Creating a Football “Safe Space” for Kids and Parents

When football legends Bo Jackson, Harry Carson and Mike Ditka say it, it’s a big deal. People pay attention to what athletes of their stature say.

The “it” is that they would never let their sons play football.

With increasing revelations regarding the link between tackle football and brain trauma, this should come as no surprise. If anyone knows the extreme violence and physicality of football it is those who have played it for a living.

It’s difficult to say exactly what sort of an impact their statements have had on the participation levels of tackle football. Regardless, their comments have raised eyebrows and generated dialogue. When a football legend makes such a statement, it opens the door for other players to offer thoughts on the subject. Every time another NFL star joins the chorus, the impact is compounded.

One important impact they have had is that it is helping to create a football “safe space” for kids who really don’t want to play. Far too often young kids feel they are expected to play and thus, believe they have little choice in the matter. They don’t want to disappoint their father, friends or community. That’s a lot of pressure on a 10, 12 or 15 year-old, particularly in communities where football is considered very important.

I was one of those kids.

I loved the game early in childhood. One of my earliest childhood memories is at age five, discovering a new football under the Christmas tree. Soon thereafter, I was fully decked out in my football “uniform” kicking that football all around the snowy, empty side lot next to our duplex apartment. I was “all in” on football.

But by the time I was in sixth grade, I realized that football was not for me.  I had fallen hopelessly in love with basketball and wanted to play it year round. I came to dread the arrival of football season because it meant that I wouldn’t be able to play much, if any, basketball.

As a very athletic son of the high school football coach, I felt that pressure. By the eighth grade, I actively tried to gain the additional weight needed to put me over the community league-mandated limit.  I was relieved when I weighed in well above the limit. I quietly celebrated with my Mom.

While the fact that I no longer wanted to play football created ample friction and angst in our household, my Father, to his great credit, understood and respected my love of basketball.

My guess is that had there been a prominent and growing list of football legends talking about not letting their children play the game back in 1971, it would have been much easier and more acceptable for me and other kids to opt out of playing football.

“If Troy Aikman, Adrian Peterson and Terry Bradshaw say they wouldn’t let their sons play football, why do I have to play?”

If that isn’t enough impact, here’s an even bigger one. The impact on parents and in particular, Fathers. Kids aren’t the only ones who feel peer and community pressure to play football. Parents often feel community pressure to have their sons be a part of the team. Having NFL legends say that they would not allow their kids to play football makes it easier for a parent to say the same thing.

“Your boy playing football?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“If Bart Scott, Brett Favre and Jermichael Finley all say that they won’t allow their sons to play because it’s too dangerous, why would I allow my son?”

The impact of the comments of these football legends should not be underestimated. For in making them, they have provided “cover” for kids who don’t want to play to declare without risk of ridicule or having to face the prospect of undue peer pressure that they aren’t going to play.
And perhaps even more important, it provides similar “cover” and “safe space” for parents to support their child’s wish not to play or to simply prohibit their son from playing even if he wants to.

WSJ - Coming Soon to Campus: The $100,000 Hotel Room

By Laine Higgins

Texas A&M University on Thursday will hold a lottery in which the winners walk away with an unusual—and very expensive—prize: The right to pay $100,000 for a hotel reservation.

The six-figure price tag is largely based on a single amenity: The yet-to-be-built hotel will sit across the street—96 feet away, to be exact—from Kyle Field, where the Aggie football team plays six or seven games each year.

Sound absurd? Thus far more than 750 Texas A&M alumni have expressed interest in the program, though not all of them had put down a refundable $5,000 deposit as of Monday. Less than a third of that number will win. For sleeping quarters on the hotel’s top floor—13 suites and 36 standard rooms—the deposit was $10,000. Those reservations, where the starting point for bids ranges from $125,000 to $475,000, will be auctioned off on Tuesday.

The clamor for the “guaranteed room options,” as they are called, is possibly the apogee of college efforts to wring extra revenue from well-heeled alumni on football game days. Already, most major universities require mandatory donations, usually thousands of dollars, for fans wanting premium season tickets. Some schools sell licenses for primo parking spaces.

“These folks are working every single angle that they can possibly think of to squeeze more juice out of the athletic machine,” says John Gerdy, a former associate commissioner of the Southeastern Conference and author of several books on collegiate athletic reform. “On one hand, it’s brilliant.”

