More on concussion issues
- Thread starter WoadBlue
- Start date
I see youth football being a dinosaur in a few yrs.
Then will kids pickup "contact football" as highschoolers, or will the athletes n high school be playing soccer and ultimate frisbee or something else instead? Or will flag football become more popular?
Then will kids pickup "contact football" as highschoolers, or will the athletes n high school be playing soccer and ultimate frisbee or something else instead? Or will flag football become more popular?
I think you may be correct about little kid football. I think we are on the verge of seeing many towns outlaw the tackle form, replacing it with flag football. 7th grade may the earliest kids can play tackle football.
That could mean a rise in rugby, but 300 pound footballers cannot play rugby. And they have less chance to play soccer. Sumo might be in their future.
male figure skating doesn't cause concussions... just saying.
Sorry but this poast is just flat out idiotic. Trying to prevent 10 year olds from getting brain damage isn't "pussifying our children" its common fukkin sense.
10 yr olds can't hit hard enough to get a concussion. Too much 24 hr news with nothing to talk about except the agendas they want to push. The number of concussions are lower now than 20 yrs ago. Also, more in soccer than football, don't hear about them doing anything to soccer.
Soccer is the world's game. Its power internationally is almost unbelievable.
I think if we learned that 90% of the starters in the English Premier League took steroids, virtually nothing would happen. Doing what would need to be done would not just seriously impair soccer fandom, and thus huge money, across the English-speaking world, but it also would adversely affect the World Cup.
You may be correct that most ten year olds cannot hit hard enough to cause concussions, but I saw an 11 year old playing in a league for 11 and 12 year olds lower his head after passing the line of scrimmage on a sweep and plow into a DB., who also lowered his head. The DB was briefly unconscious and did not leave the field until after the medic cleared him to walk off with help on each side.
That RB was a unique case - he later as a high school freshman rushed for 1400 yards in 10 games in the then largest classification in TN. But terrible hits that could break necks happen in kiddie football. And that means concussions are possible.
Of course, old fashioned coaching that demands fundamentals could have prevented the hit I saw, because neither player would have lowered his head.
And proponents of flag football leagues would say that their game requires players on both sides of the ball to keep heads up.
I should amend my post to say "most 10 yr olds" . I am not saying that it can't happen, what I am saying is people are making a biggger deal of it than needs to be. Every helmet has a warning sticker on it explaining the dangers of the sport of football. Every parent should do as they feel fit, but as for my family, my boys have had one concussion in all our years of sports and it was playing basketball. Jace took an elbow on a rebound, chipped two teeth. Didn't know anything about the trip to the state tourney or about the game. Since I sell team sporting goods for a living, I think I have some ways for him to recover a bit quicker and they worked. He was snowboarding the next weekend.
If 10 yr old collisions only cause concussions extremely rarely, then I agree, stupid rule. It's like bike helmets. How many of us grew up before bike helmets even existed? If i'm on singletrack in trees, and i'm flying over rocky, rutted loose surfaces, I definitely wear a helmet, but if i'm on a sidewalk or street it is pointless.
Snow-ski helmets are shown to only prevent minor injuries, bumps, bruises and cuts. But real accidents on the slopes, even with ski helmets, are going to cause major damage to a person.
On military bases now even adults can't ride a bicycle without wearing a helmet:
AIR FORCE INSTRUCTION 91-207 THE US AIR FORCE TRAFFIC SAFETY PROGRAM
20. All personnel (including dependents, contractors, retirees, etc.) who ride bicycles on an installation must wear an approved (i.e. American National Standards Institute (ANSI) or Snell Memorial Foundation) bicycle helmet
Snow-ski helmets are shown to only prevent minor injuries, bumps, bruises and cuts. But real accidents on the slopes, even with ski helmets, are going to cause major damage to a person.
On military bases now even adults can't ride a bicycle without wearing a helmet:
AIR FORCE INSTRUCTION 91-207 THE US AIR FORCE TRAFFIC SAFETY PROGRAM
20. All personnel (including dependents, contractors, retirees, etc.) who ride bicycles on an installation must wear an approved (i.e. American National Standards Institute (ANSI) or Snell Memorial Foundation) bicycle helmet
My favorite Knute Rockne story is his mother hating football. After she heard a tale of some boy in high school breaking his arm in a game, she demanded that little Knute stop playing that awful game. Being a god boy, he begged but obeyed when she held firm.
About 3 months after the ban, Ma Rockne heard a clamor of boys at her door, and when she opened it, there was little Knute with a broken nose. The boys all had baseball gloves and bats. Knute had a smashed nose from the 'safe' sport of baseball.
So he got to play football again.
I had read about Rockne's broken nose before I met Mr. Duffy {Note: names may be changed to protect the innocent}. He was a Notre Dame grad and retired from something or other and the barely paid first director of youth sports for my town when I was a kid. He was about 65 and had white hair. His version of the Rockne broken nose story was a bit more colorful than the version I read in a book written for boys. The best part of Mr. Duffy's version for me was his ending, which was that if Rockne had been Irish, he'd have gotten the broken nose the very next day after the football ban by sticking his face right into the first fastball in his vicinity, but being a dull Norwegian mama's boy he did nothing and got lucky, wasting three months of football.
One of the goodie two shoes boys asked Mr. Duffy, 'Do you mean we should disobey our mothers?'
And Mr. Duffy said, 'Son, obey your mama, but sometimes she will be wrong. The Mother of God intended for Knute Rockne to make Notre Dame the best football program in the country. Some things are just beyond mama.'
He must have seen the wicked little grins on some of our faces because he added, 'But don't any of youse jackanapes dare try to pull anything on me.'
And then he crossed himself while saying, 'In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.'
Can you imagine a classic champion of the Tour de France being ordered to order his children to wear a helmet while gently biking in a park?
Didn't Dr. Omalu say that concussions aren't even the biggest problem in football? He was more concerned with the smaller and more repetitive hits and claims they are as dangerous or even more dangerous to a player's health than concussions. Think about the OL and DL guys.
