Half of Parents Concerned About Kids Playing Football
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Should kids be allowed to play football, given all the injuries incurred as a result? While it’s food for thought life is full of situations that are potentially dangerous, like driving, or even riding in a car for example. We can be diligent, and we should be, but if we stopped our kids from doing anything that was potentially dangerous we’d never let them leave the house.
From Newser:
Almost half of parents have concerns about their kids playing football, but according to a new AP-GfK poll, they’re not exactly yanking their offspring off the field in the kind of droves that will “kill pro football.” Some 44% of parents were “not comfortable” letting their child punt and pass the pigskin, but only 5% said they had actually “discouraged” their kids from playing over the last two years, reports the AP. The majority of the 1,044 adults interviewed for the poll said they didn’t have a problem with their kids playing most other sports, including baseball, basketball, and soccer—though the New York Times reports that FIFA was sued yesterday by a group of soccer parents and players over its handling of concussions.
Feeding into parents’ fears are high-profile deaths of pros like Junior Seau and a pending class-action settlement that would pay “thousands of former NFL players for concussion-related claims,” notes NFL.com. But the National Federation of State High School Associations says that participation in high school football actually rose last year, after four straight years of losses. One possible explanation: With the NFL andNCAA finally acknowledging the seriousness of head injuries in the league, and college teams testing the next generation of head protection, some parents are feeling better about their kids on the field. “There’s a lot of publicity on [concussions] now … I’m not as worried,” one parent tells the AP.
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Make people aware of the facts on head trauma and let parents choose for their children. We, of course, should make the game as safe as possible, especially for young players. The perverse truth is, alas, the better the safety equipment, the more players take risks/lead with their heads because they think the equipment will protect them. Returning to leather helmets may be the only way to solve that problem.
Precisely Mr L!! If we try and wrap our kids up in ‘cotton wool’ they’ll just lose the basic instinct of avoiding pain. Well said old bean.
I’m not the football fan in the house, I leave that to my husband, but I wouldn’t want my kids to play it. It seems way too aggressive like boxing.
I liked boxing as a kid. Well I did until I met a better boxer 😉
Although I played practically every sport there was growing up I truly believe that the world of sports has changed a lot since I was a youngster and not all of them for the good. For example, my best sport was baseball which I really enjoyed playing was, at that time, true to the game. The kids used wood bats on a smaller field. There were no specialty schools that ten year old kids could go to to learn to pitch and hit, your dad or coach help you learn how to do that. Today, kids use aluminum bats which let ball come off the bat at twice the speed, at least, than it did in my day putting the pitcher at risk. When I played football our equipment was far inferior to what they have these days but the tackling in those days was about hitting the runner with your shoulders and hitting him low. “Stop the legs, you stop the runner”
These days everything is revved up at such a young level. Kids are using steroids in high school to get bigger and faster. In football it seems that teaching good solid basic fundamentals of blocking and tackling have gone out the window. Coaches place winning above teaching the game to the kids. It is like a different world now.
When my son and daughter were young they both played soccer and I learned the game so I could coach and watch the games and enjoy them with them. I am glad to see that youth leagues are now moving away from allowing “heading” the ball for the very young. There are concussion issues, but nothing like they are running into with football.
Today’s football at the college and professional level is a totally different game than it used to be. The players are all bigger, stronger, and faster than they have ever been. The problem is that the human body has not be made more durable. I remember thinking what it would be like to get hit by former Alabama’s Rolondo McLain at 6’4″, 265 pounds running at a 4.45 40 yard speed. It is roughly the same as being in an auto accident at 35 miles per hour. How many times can the human body withstand that kind of punishment. Put with that a running back at 235 pounds running at a 4.4 40 yard speed directly at him. What a collision. When playing football in the Marines back in the sixties I was hit by much smaller guys who were much slower and I think I still have teeth jarred loose. I am just not sure how much longer football can continue at its current pace and not turn into an out right killer game.
I do love watching football, but the number of disfigured young men are going to continue to rise.
Now that IS a good point old bean
Is the case with most other issues, I have terribly mixed and tangled feelings about this, not the least of which causes is that I have no time whatsoever for professional sports! Of course, I also realize that I am definitely in the minority, and consequently there in fact ARE real issues.
On the one hand, I agree with Norman that it’s pointless to try and protect everyone from everything. Not only is it pointless, but it’s impossible! We do all, after all, DIE! On the other hand, as Rachel said, I object to paying for kids arming themselves!
The fact that we are willing to pay our professional athletes an insane amount of money for beating up themselves and others, is a sort of sad commentary on humanity, but as usual, I digress. Take the sports out of schools. Maintain them as extra scholastic activities that are totally separate. A lot of people are still willing to allow their children to beat themselves up, but I’m not sure that I’m willing to pay for it with my taxes! But I don’t know, do the fees from the games contribute to the pool of money for actual education? And what are we willing to accept as a commentary on our society?
Lots of questions. Fewer answers…
You just ‘go with the flow’ Marsha. Your kid hates contact sport, cool. Your kid loves one of them also cool. With the latter you support them and hope they aren’t one of the very few unlucky ones.
It’s all you can do ’cause, unless you lock them up, they’ll do it anyway.
I, for one, think contact sports such as football should not be permitted in schools. If parents want their children to play the game they should be able to enroll them in private “academies.” Taxpayers shouldn’t be footing the bill for this potentially deadly sport. The lives of our children are too precious.
You’re serious? Don’t get me wrong I respect your opinion totally but many parents couldn’t afford to enrol their kids in ‘private academies’ so what happens then?
Contact sports exist and will always exist and kids will be drawn to the one they like whether football, soccer, boxing etc et al.
You will never stop your kids playing the contact sport they love as they’ll just do it ‘behind your back’ so you might as well get used to it and be there for them if they get hurt – hopefully they won’t but life can be a bitch eh?
In America there’s a great deal of peer pressure for students to engage in contact sports, especially football. My point is simple: the taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for kids to play sports in school that could possibly hurt them.
Fair enough – America’s a different place to England so I bow to you.
Mind you, I bet they’d play it anyway when you weren’t looking 😉
Kids get hurt playing competitive sports and in very rare and extreme cases can end up dead or severely disabled.
Life’s a risk and then you die.
British schools – particularly primary schools – were forced to remove ‘competitive sports’ from their curriculum. “Oh dear” said the libe…oops…I won’t mention them again…”we can’t have children losing it may scar them for life” – I kid you not.
Kids playing competitive sports helps set them up for adulthood when you are going to have to compete in some way whether you like it or not.
As parents you keep your fingers crossed your kid isn’t one of the extremely rare and unlucky ones.
I closed my eyes when my daughter did her beam routine. Every time!