What will it take?
Last week was an especially grim one for football: On December 1, the Kansas City Chiefs’ Jovan Belcher murdered his girlfriend then shot himself. Two days later, a new study bolstered what is becoming obvious: That there is a link between head trauma — including routine hits in a football game — and long-term, degenerative brain disease.
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Other sports such as soccer, lacrosse, hockey, and basketball also have a high risk of head trauma. There are youth football leagues that are responsible to avoid these injuries. The latest and safest helmets are used, coaches are trained about head injuries and are accountable, players are taught to use proper tackling technique to avoid head contact, and baseline brain scans are required. Refs are also trained to remove head injured players from the game. Some of these leagues have been way ahead of the NFL. Ultimately it is the parents to pull their children if they feel they are endangered.
Uh, no. We should not be allowing children to experience repeated sub-concussive injuries, no matter what their parents want. If that trauma is an intrinsic part of almost every play in a sport (unlike basketball--I don't know why you listed that), then it is inappropriate for children.
Youth football leagues can do just as much to avoid head injuries in kids as they can to foster world peace. Helmets are a joke. Somebody, maybe Paterno, said the way to make football safer was to eliminate helmets. Refs are simply not hired to do anything about concussions. The thinking in this comment is a flagrant example of the denial among those who refuse to understand the costs of football on any level.
One solution, at all levels, is the counter-intutive idea: Take Off THe Helmets!!!
Rugby does not seem to produce these concussive and sub-concussive injuries to anywhere near the percentage that football does. Tackling is as much a part of rugby as it is of football, but rugby players (a) tackle properly and (b) avoid head-to-head collisions so common in football. Why? Because without the helmet it always hurts (the pain is felt immediately) and you often bleed.
Just a thought. Same in hockey to some extent. Let 'em where protective goggles or something but take off the face masks. They allow for False Courage and continually high sticks.
Totally agree. Modern football gear basically turns the body into a weapon. When it's flesh on flesh, and you get hurt just as much as the other guy, you are far less likely to take cheap shots.
No need to rile the opposition by banning anthing, just don't let your kids play football. Try this: Launch a concerted campaign to frame parents who allow (or force!) their child to play tackle as bad parents, and that legion of frustrated old football jocks called pee-wee coaches as promoters of child abuse. Like hockey without checking, non-tackle football (touch or flag) is fun and can involve all genders and sizes. And what about the 'real men' argument? Please, real men protect children, not just the ball.
All well and good for those us us sitting in the luxury of Boston and the suburbs but try to tell this to the folks in Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, etc. Instead of harping on this we need to make the game safer which so many people in the US are working towards.
People in Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas are immune to head trauma? New Englanders living suburbs don't enjoy football? What?
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I agree wholeheartedly. In addition, hard equipment, such as helmets, shoulder pads, etc. should be eliminated, but softer padding might be okay. Rather than protecting, hard padding allows hitting with greater force.