Monday, June 18, 2012

Flag Football, Anyone?


As football in the United States has come under increasing scrutiny in connection with brain damage caused by shockingly high rates concussions and repeated sub-concussive head trauma, league official at all levels have either tried to defuse concerns or they have changed rules to reduce head contact that can cause brain damage among players, especially young players.

Apologists for football who cannot imagine life without regular doses of violent contact between males of all ages have defensively argued that accidents and injuries are a part of life and that young people can be injured while riding bikes or crossing the street.

Of course, hard hits to the head are not an inevitable part of riding bikes and adults have taken great care to see that children are safeguarded as they walk home from school. Parents religiously teach their children to cross streets so they will never be hit by a car. But when it comes to tackle football and the growing evidence that it involves regular head hits that can cause brain damage, these same adults and parents say that there is a need to reduce hits to the head and chances of brain damage.

Apparently, the elimination of dangerous head hits and the preservation of heavy contact football is valued enough to accept a reduction rather than an elimination of brain injuries. Violent contact, the apologists argue, is inherent in “the game” and valued by some players and most spectators.

But remember, we’re talking about brain damage here, not torn ACLs, stitches on a chin, or broken arms.

Parents who remember this are now beginning to ask why they should encourage or even allow their children to engage in an activity that involves regular hits to the head, sometimes with concussive force.

Think about it: if we see a parent regularly hitting a child’s head with enough force to occasionally cause a concussion, wouldn’t we intervene or call social services? In most states we are obliged to do the latter and a child protection worker or police officer would intervene. But if parents permit their children to play heavy contact football and attend games during which regular hits to the head are endured, they are seen as praiseworthy.

So if the officials running youth football programs change a few rules to reduce head hits rather create a game that eliminates them except as relatively rare accidents, does this meet our expectations for responsible action?

Would we approve of a child protection worker who told parents that regularly hit their 12-year old son on the head that they should hit the boy less often or only on weekends?

Or to use a less dramatic example, would we praise parents who allowed and even encouraged their children to play a bike riding game in which potentially concussive head trauma was inevitable?

Of course, few parents would approve of this game and even fewer would praise their kids and pay for the equipment needed to play it five times a week and another time on the weekend when they would watch and cheer for them.

Are parents really willing to suspend reason and the safety of their children’s brains simply to maintain the revered place of heavy contact football in U.S. culture?

We shall see.

In the meantime, is there anyone for replacing heavy contact youth football with incidental contact flag football?

This piece was provoked by a June 13th New York Times headline that read, “Trying to reduce head injuries, youth football limits practices.”

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