Picture from Belly Billboard
The SportsCenter anchors were talking this morning about if they would let their children play pee-wee football. Which in turn, got Mike and I talking about it.
ESPN reported that Pop Warner, the largest youth football program in the country lost 23,000+ players in the past 2 years. Estimates show that 60-70% of NFL players have started in the Pop Warner program. Pop Warner's chief medical officer reports that head injury concerns is the No. 1 cause for the drop.
Parents are paying attention.
However, are people just getting scared over nothing? CEO of Sports Concussion Institute says that the hysteria is getting ahead of the science. Children are less likely to get concussions than higher level players. There are dangerous parts of every life. Driving a car is dangerous.
So where do we go from here?
I don't want to have to tell my son that he can't be JUST LIKE DAD. How can I tell him he can't play the sport that means so much to our family? Michael said this morning that our kids will be too big from day one to be in a "high-risk" position. :) In fact our kids may be too tall to play football in general and may have to stick to basketball like mama. However, I'm sure that we will be, at some point, signing our boys up for football and these thoughts, all of the statistics, will run through my mind. I personally don't think that we can cover our children in bubble wrap. I may buy them the best helmet my money can buy but I'll leave the bubble wrap at home.
So where do you stand? What are you doing or what will you do when faced with this issue?
Every game has some definite rules. They are taught by the coach so that people can prevent any sort of injuries during the game. I love football but due to lack of safety precaution I met several leg injuries, not feeling like to continue my career in football.
ReplyDeleteRegards,
Arnold Brame