W OUT OF TOUCH
The movement to ban tackle football for kids is based on fear not fact
OULD you encourage your 10-year-old to smoke? That’s the question posed by the Concussion Legacy Foundation in their recent video on the dangers of tackle football for children. In the film, kids dressed in football uniforms stand on the sidelines smoking cigarettes as one beaming mother helps her child light up. “You wouldn’t let me smoke,” says the young quarterback. “Why should I start tackle?”
Tackle football for kids is under fire, as NFL players are increasingly diagnosed with the brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), caused by extreme and repeated hits to the head. Echoing the worries of many parents, Barack Obama said in 2013 that if he had a son he would “have to think long and hard before I let him play football.” A poll by Pittsburgh’s Robert Morris University found that 46.7 percent of parents say they’re likely to encourage their child to take up a different sport altogether.
Concerns are gaining traction in Albany where the New York State Assembly Standing Committee on Health has met to consider a new bill banning tackle football for kids under 12. In 2018, a similar bill was introduced (with ones in California, Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey), but later dropped amid a backlash — surprisingly — from angry parents.
“Parents want to own the decision to consider tackle football programs for their children,” explained Steve Alic, director of communications for USA Football, the governing body of amateur football. “We converse with parents often, and they clearly do not want government telling them when and how their kids should play sports. They want to make informed decisions for themselves.”
And yet, there’s a growing trend to eradicate any kind of contact in sports. The US Soccer Federation has banned heading the ball for players under 10 while body checks in ice hockey are prohibited until players reach 13.
But the statistics show that tackle football isn’t as dangerous as people think.
The Institute for the Study of Youth Sport estimates that 40 million children engage in sports activities in the US each year. Meanwhile, data from the Consumer Product Safety Commission shows that just 21 percent of all traumatic brain injuries among American children and adolescents are caused by sports and recreational activities — and the No. 1 culprit is cycling with 40,272 incidents. Football comes a distant second, with 21,878 incidents reported. And yet no one is calling for a ban on bikes.
Furthermore, a study by Anthony Kontos of the University of Pittsburgh’s sports concussion program recorded just 20 concussions — or about 1.76 per 1,000 football practices/games — among 11,000 matchups between 468 children aged 8 to 12 across one season. The study concluded that kids simply weren’t big or strong enough at that age to cause significant damage to each other.
“There’s not a lot of big hitting going on [in kids’ games],” Kontos said.
In fact, you could argue that kids’ football has never been safer. In 2016, Pop Warner, the biggest youth-football league in the country, introduced a new rule preventing kids under 10 from using the traditional hand-onthe-ground squat before the snap — the so-called “three-point stance” — to minimize the risk of head clashes.
And USA Football now gives young players training specifically tailored to their age and size, “which limit[s] contact and introduce[s] levels of contact for smarter play,” said Alic, who adds that these guidelines are endorsed by the American College of Sports Medicine, the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine and the National Athletic Trainers’ Association.
Today, there’s safer equipment, better qualified coaches and a much greater awareness of the risks involved. Ultimately, no parent — no matter how protective — can guarantee their child will never encounter danger. Besides, what’s the alternative . . . Golf? The bill to ban tackle football for under-12s in New York will return for consideration in Albany in January.