From a Reader …
The Clock Is Ticking on High School Football
January 10, 2012Chris Shays, Linda McMahon Senate Candidate Republican Opponent 2.0, Takes the Gloves Off
January 12, 2012Reacting to our posts about the coming demise of high school football, a reader who wishes to remain anonymous writes:
The sport of football is inherently flawed and, ultimately, dangerous. We as human beings, especially kids and teenagers, were not meant to run full speed into each other. There is no way to make the game “safer.”
I wish I had listened to my mother when she warned me not to play. Teenagers are not the most reasonable people.
I wish this research and press had come 15 years ago when I played. No one thought much of concussions then and I went to a very well-known high school (think TV shows about High Schools).
The game has seen its best days. It will rot from the bottom up. There will be a ripple effect:
First a few parents do not let their kids play. Then a few high school programs from well-to-do neighborhoods actually drop the program. A class-action lawsuit is brought against the high school athletic commission that governs the sport. Another kid dies on the field and it makes national news. They find CTE in younger and younger brains.
Football will never cease to be. It is too popular and makes too many businesses too much money (sort of like the Kardashians).
It will just have fewer and fewer kids playing it. I for one think that’s a very good thing. We as a nation should not be sending our young men out to sustain repeated head injuries for no other reason than to play a game. It’s stupid and it needs to end.
Should I be lucky enough to have children one day, I will NOT let them play football.