Good Morning Gloucester

So sad.

Should Your Child Play Football?

By John Guida November 11, 2014 3:40 pm

To the partisan battles of red and blue America, we can apparently add another culture clash: football.

Yes, the N.F.L. remains widely popular, despite its annus horribilis — among other things, the abuse scandals of Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson and, above all, the medical discoveries of the professional sport’s damage to a player’s brain.

Yet for all its popularity, the ground is shifting. As David Leonhardt writes for The Upshot at The New York Times, “Blue America — particularly the highly educated Democratic-leaning areas of major metropolitan areas — is increasingly deciding that it doesn’t want its sons playing football.”

He cites a poll conducted by the RAND Corporation for The Upshot: “Nationwide, only 55 percent of respondents said they would be comfortable with their sons playing football. The numbers for baseball, basketball, soccer and track were all above 90 percent.”

The ostensibly “liberal” view holds that football — especially at the professional level — poses risks both to players’ health and to American society at large. At The Los Angeles Times, Steve Almond, author of the book “Against Football,” criticizes “the cynical commercialization of the sport, its cultish celebration of violence and the more subtle ways in which football warps our societal attitudes about race, gender and sexual orientation.”

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Over/Under 10 years, what do you think?

The push to make our kids as soft and overly sensitive as possible is well under way.

Why is there no outrage over other sports that have just as high injury rate or more than football?  How come all these people don’t take their kids off of bikes?

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Types of sports and recreational activities

Consider these estimated injury statistics for 2009 from the Consumer Product Safety Commission:

• Basketball. More than 170,000 children ages 5 to 14 were treated in hospital emergency rooms for basketball-related injuries.
• Baseball and softball. Nearly 110,000 children ages 5 to 14 were treated in hospital emergency rooms for baseball-related injuries. Baseball also has the highest fatality rate among sports for children ages 5 to 14, with three to four children dying from baseball injuries each year.
• Bicycling. More than 200,000 children ages 5 to 14 were treated in hospital emergency rooms for bicycle-related injuries.
• Football. Almost 215,000 children ages 5 to 14 were treated in hospital emergency rooms for football-related injuries.
• Ice hockey. More than 20,000 children ages 5 to 14 were treated in hospital emergency rooms for ice hockey-related injuries.
• In-line and roller skating. More than 47,000 children ages 5 to 14 were treated in hospital emergency rooms for in-line skating-related injuries.
• Skateboarding. More than 66,000 children ages 5 to 14 were treated in hospital emergency rooms for skateboarding-related injuries.
• Sledding or toboggan. More than 16,000 children ages 5 to 14 were treated in hospital emergency rooms for sledding-related injuries.
• Snow skiing or snowboarding. More than 25,000 children ages 5 to 14 were treated in hospital emergency rooms for snow boarding and snow skiing-related injuries.
• Soccer. About 88,000 children ages 5 to 14 were treated in hospital emergency rooms for soccer-related injuries.
• Trampolines. About 65,000 children ages 14 and under were treated in hospital emergency rooms for trampoline-related injuries.

It’s the same people who say we should hand out participation awards just for showing up.  It’s the same people that are trying to tell us that we’re not supposed to appreciate beauty (and I get the difference between a creepy leer or inappropriate comment toward a woman vs a plain old compliment).

Jeeze I hope we don’t lose our football.