Pros And Cons Of Youth Football

This paper attempts to rationalize youth football as a sport by discussing the pros and cons in order to argue that youth should be allowed to play the game of football if they so choose. To do so, this paper will explore the ethical arguments and considerations of parents, young athletes, medical professionals and social media.
American football for youth emerged as a social benefit in 1929 when Joseph J. Tomlin, of Philadelphia, organized the first competitive youth football league called the Junior Football Conference [1]. At the time, society was experiencing an influx in youth vandalism; thus, in response to the issue, Tomlin’s solution was to create a youth football league to get these idle youth off the streets and into an athletic

program for the betterment of society. Through the decades football exploded as one of the leading national past time youth sports with multiple leagues springing up trans-continentally providing young athletes the opportunity to play the game they love on a local, state and even national level. Currently how many American kids play competitive youth football on teams or clubs is unclear as no one has ever conducted a census. Still, in an attempt to get an approximate idea of participation in the sport it's worth looking at various counts, even if they may be unfounded. Senior Information Specialist Michael for justanswer.com, who has a Master’s of Science Degree in Exercise Science, observed that in the year 2012, “Statistical experts estimate that roughly 5.5 million youth (considered age 8 to 14) play football.

[National Federation of State High School Associations] NFHS (high school statistics 14-17/18) participation data shows a little over 1.1 million participants; for a total of roughly 6.6 million participants in youth football from Peewee up through high school Varsity. You could probably adjust this 5 percent in both directions as a deviation because again, while each area may have full padded football, not all data is centralized [2].” Due to its nature, the sport of football has always been a physical sport and participating athletes have always been prone to various injuries; however, the issue of injuries inflicted by the game did not become a social issue until recently. Among the several injuries this sport exposes; the leading affliction and hottest social topic is chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). In 2002 Bennet Omalu, a forensic pathologist and chief medical examiner of San Joaquin County, California, as well as a professor in the UC Davis Department of Medical Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, first discovered CTE and defined the same as, “… a progressive degenerative disease that afflicts the brain of people who have suffered repeated concussions and traumatic brain injuries (TBI)” [3]. Omalu discovered this new found disease in

a former NFL football player and currently a diagnosis can only be made postmortem. The discovery of CTE swept social media conjuring extreme negative opinions regarding the validity of the sport, not only as it applies to CTE but to other assorted injuries attributed to the game as well, deeming youth football morally repugnant. However, research conducted by the American Academy of Pediatrics, published in their online journal on October 25, 2015, shows that, “Most injuries sustained during participation in youth football are minor, including injuries to the head and neck” [4], evidencing youth football is morally allowable