7 ms·

‘There’s no place to go after eight-man’: Small towns seek to preserve football

17 points by pmcpinto 9y ago

randycupertino 9y ago
These kids shouldn't be killing their brains to play a game. Just finished reading League of Denial, incredibly eye-opening re: everything the NFL has done to cover up long term brain damage from football. The NFL is basically Big Tobacco now, and imo any parent who lets their kid play football at this point with everything we know is akin to child abuse.
- megaman22 9y ago
  Oh, come on. Anybody that is "shocked, shocked, I say", about football players who've taken thousands upon thousands of hits getting squishy after their playing careers has been asleep at the wheel for a long, long time. But grade school football and NFL level football are orders of magnitude apart. Life is a trade-off, and children aren't made out of glass.
  - gadders 9y ago
    Yeah. It's like the difference between boxing for fun as a low-level amateur, and turning pro. //edit// And in that I mean that the health benefits from the exercise outweigh the slim chance of any damage.
  - jacobolus 9y ago
    We are talking about high school students (14-18 years old), playing tackle football, with all the helmet bashing (and concussions, if you read the article) that entails. Many of these kids weigh 250+ lbs and hit each-other hard on every play. But if you want to talk about grade school students, the risks are possibly worse: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/sports/football/tackle-football-brain-youth.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/sports/football/tackle-fo...
    - lj3 9y ago
      > and concussions Scare mongering. Concussions don't happen at the high school level. I played high school football, my brothers played high school football, cousins, etc. There is no helmet bashing. It's illegal and it hurts, so nobody does it.
      - alistairSH 9y ago
        Concussions don't happen at the high school level. Yes, they do. But, they also happen in soccer at a surprisingly high rate.
      - tallanvor 9y ago
        So... You didn't read the article. "A week ago, he left the second half of North Dickinson’s loss to Superior Central because of a concussion. He looked ready to return for senior night, then took a turn midweek when he couldn’t remember some of what showed up on the game film of Phillips High, this week’s opponent." Concussions are common in football, and are not just due to helmet bashing.
      - nvusuvu 9y ago
        Yes, they do. I got one. Hit to the head. Flash of white, then blacked out momentarily.
  - Jaruzel 9y ago
    But it's now an open fact that kids (who, lets remind ourselves, are not mature enough[1] to make the decision themselves) who play American Football in High School are damaging their brains. It's akin to having a high school based lesson where the teacher walks around the classroom repeatedly hitting every boy on the head with a baseball bat. If that was a thing, as a parent you would never stand for it. However you happily let your your child suffer the same cranial damage out on the football field simply because it's 'cool' to have a kid on the team. As a parent, my mind boggles at this. -- [1] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_majority https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_majority
fencepost 9y ago
Once thing that jumped out at me was the gender disparity in the younger classes. If I'm reading it correctly, for 2015+2016 there were 39 kids in kindergarten and 7 of them were boys.
grecy 9y ago
Coming from Australia, one of the strangest things about American Football is that nobody plays it for recreation (or semi-competitively) after High School / College. In Australia there are thousands and thousands of cricket, Aussie Rules footy, Rubgy (union and league) and more games played every single weekend. It's strange that a national sport is not played more.
- Jaruzel 9y ago
  The UK is exactly the same. In most towns/citys all the recreation grounds are full up with amateur league football (soccer) and rugby, plus loads of cricket matches, during the appropriate seasons. That's not to mention all the workplace-based football/netball teams that have matches in the week.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  There are flag football leagues all over the US, semi-pro leagues exist, too. There's lots of people who play on the weekend in and out of leagues. Or you're asking why 35-year olds aren't buying helmets and pads so they can break collarbones and tear ligaments? Contact football is brutal.
  - grecy 9y ago
    > Or you're asking why 35-year olds aren't buying helmets and pads so they can break collarbones and tear ligaments? Contact football is brutal. Yes, yes. In Australia we play Aussie rules, Rubgy League and Rugby Union - all are full contact with no pads or helmets. Plenty of people play into their 40s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh5hNY83UA4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh5hNY83UA4
    - aaron-lebo 9y ago
      The price of equipment itself is a limiting factor. Also, though rugby is rough, there's an argument that the reason why US football is as dangerous as it is is due to the equipment. See here where a helmet to helmet hit breaks a jaw. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9RfJwSkMU8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9RfJwSkMU8
oneeyedpigeon 9y ago
American football; for the rest of the globe, football is something different, normally what Americans refer to as "soccer", sometimes another nation-specific sport such as Australian Rules Football. Can we at least get "American" added to the title to avoid confusion?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  Is eight-man soccer a thing?
  - lostcolony 9y ago
    It can be played with smaller teams, sure. Just like basketball; even with just two of you you can still have a compelling reason to play. Football, not so much.
    - burntsushi 9y ago
      Sure it can. I grew up playing 3-man touch football. One QB, one receiver and one defender. We always called it "stars" and had an entire rule system for it, although I don't actually know whether it was an intensely local thing or whether it's something a lot of other people did too.
  - portref 9y ago
    Five-a-side is very common, tons of five-a-side pitches in the UK with people playing in leagues or more casually.
  - portref 9y ago
    Five-a-side is very common, tons of five-side pitches in the UK. edit: in the context of your comment, yeah there's no mistaking the headline is about american football.
  - oneeyedpigeon 9y ago
sparrish 9y ago
There is someplace to go after eight-man... Our small school in Eastern Colorado played six-man football against other schools across the state. The field is smaller and there's a lot more running. Most guys played both ways (offence and defense). And the school and boosters funded it very well. I didn't participate cause I could care less about sports in general.

