4 ms·

Looks like there are about 3 times more kids playing soccer than tackle football. I'd say a 3x lower concision rate isn't close to "nearly as bad". In addition

Looks like there are about 3 times more kids playing soccer than tackle football. I'd say a 3x lower concision rate isn't close to "nearly as bad". In addition to concussions, football players are also believed to receive repeated microtrauma from running into each other repeatedly, which contributes to CTE. Football is a full contact sport. It is inherently more dangerous. Collisions in soccer happen accidentally. They happen intentionally in football. In addition there are new restrictions on heading the ball in soccer for younger kids, which will likely make the game a bit safer.

camiller 9y ago
In 2016 (in the US) 1.08 million students participated in high school football while 821,851 participated in soccer. I don't have stats available for middle school, but earlier than that the players don't hit nearly as hard, as they have considerable lower mass and speed. Not sure where your 3x number comes from, but I don't think we need to include YMCA recreational league soccer any more than we need to include flag football.
- learc83 9y ago
  3x is the total number of youth participants in soccer vs total youth participants in tackle football. I didn't see that your study was high school and college only. It seems that girls suffer much higher rates of concussions in all sports likely do to less developed neck muscles according to this [1]. So you'd have to compare concussion rate in football vs boys soccer to get a real comparison. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/recruiting-insider/wp/2017/03/27/girls-soccer-has-highest-concussion-rate-of-high-school-sports-study-finds/?utm_term=.91d80778cb4c https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/recruiting-insider/wp/20...
- dexterdog 9y ago
  Where are those numbers from? I know that football has a lot of extra bodies on the sideline, but it doesn't have a girl's team so I would guess that more kids are playing soccer than football. At the very least the number of man-hours played has to be way higher.

camiller 9y ago

In 2016 (in the US) 1.08 million students participated in high school football while 821,851 participated in soccer. I don't have stats available for middle school, but earlier than that the players don't hit nearly as hard, as they have considerable lower mass and speed. Not sure where your 3x number comes from, but I don't think we need to include YMCA recreational league soccer any more than we need to include flag football.

learc83 9y ago
3x is the total number of youth participants in soccer vs total youth participants in tackle football. I didn't see that your study was high school and college only. It seems that girls suffer much higher rates of concussions in all sports likely do to less developed neck muscles according to this [1]. So you'd have to compare concussion rate in football vs boys soccer to get a real comparison. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/recruiting-insider/wp/2017/03/27/girls-soccer-has-highest-concussion-rate-of-high-school-sports-study-finds/?utm_term=.91d80778cb4c https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/recruiting-insider/wp/20...
dexterdog 9y ago
Where are those numbers from? I know that football has a lot of extra bodies on the sideline, but it doesn't have a girl's team so I would guess that more kids are playing soccer than football. At the very least the number of man-hours played has to be way higher.