The guaranteed room options, or GROs, work much like the personal seat licenses now offered by many professional sports teams—only for hotel rooms rather than season tickets. At A&M, the holders will make a one-time, tax-deductible $100,000 donation to the university in exchange for the right to reserve a specific room on any day for the next 10 years. They also get a plaque engraved with their names on the door...

Read Full Article Here

High School Football: The Folly of Trying to Sustain the Unsustainable

There were two recent items in the media regarding high school tackle football that, taken together, provide a strong hint of the future of the sport in our schools.

The first was a report that a three-judge panel of Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court rejected an attempt by the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA) to have a suit against it tossed out. The suit demanded extensive steps to limit the harm from concussions among high school and junior high athletes.

The second was a report from Oklahoma Watch outlining how high school athletes in that state are sustaining hundreds of concussions and how the high schools are woefully understaffed with athletic trainers and licensed medical professionals trained to identify, treat and prevent brain trauma in athletes.

Taken together, these two developments point to the folly of attempting to sustain an activity that is becoming increasingly unsustainable by the day. While many will lament this reality, if one is willing to approach it in an open and honest way, it could provide an opportunity to create a blueprint for the future of high school sports in America.

There are several trends regarding the sport as well as the challenges facing our secondary school system that will make the sponsorship of tackle football increasingly problematic. The first is the mounting evidence of the link between participation in football and damage to the brain. Seemingly every day there is a new study confirming the harmful outcomes of participation in football. This trend is not likely to abate anytime soon.

In response to this alarming trend, football advocates point to various safety measures such as improved equipment, increased medical oversight and staffing and improved concussion testing and protocol. While these efforts are commendable, they are measures that require significantly more costs for an already very expensive sport. Another example of an expense that will rise dramatically relates to risk management and the cost of liability insurance. As a result, educational leaders will be asked to evaluate the supposed benefits of football against the very real risk of their students suffering debilitating injuries to their brains. Many of them will come to the conclusion that the risk is simply too great.

And if these troubling trends are not enough, they are playing out against an environment of increasing academic expectations and tightening school budgets. In such an environment, it will be more difficult for an educational institution to justify allocating additional resources for an activity that scrambles brains. Educational institutions are in the business of strengthening brains, not destroying them.

In short, while there may always be communities and school districts that will continue to sponsor tackle football, given these trends and the reality they reveal, with each passing day, it will become increasingly clear that high school football is no longer a sound educational investment. As a result, the sponsorship of football in our secondary and junior high schools will slowly but surely wither on the vine.

If kept safe and in the proper perspective, interscholastic sports can be a powerful supplement to the educational experience of young people. Thus, it is understandable why educational leaders remain reluctant to eliminate any interscholastic sports. But football, due to it’s extremely barbaric nature, is a different animal. But rather than bemoan and resist this reality, the elimination of football presents an opportunity to restructure the role that sports plays in our schools.

Specifically, it is time for educational leaders to begin to seriously consider moving to the European model of school sports. In that model, elite athletes pursue their athletic experience through participation in private club teams. The role of school athletics in the European system is to provide broad based participation opportunities in activities that can be practiced for a lifetime (i.e., the type of programming that has traditionally been provided through physical education classes and intramural and wellness programs). This, as opposed to our current system of highly competitive interscholastic programs that are geared to a small percentage of elite athletes while relegating the vast majority of students to the sidelines to watch. In one of the world’s most obese nations, such an approach simply makes no sense.  

That said, interscholastic sports have become so ingrained within the culture of the school and broader community, that moving directly to the European club system may not be realistic at this point.

Perhaps there is an intermediate step.  The elimination of football provides an opportunity to redirect the resources, energy and emotion currently allocated to football to not only other interscholastic sports such as soccer, basketball, swimming, cross country and baseball (sports that are less physically punishing and that can be practiced for a lifetime) but also to strengthening physical education and intramural programs as well as lifelong wellness activities such as yoga and weight training. Such a shift will clearly result in far better health and fitness outcomes for far more students than the current tackle football centric model.  This might be a viable intermediate step to eventually moving to the European model of scholastic sports and fitness.

In short, it’s time to stop trying to sustain the unsustainable. With each passing day, it is becoming clearer that both from an educational and public health standpoint, the European school and community sports model is far superior to our current football-centric elite athletic system. That being the case, rather than bemoaning the growing negative health and safety trend lines associated with tackle football, education and community leaders should seek to leverage those developments to re-imagine and restructure how schools can more effectively utilize sports and fitness activities for more positive community health outcomes.

