knownone":v5pgscqb said:
I don't have kids, but I'm curious what is fueling your concerns as parents? is it CTE and head injuries? or just the overall dangers of football.
I personally wouldn't let my kids play football (assuming I have any), but a lot of the research that I've read is very concerning for sports as a whole. In fact, most of the studies say that simple repeated head impacts are what cause the most damage. Which leads to heavy ramifications for all youth sports, not just football. Soccer, basketball and even baseball have similar risks of repeated head injury, yet most parent's I know are flocking to these sports as "safe" alternatives to football.
Football seems to be the target of sensationalism because it is the most violent of all the major sports.
Youth Soccer has more concussions than youth football.
Most youth coaches teach "heads up" tackling. Like I said my nephew played 8th grade football last year for the first time. He said they spent about 3 weeks going over safety, proper tackling technique, and conditioning before any contact on the field.
I played soph-Frosh in highschool 30 years ago and we may have had 1 day on safety and proper tackling technique. We had massive hitting in practice, and guys were hurt left and right. I had one concussion (called getting your bell rung back then) where you'd take a few plays off and go back in.
Things are much different today....
The worst injury my nephew got was the wind got knocked out of him besides little dings here and there. I don't think they had any broken bones, no concussions, and might have been a sprain here or there and they had 40+ kids playing. They also did a ton of rotations where they'd pull out a ton of kids at one time and put another group in. They never lost a game either. BTW they had a girl on the team, and did play against another girl.
I'm not saying major injuries don't happen today because they still do, but to a lesser extent.....with better knowledge, better coaching, better technique, better technology, it's quite a bit safer than 30 years ago.
But....... I think it's a decision that every parent needs to ponder, and hopefully the kid is a part of that decision making process. My biggest word of advice is educate yourself on "Today's youth football" not yours or mine, if you do that and still don't want your kid playing, the at least it was an informed decision based on facts and knowledge.
....and just because you kid plays a year of football doesn't mean he'll want to keep playing it. My nephew played last year and had fun, and was a good player, but even with coaches wanting him to play his freshman year, he is more than likely not going to because of the full time commitment. ....but he tried it and now won't regret NOT ever giving it a chance.