On Tuesday, yet another study linking the repetitive head trauma experienced by NFL players to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, later in life was released.
The New York Times reported on research published in the British Medical Journal examining CTE among former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021. Of 878 former players who died during that period, 235 had their brains examined. Of those, 215 were diagnosed with CTE.
That’s 91.4%.
But researchers cannot say 91.4% of NFL players develop CTE because those brains weren’t a random sample. Even if every one of the other 643 players whose brains weren’t examined did not have CTE, those 215 confirmed cases still represent 24.5% of the entire group.
At least 1 in 4.
As usual, the NFL’s media partners at ESPN were largely silent. “Get Up” host Mike Greenberg spent 55 seconds reading the findings from a teleprompter. “First Take” similarly devoted 43 seconds to it. The network’s highest-paid star commentator, Pat McAfee, didn’t touch the story at all.
But this isn’t another column arguing that the NFL isn’t doing enough to protect its players, nor am I suggesting we abolish professional or college football. I think the NFL is doing about as much as it reasonably can to make an inherently violent sport safer when its athletes are bigger, stronger and faster than ever.
College and NFL players are adults. They know the risks. If they decide those risks are worth taking, that’s their choice.
My concern is with those who cannot meaningfully make that choice for themselves.
Children.
Roughly two million American kids under 18 play tackle football each year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found an average of about 53,700 emergency-department visits annually for football-related traumatic brain injuries among children.
And those are just the injuries serious enough to reach an emergency room.
What about the concussion that never gets diagnosed? Or the kid who “gets his bell rung,” sits out a couple of plays and goes back into the game? More importantly, what about the hundreds of ordinary hits a child can absorb during a season that never produce concussion symptoms at all?
That’s increasingly where the CTE conversation is headed: not simply diagnosed concussions, but the cumulative effect of repetitive head impacts.
It’s one thing if an adult wants to roll the dice with his future health. And let’s be honest, it’s a gamble worth considering when you look at the money being handed out in college football and the NFL. We’re talking about life-changing and, in some cases, generational wealth.
An adult can weigh the potential reward against the potential consequences. A 12-year-old cannot.
A child — whose father hopes to live out his football dreams vicariously through his son — doesn’t possess that same depth of knowledge. He cannot meaningfully consent to the potential long-term consequences of repeatedly subjecting his developing brain to violent collisions.
Children need to be protected, even if they want to play.
So how do we do it without eliminating the game?
Perhaps tackle football shouldn’t begin until age 10 or 12. Flag football could replace it before then, eliminating years of unnecessary collisions. We could dramatically reduce or eliminate full-contact tackling in practice. We could ban high-impact collision drills. We could require independent medical professionals at games. We could also examine matching younger players by size and physical development, rather than simply age, so a 90-pound child isn’t routinely colliding with someone twice his size.
None of these ideas alone ultimately solve the problem, and there is no uniform national standard. Different leagues, organizations and states operate under different rules.
So football season begins again around the country. Games will be played. Teams will win and teams will lose. Millions of us will watch because football remains an incredible game.
I’m certainly going to watch.
But the more we learn about what repeated blows to the head can do to the human brain, the harder it becomes to pretend we don’t know there’s a cost.
Adults can decide whether that cost is worth paying.
Children cannot.
And if we aren’t willing to stop them from playing tackle football, we owe it to them to make sure they aren’t paying a price decades from now for a decision they weren’t old enough to understand.
The post Why parents should think twice about letting their kids play tackle football appeared first on MS NOW.
