A lot of sports people think a new bill to ban elementary school-age kids from playing tackle football is an overreach. I’m on the opposite side of the fence. I don’t think it goes nearly far enough, either in scope or in age.
We have to understand, first of all, that progress is a slow, often painstaking, process. Even steps that seem obviously necessary are often taken reluctantly and only after great consternation.
History has proven that over and over. It took a concerted effort for women to have the same voting privileges as men. It took until 1947 for a black man to make a Major League baseball roster; until 1964, almost a century after the Civil War ended, for a comprehensive civil rights bill; and until 2008 for someone other than a white male to become president of the United States. There are other aspects of incremental social progress where we just haven’t reached the finish line. But we will. Mark my words.
Today, though, we concern ourselves with the evolution of football, specifically at what age should those who play it be subject to the game at its fullest — specifically, by being tackled.
There’s a bill up on Beacon Hill, sponsored by House Minority Leader Bradley Jones, who represents part of Lynnfield. This would impact mainly Pop Warner and other similar youth programs, while not touching high school sports.
Football, as it is played now, is a brutal game. I suppose a lot of that is geared to its similarities to war itself, which, as we all know, is the ultimate in brutality. But while there is certainly room for grace and athleticism in football, too much of it is rooted in the type of violence that, far too often, results in irreparable bodily damage. The list of people who have endured serious and painful physical debilitation because of football is long. If it doesn’t affect your cognitive skills, it affects your mobility in some way, shape or form. I wish I had even a nickel for every time I saw someone stepping gingerly and muttering “old football injury” as an explanation.
These days, and rightly so, concussions are fueling this type of legislation. Having one is bad enough. But the cumulative effect of them can be devastating, and very often the full brunt of them do not show up until later in a person’s life. Perhaps the most pervasive is Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a condition whose symptoms often do not appear until years after the injuries that cause it. There have been several colloquial euphemisms for it, the most popular one being “punch drunk.” At any rate, CTE can render a person as helpless and as disoriented as patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
Let’s simplify: being beaten about the head, or having your head snapped backward by a ferocious hit, can give you a concussion. If you end up with multiple concussions over the course of your playing career, you could possibly get CTE.
We’re just talking about head injuries. We’re not even getting into joint issues that may be exacerbated by gyrating hits, or cervical and/or spinal conditions, though those are very real too.
I played football in high school (not well, but …). During a practice my sophomore season, I was kicked in the head (helmet on) and ended up getting sick on the field about 10 minutes later. This was 1968 and a lot of what we know about head injuries we didn’t know then. I was not excused, and, in fact, finished out the practice with no letup. In defense of my coaches, the injury occurred during a typical scrum, and they probably did not see it. Back then, you didn’t stay down. You got up right away.
I came home, apparently glassy-eyed enough for my mother to get concerned. The result: I missed a week of school and ended up flunking biology that quarter. Though nobody ever said it in as many words, it’s clear now that I had a concussion, and that the condition wasn’t helped by even more running around and physical contact.
We’ve come a long way since 1968, and I’m sure youth leagues are extremely diligent now about educating their coaches on how to detect possible head injuries and how to respond to them. And one can only hope that the glory-hounds who would expose a kid to injury for the sake of his or her personal ego gratification have been successfully exterminated.
But the problem is that, at least in football, the violent physical contact leaves too much room for serious injury even beyond that. There’s a certain amount of risk inherent in life, and nothing is going to change that. But do we have to expose people to even more just so we can see the highlights on ESPN?
The day’s going to come when people wake up to the fact that sports where physical mayhem is a major selling point, as opposed to an unfortunate byproduct, constitute a serious health hazard. And when that happens, the game will — and should — be radically altered.
Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].