Many are opting out. Participation in youth tackle football has been declining for years. But especially in communities of color, tackle football’s lure remains strong and the balance tips toward opportunity, a four-month investigation by The Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism and the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland has found.
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Last year, the Boston University CTE Center released a study that said the developing brains of children are at risk for damage from repeated impacts to the head and brain that have been associated with impulsive behaviors and cognitive problems.
The study notes that children who start playing tackle football at an early age or participate in the sport for more than 11 years run an increased risk of such impairment.
I had a similar childhood, and I understand that kids want to do things that are fun, but now we are the adults and it is our responsibility to make things safe at the cost of some fun. Remember how we didn’t like grown-ups with their tyrannical authoritarian rules? Well now we’re the grown-ups, and now we are privy to info that kids don’t have, and it turns out that those grown-ups had reasons for not letting us do certain things, and now it’s our duty to be the stick-in-the-mud fuddy-duddy who stops unnecessary brain damage. Not only that, but there’s just generally more scientific evidence showing that this shit is way worse for kids than we ever realized. I have yet to see a study come out saying “football is actually not that bad for kids or their brains” and we will never see a study that says “playing football is better overall for kids than not playing football.”
If we latch onto our childhood nostalgia, we’ll find ourselves no better than dumbass boomers who glorify their “good ol’ days” that were actually objectively pretty shitty for most people. Let’s change with the times as we learn and understand things so we can pivot to gracefully accept improvements even if they’re scary and new. Let’s break the cycle. Let’s not fail these kids the way our parents failed us.