Youth Sport Specialization: A Terrible Idea

University of Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh raised some eyebrows recently when he recommended that football players not concentrate on football year-round but rather to play soccer for a portion of the year.

Every parent of every athlete in America should think about his suggestion.

One of the more troubling and counter-productive developments in youth sport over the past 20 years is the increasing pressure being placed on young athletes to specialize in a sport. The logic behind this notion is that the younger an athlete specializes in a sport the greater the chance of that athlete achieving success in that sport at the high school or college level.

That is ludicrous. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

All evidence points to the fact there is little correlation between early specialization and later athletic success.  Yet, all too often, young athletes are being pressured, mostly from coaches, to pick a sport (usually, the sport that particular coach coaches) to concentrate on, the earlier the better.

“If you want to start next year or if you want to have a chance at a college scholarship,” urges the coach, “you need to spend all of your time, effort and energy on one sport. If you are not dedicated to and practicing that sport, someone else is. And when the two of you meet, he or she will prevail.”

Parents, many of whom may not have a lot of experience with athletics or have visions of future athletic scholarships and stardom for their child, all too often defer to the wishes of the coach. But parents and their young athletes would be well served to consider several factors before committing to specializing at an early age.

First, is the physical toll. According to Dr. James Andrews, one of the nation’s most respected orthopedic doctors specializing in sports related injuries, the number of “repetitive/overuse injuries” sustained by single sport athletes is rising at an alarming rate. The fact is, our body parts wear out with overuse. When you choose to specialize in one sport, the wear and tear of the specific muscle, ligament and skeletal groups is intense and unending. Different sports require the concentrated use of different sets of body parts. Participating in several sports develops a well-balanced body and well-rounded athlete. When the time finally comes to specialize in a sport, a well-balanced and developed body provides more potential for long-term development and improvement.

And then there is the “burn-out” factor. While specialization may lead to some immediate improvement, over the long haul, it increases the likelihood of the athlete experiencing “burn out”. Simply put, when you pour all of your time, effort and emotion into any activity 365 days a year, year after year, it’s only natural that the chance of becoming tired, bored or simply “used up” increases dramatically. Specializing in a sport at a young age in the hopes that athletic success will be achieved years down the road may actually decrease the likelihood of long term success because it increase the chance that repetitive/overuse injuries will take their toll or that the athlete will simply burn out on the sport and discontinue participating.

If the potential negative effects regarding injury and burn out are not enough for parents and young athletes to reconsider specialization, a compelling case can be made that playing another, secondary sport will actually improve the athlete’s skills, competitive instincts and mental capacity when the athlete re-engages in his or her primary sport. Playing sports are playing sports. Regardless of the sport, many of the same principles and attitudes apply. It doesn’t matter what team sport you play as long as you are playing a team sport you are learning teamwork skills that apply to all sports. As long as you are competing, regardless of which sport, you are developing competitive instincts and skills that apply to sports across the board. 

Further, it can improve understanding of team dynamics when the athlete experiences being a major contributor in one sport but is more of a support player in a second sport. For example, being a “star” of a team requires certain leadership responsibilities and skills. The star in one sport will be better able to understand, motivate and lead less talented teammates if that star participates in a different sport where he or she was not the star.

Finally, it is imperative to understand and consider the motivation of coaches who push athletes to specialize in their sport. As the son of a high school football coach, I fully respect the time and effort that goes into coaching. And, for the most part, coaches have the best interests of their athletes at heart. But far too often coaches pressure athletes to specialize in the sport they coach more for their own ego and to ultimately win games rather than considering the long-term best interest of the athlete. Having their athletes concentrate on their sport is clearly in the short-term best interest of the coach and his or her team but it is hardly in the long-term best interest of the athlete.

In short, Jim Harbaugh is exactly right on the issue of sport specialization at an early age. We’d all be well served to heed his advice. 

Participation Trophies for All and the Ruination of Our Youth? Chill Out!

We’ve all witnessed those youth sport ceremonies where every participant receives a trophy. While most consider them to be a fairly harmless way to offer a child some encouragement and provide a sense of accomplishment, there are a considerable number of critics who deride the practice. They argue that recognizing children for mere participation encourages mediocrity and does little to promote excellence. According to the most fervent of those critics, such practices are leading to the creation of a generation of entitled, lazy children.

