Farewell to football: Could it happen here?
The New York Times had an excellent piece recently about a school board in suburban St. Louis that did away with football at the local high school because of safety concerns and a dwindling number of interested athletes.
Richmond Heights High School is not alone. Young people and their parents increasingly are moving away from football. Participation at the high school level is down 2.4 percent over the past five years, according to the Times report, and the decline is even more significant for Pop Warner, the nation’s largest youth football organization.
Most likely, many youngsters and their parents have heard the horror stories about former NFL players taking their own lives because they were suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a devastating brain disease that has been linked to repeated blows to the head.
The National Football League, after trying for years to downplay the link between playing football and diseases like CTE later in life, has finally climbed aboard the safety bandwagon. There’s no doubt that equipment is better, especially helmets. NFL teams are having fewer full-contact practices. There is a greater emphasis on punishing players who launch themselves at other players’ heads.
But is it enough? Perhaps for those who make millions playing the game, or college athletes who dream of a pro career. But what about our kids?
“So many player protections – equipment, practice formats, drills, regimens – that are standard in pro and college football are unknown in high school football,” Terry O’Neil, founder of Practice Like Pros, an organization that pushes for safer football techniques, told the Times. “After all the many excellent rule changes in the last few years, we don’t expect any future rule changes to change the game drastically. Game day will always be dangerous.”
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell claimed recently that the sport is “safer than ever.” We seriously question that. Players are larger, stronger and faster than ever. Hence, the hits are harder and potentially more damaging.
Here in Western Pennsylvania, where high school football is king, it’s hard to imagine school board members voting to do away with football, other than for a lack of participants. But we believe it’s something that should be on their radar as more and more information about the dangers of the sport becomes available.
Football can be made safer, but it can never be made safe.