NFL head injuries have led to drastic youth football decline

[Jville]

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According to ESPN’s “Outside the Lines," Pop Warner, the nation’s largest and most recognized youth football program, saw its participation levels drop 9.5 percent between 2010-12. Pop Warner lost 23,612 players, thought to be the greatest two-year decline since the organization began keeping statistics decades ago

[urltargetblank]http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/report-nfl-head-injuries-led-drastic-youth-football-171008309--nfl.html[/urltargetblank]

 

[chris98251]

Doesn't surprise me in this fear by media society, I coached at youth football level also, those kids rarely get any real impact going untill they get to the 11 or 12 year old level, even then if taught to form tackle etc you rarely see concussion type plays. The one exception is taking a knee to the helmet on a block or tackle, but again the force and speed and impact at that level isn't what you see in high school and beyond.

If the NFL doesn't get a handle on this stories and fear will propagate through the sport, seems weekly we see another coach or player say I won't let my kid play football which just adds to the fear factor. They question would never even be asked if the NFL would get it's act together and get this cleaned up once and for all.

 

[EverydayImRusselin]

Do you really think it can be cleaned up though? I don't see how you can stop the repetitive head shots that are going to be taken just by playing football. They've done some studies that show that even just playing soccer and heading the ball can lead to head injuries. How are you going to prevent even that level of contact to the head? I think we are in the beginning of the end of the sport IMO. I work with a guy who played through college, made it through a week of training camp for the Raiders and he suffered a stroke when he was only 34. He fully believes that his football career had something to do with it.

 

[chris98251]

Again I say as long as this remains unsettled it will be a media topic, you don't think the Lawyers are looking for everything that could be construed as a head injury due to football and sports in general to rally their case. Best advertiseing for their cause is the media and the countless stories that can be drummed up. If this was so widespread you would think college teams and high school teams would have a major shortage of players right now as they would be leaving in droves. What about the NFL, Moffit left the Broncos granted, but was that fear of injury or fear of sitting on the bench?

Also Soccer has been pulling countless players away from football for years, now with a full time select and winter baseball league for many youths they are in many camps told they cannot be on a select team and play another sport as well. Lots of things that are going into this decline.

 

[Axx]

it could also be that the recession. People just don't have quite the same amount of money to waste on pop warner football.

But i doubt that people we will see any significant decreases at the varsity level.

 

[joeseahawks]

When people who have played the game say they won't let their kids play, people listen and look for alternatives.

 

[Chukarhawk]

not where I live. Youth teams are bursting at the seams.

 

[Popeyejones]

Was a good article probably a year or two ago (?) about how the NFL's decline will come from parents keeping their kids out of the sport as the concussion research became more robust, then followed by public schools being forced to give up on the sport as it became less and less insurable. Was it Malcolm Gladwell? If not, he has made a similar argument (but I don't think I saw it from him first).

In any case, this sounds about right. Been working on transitioning over to NBA fandom, but I know relatively little about the inner workings of that game, which makes it much less enjoyable.

 

[CPHawk]

When people who have played the game say they won't let their kids play, people listen and look for alternatives.

Those people are pissing on the game that gave them so much. Anyone ask hypocrite Favre, if he is so against his kids playing football, why are you coaching HS ball jack?

 

[muxpux]

My Nephew got a concussion this year playing middle school ball. it wasnt one distinct hit, he talked to the coach at halftime and said he was feeling dizzy and wierd, and it became obvious something was up. went to the hospital where they told him he was done for the season. fast forward a couple months, wrestling season starts, first match, 2nd round, boom. concussion, and whisked off to the hospital again. hes done with contact sports for a while and PISSED. in football he was RB/LB and was arguably the best one on the team. last year in wrestling he didnt lose a match til late in the year and i think finished with only 1 loss. he still wants to play, convincing mom might be harder to do.








(great number!!)

 

[Happypuppy]

Injuries happen. I suspect in a year or so we will have helmets or some sort that really help with all the money invested in safety now.


Hoping not to get too far on a tangent I will add this at I believe it fits

Football as of late seems to be demonized for head injuries pales compared to sports such as MMA that's is so popular now. It seems even small towns have a school or 2. I know one fellow at the gym that is in his early 20s that has had a half dozen concussions and from what I understand it's not that abnormal.

Don't forget with so many families split with a single parent making most decisions the mom there more often than not are don't want to,let little Johnny get hurt.

It is one of the big reasons as to the decline in little league and the fear of failure and some sort of trauma from getting singled out for failing ( dropping the ball striking out etc)

 

[AbsolutNET]

I coached high school football the last couple years after taking a few off, and I can tell you in complete certainty that it is in the heads of the players in my city. I had SIX guys go down with "concussions" in the first 6 weeks, and it was a problem last year too. A lot of kids are seeing so much about head injuries in football, that they think whenever they take a shot, that they have a concussion. They don't realize your head can get dinged, but it doesn't mean you're concussed. And at our level, if a guy complains about head pain, or a head ache, we have to send them home to see the Dr. And the Dr. will not clear them for at least 7 days.

We had a couple guys go down with actual concussions, and that happens, but there was literally one guy each week telling us they have concussions before they even saw a Dr...Granted I coached at a city school that was lucky to suit 22 guys during practice, almost half of which hadn't played more than a year of football in their lives, but I could definitely see a marked increase in the awareness and sensitivity to head injuries (in the sense that guys were telling us they had a concussion when they had no symptoms other than a head ache during practice, ie they didn't have one). After week 6, our Admin was even considering cancelling the season because so many guys were going down and we started to worry about lawsuits following parent complaints.

This could be an isolated experience, I sure as hell haven't seen anything like it before, but it looks like it's not uncommon.

 

[CPHawk]

Stats show just as many head injuries in basketball and soccer, why isn't anyone going after those sports?