Youth Football, Inconvenient Truths

Storyline: We decry the reality when a kid gets gunned down on the streets. We need to express similar outrage when a kid dies on the 30-yard line.

The high school playoffs are in full swing. The games are exciting. And towns and cities all over the country are abuzz with excitement.

But there’s another reality to Friday Night Lights, one that we don’t like to talk about. It’s this: American kids are dying for football. Literally. Nine players have died so far this season. And it’s not a new story. Over a century ago—in 1905, to be exact—18 amateur football players died, most of them high schoolers.

We like to think that today’s game is safe. Equipment improvements certainly help. Good (“head down”) coaching certainly helps. Concussion-prevention and –treatment protocols certainly help. But none of those approaches, even when taken together, make football safe.

Courtesy: dudemom.com

While football is arguably safer than it was years ago, the inconvenient truth is this: football isn’t safe. They are two reasons why—the game itself and the age of players who play it.

Football is combative and confrontational. As players get bigger, stronger, and faster, the hits get harder and the impact is just that much greater. And many of those hits are being taken by kids whose physiology is developing, not developed.

Those factors override how we’ve approached and solved other thorny issues of modern life—by developing and applying advanced technology. But “safe” in football won’t come from advanced helmet design. And having medical staff available at the field won’t make football safe, either. The current reality is that fewer than half of America’s high schools have an athletic trainer on staff.

Football isn’t safe because we’re learning the culprit isn’t always “the big hit.” The scary reality is that head trauma is caused by repetitive hits, “sub-concussive hits,” which come from contact—practice after practice, game after game, year after year. Those hits are especially problematic when taken in youth football. The impact of hits accumulate, often felt later–sometimes years later.

Because of this finding, numerous medical experts recommend that kids refrain from playing contact football until they’re teenagers. But the reality of competition in any sport suggests otherwise. If a player wants to advance in levels—in any sport–the default option is to begin playing early. And so it is in football, too. Over 225,000 American kids engage in Pop Warner football, where play starts as early as 5 years old.

Courtesy: USAFootball.com

What are parents to do? Some do nothing, believing that the game is safe or that the benefits of playing outweigh the risks of stepping away. Others are saying no to football. Participation in youth football is down about 10% over the past few years; and it’s down about 3% at the high school level.

Just who is stepping away? The general rule is this: there’s an indirect relationship between football participation and socioeconomic status. That is, non-participants are more likely to come from families with parents that have more formal education and earn higher incomes. Safety concern is the primary reason for non-participation: many families with sports-playing kids seek non-contact athletic alternatives.

That finding reveals another inconvenient truth about football: the predominant racial and ethnic composition of football teams, especially at the college level. Playing high school football and getting a college scholarship—perhaps even a shot at the pros—is an economic pathway for many limited-income and racially-diverse families. Safety may be a concern (and often is), but it’s outweighed by the prospect of deferred rewards. So a frequent storyline in those families is for kids to play early and “get noticed.”

Courtesy: insideakronchildrens.org

The problem with inconvenient truths–in youth football or any other situation is life–is that we prefer to act as though they don’t exist. We ignore reality. We defend the status quo. And the situation gets even more challenging when the circumstance involved is an industry. Yes, football is an industry. It’s a career choice for coaches and support staff. It’s a product line for manufacturers. It’s a brand for schools. And it’s a way of life, too, for people, schools, and communities. Think about a life without football.

But I don’t believe the issue is eliminating the sport, even though President Teddy Roosevelt came close to banning it in 1905. Instead he got a group of leaders together and asked them to come up with solutions. What emerged were rules to make the game safer and to initiate an oversight board to monitor the game.

We need that approach today. But the first step is to admit this: FOOTBALL IS NOT SAFE, ESPECIALLY FOR KIDS!  Then we need to make player safety THE #1 priority—more important than wins and championships. Each school, each community, each conference, and each state governing association needs to take leadership—aggressive leadership—to address what has become a national crisis, if not a national embarrassment.

We decry the insanity when a kid gets gunned down on our streets. We need to express similar outrage when a kid dies on the 30-yard line.

Courtesy twitter.com

This article is dedicate to Penny L. Gilbert whose son, Damon Janes, died in conjunction with football injuries. You can read about the situation here.