No child’s play
Why kids shouldn’t be playing tackle football until high school
The winter morning my husband and I went to find out the gender of our baby, we’d convinced ourselves we knew what was coming. We both came from families heavy on boys. Our grandfathers had brothers. Our fathers had brothers. He had brothers. I had brothers. We were having a boy. “It’s a girl,” the ultrasound tech told us instead.
It was a surprise — but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved.
Yes, relieved. Not that I wouldn’t have loved a son every bit as much as I love my daughter, but that unconditional love is one of the reasons that I was relieved that we weren’t having a boy.
As a mom who loves sports, I wasn’t going to have to tell my son that I didn’t think he should play football.
That was five years ago, and the evidence about the dangers of football has only grown. The latest came last week from a study of 202 brains from deceased former football players. Researchers determined that 177 had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, also known as CTE.
That’s 87.6 percent. The study, the largest of its kind, acknowledged potential bias in the results. Relatives of the players whose brains were studied may have submitted them because symptoms had been suspected.
In other words, it’s unlikely that eight out of 10 football players have the neurodegenerative brain disease that develops after repeated head trauma.
Butwhat if it’s only five of 10?
That’s still way too many.
“There’s no question that there’s a problem in football, that people who play football are at risk for this disease,” study coauthor Dr. Ann McKee told reporters last week.
She addedthat answers “urgently” needed to be found.
Here’s a place to start —no tackle football until high school.
No more youth football. No more middle school football.
Unless it’s flag football, kids younger than 13 or 14 should not be playingfootball in helmets and pads. The reason that they shouldn’t be slamming themselves into each other is twofold —the development of kids’ brains and the oversight of youth leagues.
First of all, research suggests that the human brain isn’t fully developed until we are in our 20s, butthere’s also evidence that a vast majority ofthe development happens by the time we’re 12 or 13. Playing football before the brain is fully developed is likeRussian roulette. Everything might be fine, but it could also go horribly wrong. That risk is only exacerbated by the lack of continuity in youth football. Some leagues have great oversight, topof-the-line equipment to protect the kids and tipof-the-spear education to teach the adults how to guard against brain trauma and what to look for as it relates to concussions.
But we all know that isn’t always the case.
Hand-me-down and worn-out equipment is used. Well-intentioned but ill-equipped volunteers are coaching.
Stir it together, and it’s a recipe for disaster.
Eliminating tackle football before high school isn’t exactly a new idea. Earlier this summer,Pro Football Hall of Fame defensive tackle Warren Sapp became one of the most high-profile advocates for it.
Many former NFL players have gone on record saying they won’t allow their sons to play until they’re older.
“The No. 1 way that we could reduce CTE in both future NFL players and throughout all football players in the whole ecosystem would be to reduce the number of years that they play,” Chris Nowinski, co-founder and executive director of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, said during an interview on CNN last week. “That means I think we should be getting rid of youth tackle football.”
Watching Nowinski, I got the sense he knows how unpopular that opinion is.
I understandit, too. In fact, I expect to hear from friends whoare a hundred percent behind youth football. They coach it. Cheer it. Love it.
And many of them are on the good side of youth football. They have training on how to spot the signs of a concussion. They teach heads-up tackling techniques. They make the game as safe as possible.
But that doesn’t change the fact that youth football players are subject to dozens of hits every time they practice or play —and that adds up.
“Children should not be exposed to 500 hits to the head every fall until they’re at least in high school, until their brain has a chance to at least mature,” Nowinski said in that CNN interview. “If we did that, just simply looking at the math on it, I think we would reduce most cases of CTE.
“But if we don’t make that change, every other change that we’re making it’s going to make nearly the same difference.”
That’s because no helmet is safe enough to eliminate brain injury. No medical professional is educated enough.No technology is advanced enough.
Football players are
going to have brain trauma.
But look at that study released last week, and you’ll see the percentages of players with CTE rise the longer they play.
Of the brains from players who played only in high school, it was 21.4 percent.
Of those who played in college, 90.6 percent.
Of those who played in the NFL,99.1 percent.
The pro numbers —110 of 111 brains —got the lion’s share of the headlinesafter the study, the NFL the majority of the heat. And there’s no doubt that the league needs to have its feet held to the fire if for no other reason than it denied there was a problem for years.
Let me also say that there are other sports where brain injuries happen with alarming frequency. Mixed martial arts, soccer and hockey top the list. More should be done to study athletes in those sports.
But right now, what has been studied most is football —and the results simply must give us pause.
Since those study results were released last week, some have asked if this is another step toward the day when football ceases to exist.
Maybe so. Maybe not. But if it isn’t seen as amoment to consider the future of the game and make it safer, we’re squandering a golden opportunity.We can wait around on advances in technology and medicine that might never make the sport entirely safe, or we can do something right now to make it safer. We can tell our children we don’t think it’s safe to play tackle football until they’re at least in high school.
It might save the game, but more importantly, it might save our children.
JENNI CARLSON: JENNI CAN BE REACHED AT (405) 475-4125 OR JCARLSON@ OKLAHOMAN.COM. LIKE HER AT FACEBOOK.COM/ JENNICARLSONOK, FOLLOW HER AT TWITTER.COM/ JENNICARLSON_OK OR VIEW HER PERSONALITY PAGE AT NEWSOK.COM/ JENNICARLSON.