If only there were some way to quantify and test the positive impact of football on our society. One man sees straws where another sees faces and names of those he has seen make a difference in the lives of the nation's youth.

At least I see the real issues for what they are and don't resort to name calling.

Wat? Dude, there are other sports. Make one up that does not involve exposing people to unknown risks of brain damage. It's not that complex an idea.

Also, I did not call you a name.

I bet we'd have fewer chubby kids if soccer were dominant instead of football.

You changed the arguement completely, but w/e I'll play along.

Something tells me that this is a small % of the population and football doesn't solve the problems anyways. If you're saying it keeps those off the street, so does anything else.

Also, I believe NFL players aren't know for being model citizens.

Microbob: there's studies going on about the dangers of repeated headers. I won't go into detail bc the thread is tilted enough, but I'll tell you it's not good.

And more people who can't deadlift their own bodyweight

Yeah, I've thought about this in my case. I was definitely a chunky kid but I also have just an overall big frame. Not sure how things would have turned out had I played soccer or something as a kid.

Football is my third favorite sport. My first love was always basketball. I was actually a pretty good post player as a kid but when my height settled at 5'11 I spent my career glued to the bench before getting cut in 11th grade. Coach liked me cuz I was a high energy guy but joked that they had to time me with a calander.

Baseball is huge in my family. My dad and I played catch all the time and he threw me batting practice virtually every summer day my entire life. I was a pretty decent singles hitter but had no power despite being big and strong (memorably, my uncle who was coaching the other team came out of the dugout and yelled "Contact hitter" signalling the outfield to move in before everyone of my at bats in a VFW league game). I also somehow throw like a hybrid of Johnny Damon and Tim Tebow. I spent my high school career as a pinch hitter.

Football, despite being unathletic was something I could excell at simply by being smart and putting in the effort in the weight room. I was a good player, an all-conference player, a captain. It was a huge boon to my self-esteem and popularity. It also gave me the confidence to explore other interests (like the chess team), confident that nobody would pick on me. I was even able to protect the other chess nerds from bullying just by having them seen with me. I tried out for the D3 football team in college, and despite being horribly out matched was able to make some friends right away that helped me transition to college including my best friend to this day. I was never gonna be an academic failure but social failure was a possibilty as a pimply chunky kid with braces. College ended up being a blast.

tl;dr but football ended up being awesome for me personally in a way that I doubt any other activity could have been. I shall defend her to the death!

why is that important?

and as if fat ppl can do that anyway, lol

Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful to society in general

Deadlifting body weight is not hard at all and I am sure most soccer players can do it.

so why not do deadlifts followed by hitting your head against the wall

Of course it isn't hard, but you'd be surprised how many people can't do it

One benefit of football is the coaches generally teach you proper lifting technique with compound lifts. Something I and many others never would have learned without playing the sport.

This is an odd tangent. Plenty of sports teach these lifts. I used to do shot/disc and we did plenty of these type of lifts.

nope, just football!

non football players throw shot/disc? I thought that whole event was just a cover so the football players could workout with the coach (who's always the shot/disc coach) legally.

Fair point, I saw the track team doing real lifts in the weight room too.

I'm certainly not claiming football is the only sport that provided good lifting technique, or camaraderie, or life lessons, or sacrifice, or any other cliche. But I think it provided all those things in a better combination than any other sport, and for me the benefits it provided easily outweighed the risk of brain trauma.

This.

Although hopefully research will advance and show us how risky the activity is. More information is always better.

Like 8/10 were football players in my experience. My coach was just getting some super easy extra coaching bonus. YMMV.

I agree with all of this except for the benefits outweighing the risk of brain trauma.

I agree that all those sports are less dangerous than football. But until you see the day when 90k people come to the big house and pay huge money to watch OSU Mich soccer this debate is irrelevant,schools make way too much off football and would never consider a ban.

I don't think the first schools to stop having football programs would be OSU or any other big time program. Unless there are some major law suits I doubt we will see anything happen for a long time.

My concern is the youth, both the kids health and the program health. I spend 3-4 days a week working for youth football during the season so this is near and dear to me.

It is cliche but true - the youth are the future of the sport.

You cant SERIOUSLY think that football is appreciably different from non-football sports by these metrics, can you? That is like some PSU-fan levels of blind favoritism.

I think you are thinking of baseball.

Or basketball.

Or soccer.

Or any sport except like skiing.

This is just the kind of non-competitive soft crap which is probably going to kill contact sports entirely one day. For very young players I can understand the concern but for a lot of people football is a way of life. In some towns it's a Really Big Deal and even with the risks involved, there are young people who want to go out and compete in spite of the risk. Just because there's some element of danger to something doesn't mean it should be done away with or sanitized to death.

People seem just fine at sorting out for themselves what risks they feel comfortable with. If you don't want to ball then there's chess club or the debate team. No need to **** up a perfectly good sport like football for everybody else.

I've played football in high school and had a few scholarships to play in college and a little semipro. I've suffered 2 diagnosed concussions and had my bell rung a few times. There is NO way I'll ever let my son play football until they are in high school at the earliest and even then I will try to convince him not to.

With all the research that is coming out everyday you would be a fool to let your son play. There are studies out there that show repeated small hits of the head (like a lineman's head clashing with a dlines head) over and over is more damaging than a major concussion and the effects of the 2nd and 3rd concussion grow exponentially dangerous. Not to mention a concussion or brain damage at a young age is MUCH worse than a concussion at an older age due to the brains growth stage.

Football will eventually go the way of boxing.

I honestly don't know. I was being genuine when I said I would love to see the results of a study. My own subjective experience tells me that football is appreciably different from other sports (having played baseball, tennis, and lacrosse, to name a few), but I could be wrong.