17 points by pmcpinto 9y ago

These kids shouldn't be killing their brains to play a game. Just finished reading League of Denial, incredibly eye-opening re: everything the NFL has done to cover up long term brain damage from football. The NFL is basically Big Tobacco now, and imo any parent who lets their kid play football at this point with everything we know is akin to child abuse.

megaman22 9y ago
Oh, come on. Anybody that is "shocked, shocked, I say", about football players who've taken thousands upon thousands of hits getting squishy after their playing careers has been asleep at the wheel for a long, long time. But grade school football and NFL level football are orders of magnitude apart. Life is a trade-off, and children aren't made out of glass.
- gadders 9y ago
  Yeah. It's like the difference between boxing for fun as a low-level amateur, and turning pro. //edit// And in that I mean that the health benefits from the exercise outweigh the slim chance of any damage.
- jacobolus 9y ago
  We are talking about high school students (14-18 years old), playing tackle football, with all the helmet bashing (and concussions, if you read the article) that entails. Many of these kids weigh 250+ lbs and hit each-other hard on every play. But if you want to talk about grade school students, the risks are possibly worse: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/sports/football/tackle-football-brain-youth.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/sports/football/tackle-fo...
  - lj3 9y ago
    > and concussions Scare mongering. Concussions don't happen at the high school level. I played high school football, my brothers played high school football, cousins, etc. There is no helmet bashing. It's illegal and it hurts, so nobody does it.
    - alistairSH 9y ago
      Concussions don't happen at the high school level. Yes, they do. But, they also happen in soccer at a surprisingly high rate.
    - tallanvor 9y ago
      So... You didn't read the article. "A week ago, he left the second half of North Dickinson’s loss to Superior Central because of a concussion. He looked ready to return for senior night, then took a turn midweek when he couldn’t remember some of what showed up on the game film of Phillips High, this week’s opponent." Concussions are common in football, and are not just due to helmet bashing.
    - nvusuvu 9y ago
      Yes, they do. I got one. Hit to the head. Flash of white, then blacked out momentarily.
- Jaruzel 9y ago
  But it's now an open fact that kids (who, lets remind ourselves, are not mature enough[1] to make the decision themselves) who play American Football in High School are damaging their brains. It's akin to having a high school based lesson where the teacher walks around the classroom repeatedly hitting every boy on the head with a baseball bat. If that was a thing, as a parent you would never stand for it. However you happily let your your child suffer the same cranial damage out on the football field simply because it's 'cool' to have a kid on the team. As a parent, my mind boggles at this. -- [1] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_majority https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_majority

fencepost 9y ago

Once thing that jumped out at me was the gender disparity in the younger classes. If I'm reading it correctly, for 2015+2016 there were 39 kids in kindergarten and 7 of them were boys.

grecy 9y ago

Coming from Australia, one of the strangest things about American Football is that nobody plays it for recreation (or semi-competitively) after High School / College. In Australia there are thousands and thousands of cricket, Aussie Rules footy, Rubgy (union and league) and more games played every single weekend. It's strange that a national sport is not played more.

Jaruzel 9y ago
The UK is exactly the same. In most towns/citys all the recreation grounds are full up with amateur league football (soccer) and rugby, plus loads of cricket matches, during the appropriate seasons. That's not to mention all the workplace-based football/netball teams that have matches in the week.
aaron-lebo 9y ago
There are flag football leagues all over the US, semi-pro leagues exist, too. There's lots of people who play on the weekend in and out of leagues. Or you're asking why 35-year olds aren't buying helmets and pads so they can break collarbones and tear ligaments? Contact football is brutal.
- grecy 9y ago
  > Or you're asking why 35-year olds aren't buying helmets and pads so they can break collarbones and tear ligaments? Contact football is brutal. Yes, yes. In Australia we play Aussie rules, Rubgy League and Rugby Union - all are full contact with no pads or helmets. Plenty of people play into their 40s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh5hNY83UA4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh5hNY83UA4
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    The price of equipment itself is a limiting factor. Also, though rugby is rough, there's an argument that the reason why US football is as dangerous as it is is due to the equipment. See here where a helmet to helmet hit breaks a jaw. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9RfJwSkMU8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9RfJwSkMU8

oneeyedpigeon 9y ago

American football; for the rest of the globe, football is something different, normally what Americans refer to as "soccer", sometimes another nation-specific sport such as Australian Rules Football. Can we at least get "American" added to the title to avoid confusion?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
aaron-lebo 9y ago
Is eight-man soccer a thing?
- lostcolony 9y ago
  It can be played with smaller teams, sure. Just like basketball; even with just two of you you can still have a compelling reason to play. Football, not so much.
  - burntsushi 9y ago
    Sure it can. I grew up playing 3-man touch football. One QB, one receiver and one defender. We always called it "stars" and had an entire rule system for it, although I don't actually know whether it was an intensely local thing or whether it's something a lot of other people did too.
- portref 9y ago
  Five-a-side is very common, tons of five-a-side pitches in the UK with people playing in leagues or more casually.
- portref 9y ago
  Five-a-side is very common, tons of five-side pitches in the UK. edit: in the context of your comment, yeah there's no mistaking the headline is about american football.
- oneeyedpigeon 9y ago

sparrish 9y ago

There is someplace to go after eight-man... Our small school in Eastern Colorado played six-man football against other schools across the state. The field is smaller and there's a lot more running. Most guys played both ways (offence and defense). And the school and boosters funded it very well. I didn't participate cause I could care less about sports in general.