Brain Trauma in Youth and High School Football: To Play or Not to Play?
By Ken Reed
The question of whether or not our young people should be playing football continues to gain attention.
Earlier this week, Good Morning America featured a segment about a Dover, New Hampshire school board member — and retired medical doctor — Dr. Paul Butler, who’s calling for the banning of high school football.
“The literature is clear. This is a dangerous game for children to be playing,” says Butler. “A game that uses the head as a battering ram is not a smart game to allow a youngster to play.”
The Washington Post ran a major feature article this week on safety concerns in youth football. The focus was on parents struggling with the pros and cons of youth football participation due to the growing awareness of concussion issues in the game. The article also highlighted data showing a drop in youth football participation in some youth leagues.
In the article, Dr. Robert Cantu, the co-director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at the Boston University School of Medicine, says he would like to see tackle football banned for athletes under the age of 14. In addition, he calls for no heading in soccer and no full-body checking in ice hockey at the same age.
Cantu believes a young person’s brain is too vulnerable and no modernized helmet or altered playing rules can fully prevent concussions.
“The youth brain housed in a disproportionately big head on a very weak neck, it’s a bobblehead doll-effect that increases the injury,” says Cantu, author of the new book, Concussions and Our Kids.
Despite the growing mound of research showing that playing football is dangerous for the human brain, the football culture in this country is strongly ingrained.
A new survey by the youth sports organization i9 Sports revealed that despite increasing awareness about the dangers of concussions in football, nine out of 10 fathers who played football at the high school level or higher and suffered, or believe they suffered, a concussion playing football, still want their kids to play football.
Culture change experts say it takes seven years to change a culture. When it comes to youth and high school football in this country it might take longer.
The popularity of football in this country is certainly easy to understand. It can be an entertaining game to watch. But given what we know about brain trauma in football, the i9 survey results are sad. We’re not talking about ACL injuries. We’re talking about the brain, the seat of who we are as human beings.
(See Ken Reed’s take on the issue in a Chicago Tribune op-ed column)
— Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans
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Episode #28 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: A Chat With Mano Watsa, a Leading Basketball and Life Educator – Watsa is President of PGC Basketball, the largest education basketball camp in the world, with over 150 camps in 30+ U.S. states and Canada. We discuss problems in youth sports today, including single sport specialization, the growing gap between the “haves” and “have-nots,” the high drop-out rate in competitive sports, and the growing mental health challenges young athletes are dealing with today.
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Episode #26 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: How Can We Fix Youth Sports? – John O’Sullivan is Founder and CEO of Changing the Game Project and author of “Changing the Game: The Parents Guide to Raising Happy, High Performing Athletes and Giving Youth Sports Back to Our Kids.”
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Episode #24 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Mental Health and Athletes: Ending the Stigma – Nathan Braaten and Taylor Ricci are the founders of Dam Worth It, a non-profit created to end the stigma around mental health at colleges and universities through sport, storytelling, and community creation.
Episode #23 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Olympian Benita Fitzgerald Mosley Talks Title IX, Youth Sports and the Olympics.
Media
"How We Can Save Sports" author Ken Reed appears on Fox & Friends to explain how there's "too much adult in youth sports."
Ken Reed appears on Mornings with Gail from KFKA Radio in Colorado to discuss bad parenting in youth athletics.
“Should College Athletes Be Paid?” Ken Reed on The Morning Show from Wisconsin Public Radio
Ken Reed appears on KGNU Community Radio in Colorado (at 02:30) to discuss equality in sports and Title IX.
Ken Reed appears on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour (at 38:35) to discuss his book The Sports Reformers: Working to Make the World of Sports a Better Place, and to talk about some current sports issues.
- League of Fans Sports Policy Director Ken Reed quoted in Washington Post column titled "What happened to P.E.? It’s losing ground in our push for academic improvement," by Jay Mathews
League of Fans is a sports reform project founded by Ralph Nader to fight for the higher principles of justice, fair play, equal opportunity and civil rights in sports; and to encourage safety and civic responsibility in sports industry and culture.
Vanderbilt Sport & Society - On The Ball with Andrew Maraniss with guest Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director for League of Fans and author of How We Can Save Sports: A Game Plan
Sports & Torts – Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans – at the American Museum of Tort Law
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