Tackle Football For Youth Will Be Unthinkable 50 Years From now

Football is that the most well-liked sport to observe in America. More than half Americans consider themselves as fans of the NFL, NCAA football, or both. It’s additionally a well-liked recreational sport: as several as a pair of.5 million yank youngsters, primarily boys ages 5 to 13, play tackle football each fall.

Part of football’s popularity is its inherent violence. The most dangerous part of playing football comes from unseen injuries: damage to the brain caused by repeated tackling throughout the course of the game. Football is now known to be so destructive to the brain that healthy NFL players are retiring in their prime, turning down millions of dollars to lower their risk of developing brain diseases associated with repetitive head impacts.

The brain changes tremendously on the journey from birth to adulthood. Any form of trauma can change the brain, and thus change the child. Maybe in fifty years, we’ll remember and be horror-struck that we tend to allowed youngsters to play tackle sports like football with heading, or ice hockey with checking, or boxing.

The science is clearer than ever: Research shows players as young as nine have gotten hit within the head five hundred times in one season of youth tackle soccer.

That should not feel normal to us. Think of the last time, outside of sports, you allowed your child to get hit hard in the head 25 times in a day. Better yet, when was the last time you were hit hard in the head?

Scientists are now beginning to understand the long-term consequences of all those hits. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, is a degenerative brain disease that was once thought to be confined only to “punch-drunk” boxers. Yet within the past decade, The University and Veterans Affairs researchers have diagnosed CTE in football game, soccer, ice hockey, and rugby players, along with other collision sport athletes.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the only known risk factor for CTE is repetitive head impacts like those experienced in many contact sports. An analysis of the first 211 football players diagnosed with CTE at Boston University found those who started tackle football before age 12 could have a 13-year-earlier onset of the cognitive, behavioral, and mood symptoms associated with CTE. Athletes who played contact sports for more than nine years had a six times greater risk of developing Lewy body disease, a cause of Parkinson’s, than those who played eight or fewer years.

Our society is committed to protecting children — that’s why we ban smoking, remove children from homes with lead paint, and force parents to put their children in car seats.

We should additionally defend youngsters from surplus brain harm in youth sports. Luckily, the fix is remarkably easy. We just need to change some rules. Change youth tackle football to flag football. Stop asking players to ram a flying ball with their forehead.

There is some good news. A few years ago, US Soccer bowed to pressure and banned heading before 11 (though 14 would be better). But youth tackle sports remains untouched, and children are still being aggressively recruited into youth tackle football as young as age 5. Despite its dangers, the NFL subsidizes youth tackle football, likely because it has data showing that 60 percent of its die-hard fans begin following the sport in elementary school. We reached bent the NFL for comment, and they did not provide one.

So whereas the business fights to take care of the establishment, parents have to ask hard questions when their child wants to play tackle football to be like their NFL heroes. Are the advantages of youth tackle sports value risking the health of your brain? A better question — can a child make that choice?