My 9 year old played pee wee football this year. Our league had no weight limits, but we played in a few tournaments that did have limits. In league I saw a few hard hits, mostly in practice. The big concern is the coach walking over to a parent and saying "he got his bell rung" and two minutes later the kid is back on the practice field. Most of the time a kid got his head hurt was from being slung to the ground causing the back of his head to bounce off the ground. I also saw a lot of poor technique that was never corrected.

We played in two travel/all star tournaments and holy crap was that an eye opener. Though they had weight limits, I saw more violent collisions in one practice than I saw all year in league football. In league ball, someone is usually backing down, in travel football most of the kids are going full speed with the intention of blowing someone up. My kid played QB and his job was to get everyone lined up and hand the ball off to the stud RB or pass to the stud WR. If he had played any other position I would have taken him off the team. Our first game out, the opposing RB suffered a compound fracture in his arm. In our final game the opposing QB broke his wrist and we had two kids on our team knocked completely out.

I am a hypocrite, as I will probably let my kid continue playing football, but I think most kids shouldn't start playing until Jr. High.

Why? There are so many alternatives out there sports wise. You do realize that if he continues to play you will eventually, sooner or later, be at a game where he sustains a big head injury and is laying on the field helpless?

I just couldn't live with myself. Baseball + Golf ftw!

I don't think that's true. I only played in high school and using your helmet as a weapon was a constant. I played with a kid who played outside linebacker with a huge head who would always throw that melon around every time he blitzed. Made for some rough practices.

Just my experience though.

It's kind of a wild generalization as I've only seen about 5k+ high school kids play football in my life. But then again its not something I'm paying a ton of attention to when watching film.

But still, its nothing compared to NCAAF or NFL. Kids tend to use shoulders much more often than their heads. I believe a large part of it is the fact that at the NCAAF level+ there is NO practicing of tackling. Once you leave the high school field you are never practicing or taught tackling again.

Either way, the helmet is the issue imo. As long as they continue to improve the helmet to make it safer it will make the game more dangerous. Its a catch-22 to me. As you obviously want the safety. But you have to make the punishment for using the helmet as a weapon extremely severe.

Needle, lets say your son is #20 in that video, who gets knocked out by that ******ed drill and starts crying.

You see it in real time from ~20 feet away as you're watching practice. What's your play?

In that hypothetical I'd let the coach do his thing. I don't know if he let him back into practice but I think its clear that you don't let that happen until he has had a chance to be evaluated correctly. But just because a kid gets hit and starts crying it doesn't mean that he is concussed. In the LLWS kids crys after much much less than that and is likely older than that kid.

But in the real world I'd have a large say in what is going on at the pop warner level and if I saw that drill I'd probably have stepped in anyway as that drill teaches nothing, especially if they don't correct what the kids did wrong.

Kids cry in the LLWS because they get hit by a pitch or make an error lol. I don't think the two are comparable.

The amount of concussions sustained pee wee football compared to little league are probably 1,000 to 1.

Needle, one point that your missing on though is just regular hits - that maybe do not lead to a concussion but are not healthy for the head/brain.

I'm sure you can appreciate as a lineman, that even the hits generated by the offensive/defensive lineman exploding off the ball into each other can cause some damage. Sure, no single contact will probably end up in a concussion - but the repetitive ramming of helmets on the offensive and defensive lines can't be good.

I don't think I'm missing it. I played the sport for 15 years and have been involved in it for 19. The sport obviously has its downfalls, I believe the positives >>>>> the negatives. I don't even know if head injuries are the most common. They might be. But from my experiences, which is very limited, knees, shoulders, hips, wrists, necks, ect. are all very common ailments. For myself I have a 5 time operated back, and 2 time operated knee let alone another knee that takes me minutes in the morning to strech out before I get out of bed and a shoulder that I feel is slowing falling apart.

Oh and been diagnosed with 3 concussions. God knows how many I've had.

With all those injuries and concussions how can you say the positive outweighed the negative for you?

Surely the grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr football life lessons and rawrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr football bonds you've formed could have been formed in other sports.

Thinking that only football provides those things is really close minded thinking.

Common sense says the more we find out about concussions the less parents are going to let kids play tackle football. You'll see the athletic kids focus on other sports. The NFL probably won't feel the effects for 15-20 years though.

God help the NFL though if someone dies on the field.

Really amazed that no one has died on the field yet.

Football was basically the only way I could afford college.
I got an undergraduate degree and two years coaching experience.
I got another year coaching experience year after college.
Paid for a large portion of my Master's degree.
A year experience(albeit not the best situation) coaching at a 1-AA level program.
I now have a Master's degree.
Paid high school coaching position with a full-time teaching position to come in an economic period where teachers are not being hired.

I think football did more for me than just about anything ever will in my life. I sustained more injuries than your typical player, probably by a large margin. I was unlucky. I took a couple of nasty hits and unlucky ones as well. None of which are causing a tremendous amount of life altering changes at this time. Will that change down the road? Possibly. But even so, your average high school player won't go on to play in college, hell very few will play more than 1 year of college football. And up until that point will have had little major injuries occur to them.

I'm obviously much more intelligent than you give me credit for. Even if I'm a dumbass I know many things in life give that community feeling. Church programs do a tremendous job of doing that, probably better than football or really any sport as anyone of either gender can participate in those. I look at football the same way people view fraternities. There are negatives but the positives far outweigh those negatives.

Wow buncha ladies ITT.

I played high school football and college rugby and I sustained one definite concussion, and two other possible mild ones throughout my tenure. Hell, my brother suffered a grisly compound fracture in college football. **** happens. I also became much tougher, learned how to lift weights correctly and thus became healthier, and formed personal connections that helped me get the job I have today. Yeah, I'd say the positives outweigh the negatives. And it's really not close.

Was only a matter of time before our first "tough guy" showed up. Grats chuckbomb.

You can learn all of those things doing pretty much any other sport or any other competitive event.

And needle you're basically saying football helped you out with money and that's why it was so great for you.

+1

Any sane person knows when they step on a field where there are 300 lb guys in body armor slamming into each other violently at high speeds there is a significant increased chance of concussions.

That's one of the reasons they make so much damn money.

Nobody is forcing these guys to play football. If they think it's too dangerous and are worried about their health, go do something else.

I don't think that has anything to do with it.

Football is his #2 or #3 sport. His favorite is baseball by a wide margin. As far as why I let him play, I think it boils down to the current level of risk. I think he is just as likely to suffer a head injury from riding his ripstick with a helmet or by getting drilled with a fastball in the helmet by a kid throwing 60 mph. We bought him a Xenith football helmet which are supposed to be the best for preventing concussions in youth players. My bigger concern at this age is suffering an arm injury to his throwing arm. A lot of that has to do with him individually. He is tall, so the few times he gets hit, it is in the body. If he was playing on the line, running back, linebacker, no I would not let him play football at this age.

If you thought I was being a "tough guy" you completely missed the point of my post. Which is that youth football has benefits that massively outweigh the costs.

I've done several sports and competitive events (including dumb **** like math olympiads and whatnot), and I found football and rugby to produce by far the most camaraderie and lasting connections. Your mileage may vary I guess, but I think there's something about a contact sport that builds character over and above other things. If it's not your thing that's fine, but ffs banning it seems absurd.

I can't speak for rugby, but football is the ultimate team sport. In my opinion that has more to do with the relationships that are built than the contact aspect.

I agree with your first sentence, but think it's tough to separate the two. Blocking and gap assignments don't mean as much when you're playing two-hand touch.

we are talking about 8 yr olds ffs. damn kids should know better amirite?