to spend money on what is one of their major leisure outings. It's like a port in the Caribbean losing its cruise ship traffic. (Overall, the loss of football could actually increase migration from rural to urban areas over time. Football-dependent areas are especially prominent in rural America, and some of them will lose a lot of money and jobs.)


Outside of sports, American human capital and productivity probably rise. No football Saturdays on college campuses means less binge drinking, more studying, better grades, smarter future adults. Losing thousands of college players and hundreds of pro players might produce a few more doctors or engineers. Plus, talented coaches and general managers would gravitate toward management positions in American industry. Heck, just getting rid of fantasy football probably saves American companies hundreds of millions of dollars annually.


Other losers include anything that depends heavily on football to be financially viable, including the highly subsidized non-revenue collegiate sports. No more air travel for the field hockey teams or golf squads. Furthermore, many prominent universities would lose their main claim to fame. Alabama and LSU produce a large amount of revenue and notoriety from football without much in the way of first-rate academics to back it up. Schools would have to compete more on academics to be nationally prominent, which would again boost American education.


One of the biggest winners would be basketball. To the extent that fans replace football with another sport (instead of meth or oxy), high-octane basketball is the natural substitute. On the pro level, the season can stretch out leisurely, ticket prices rise, ratings rise, maybe the league expands (more great athletes in the pool now), and some of the centers and power forwards will have more bulk. At the college level, March Madness becomes the only game in town.


Another winner would be track and field. Future Rob Gronkowskis in the decathlon? Future Jerome Simpsons in the high jump? World records would fall at a rapid pace.


This outcome may sound ridiculous, but the collapse of football is more likely than you might think. If recent history has shown anything, it is that observers cannot easily imagine the big changes in advance. Very few people were predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union, the reunification of Germany, or the rise of China as an economic power. Once you start thinking through how the status quo might unravel, a sports universe without the NFL at its center no longer seems absurd.


So … Tennis, anyone?


Tyler and Kevin are academic economists who think the dismal science can shed some light on the inner workings of the sports world. Follow them on Twitter: Tyler is @tylercowen, Kevin is @ez_angus.

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Previously from Tyler Cowen and Kevin Grier:
Two Economists Explain the NBA Lockout
The Economics of Moneyball

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FOOTNOTES

1. The second most likely path of doom is that medical science conclusively connects CTE with football, and state legislatures or Congress move to ban it. If the connection is made, this could take only three to five years. This is faster because it doesn't require financial ruin or a slow drain of labor supply, but also less likely because Congress and a lot of other legislatures face a lot of gridlock as it is.
   
   
2. http://www.packers.com/assets/docs/2010economic_impact_report.pdf