Essay On Football Concussions

Since 1958, American Football has been growing, in both popularity and as a sport, to become a dominant force in the country. As a result, more and more families are allowing their kids to play the game in leagues across the country and are not concerned with concussions. Even though people who defend the game will say the science is not yet definitive, tackle football should be banned for kids under the age of fifteen because concussion injuries are on the rise among the youth and the coaches are not yet trained to handle this injury.

In August of 2013, the National Football League announced they were paying $765 million to settle a lawsuit involving thousands of its former players over problems related to head trauma (Richardson). This is just one sign of the growing concern that the sport’s collisions pose a serious risk to long-term player health. There is little known about how a full season of head hits affects the largest group of football athletes: the nearly four million youth and high school student players.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year emergency departments treat an estimated 135,000 children ages five to eighteen for sports-related brain injuries (National). Most of these injuries are concussions, and the children recover. The long term effects on children who suffer repeated concussions, even mild ones, is still not known. It’s hard to imagine a child as a disabled, middle-aged man, but repeated concussions could put a child at risk for severe conditions such as early onset dementia, Parkinson’s disease and other neurological disorders that require neurosurgery, but no one wants to think about while on the sidelines at a football game.

Around one million Americans play high...

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...otball teaches the proper entry point for contact, around the hips, to prepare kids for full contact when their bodies are ready, or at least readier, for it.

None of this is likely, at least anytime soon. Science or no science, the real reason five and six year olds will keep padding up and hitting is consumer demand. If Pop Warner offered only flag football, its executive director John Butler estimates, “90 to 95 percent of our members would drop out” and play for independent teams “because whether it be kids or parents, they want to play tackle football.”

Of course they do. They watch it on Sundays. It’s fun. But as Eddie Mason responded, “Sometimes you have to take the decisions out of the hands of the parents and you have to just make the change. You say, well, we don't offer tackle at this age, we offer flag, and these are the reasons why (Associated Press).”