We all like to consider ourselves “competitors” and “winners”. As adults, we have a propensity to look down our noses at how “easy” younger generations have it. “These kids are so spoiled”, we claim while reminiscing about our hardscrabble lives and sports experiences.  That “I’m a winner” narrative parallels the narrative of American “exceptionalism”. And the notion that sports is a vehicle to instill the drive for excellence in participants by emphasizing and rewarding winning above all else is an extension of that narrative.

But the issue of recognizing young athletes for participation is far more nuanced.

As a lifelong participant and intense observer of the role and influence of sport in our culture, it has become clear to me that the relative value and emphasis on the importance of winning does, and should, vary depending upon the level of play. Yes, winning is important but it is a fluid concept, one that ebbs and flows throughout an athlete’s life. The purpose and value of participation in sports is influenced by the push and pull of two seemingly incongruent forces and concepts. This tension is best described as the process (education and personal development) versus the end result (winning).

Youth sports, particularly at the pee-wee level, should be about participation and having fun. Winning at that level is meaningless. The purpose of youth sport is to create a child-centered focus and environment where the kids get exercise, acquire some skills and above all, have fun. The goal should be to make it as enjoyable and accessible as possible so that when the season ends, the child will have had a positive and nurturing enough experience to want to play the sport again in the future. And if receiving a participation trophy or certificate at the end of the season helps contribute to that goal, then provide one. The fact is, receiving such recognition at age 5, 6, 7, or 8 is not going to warp their personalities for a lifetime.

If we truly believe in sports’ value as an educational and character building activity – one that teaches lessons in discipline, teamwork and, yes, the importance of striving for excellence and winning – we must acknowledge that the only way an athlete will be able to eventually learn these skills and character traits will be by continuing to play the sport on an ongoing basis. That being the case, why make pee-wee league sports about winning rather than participation and having fun? The idea at the pee-wee league is to engage them with the sport and begin to nurture in them a love of that sport in a way that lasts a lifetime. And if providing a kid with a participation trophy contributes to that child wanting to continue to play the sport in the future, so be it.

Without question organized sport can be a valuable tool to teach the importance of striving for excellence through hard work and dedication. But clearly, when around 70 % of kids quit sports by age thirteen (National Alliance for Youth Sports), with a major reason being that they are no longer having fun, serious consideration must be given to the relationship between emphasis on winning and making pee-wee sports about participation and fun. If we want to instill in kids the importance of developing a drive and desire to win it should be emphasized at an age appropriate time.

In short, what’s the hurry to replace, at such an early age, the joy and innocence of a child participating for the mere fun of participating with the adult driven concept of winning being the central purpose of sport? As an athlete rises through the system to the junior high and high school levels, there will be plenty of time to increase the emphasis on, and rewarding of, winning. But if we destroy their love of sport by over emphasizing the importance of winning versus participating and having fun to a point where they quit by age 13, there is no chance of ever instilling in them the lessons related to striving to win because they will no longer be on the fields and courts to learn them.

That said however, winning, even at the high school level, should never overshadow the purpose of sport sponsored by an educational institution. Even with an increased emphasis on winning the fundamental purpose of sport sponsored by an educational institution remains, education. It is the “educational value” of participation in sports that is the primary justification for it being sponsored by an educational institution. So yes, increased emphasis on winning is more appropriate at the high school level provided the importance of the end result (winning) does not overshadow the value of the process (education).

As the athlete moves to the college level, the pressure to win becomes greater. Again, while there is nothing inherently wrong with that, at it’s core, the athletic experience, even at the college level, must be first and foremost about education. Even at this next level of competition, the fact that it continues to be justified based on its educational benefits for participants requires that the balance between the emphasis being placed on winning versus using athletics as a tool to educate and instill positive character traits in participants remains balanced and in the proper perspective.

Once the athlete reaches the professional level, all bets are off. As a professional athlete, everyone knows the score. Pro sports are a business. And the business is winning and generating money.

I spent two years as the youth program director at a YMCA where I was responsible for running several youth sports leagues. One of the more amusing experiences relating to those leagues was regularly being asked by youngsters immediately after a game ended, “Who won?” 
Generally, I’d reply, “I don’t know.” Invariably, they’d consider that for a moment, shrug their shoulders and respond “Okay”. More often than not, they’d then turn to their parents to ask where they were going for ice cream. At such a young age, kids really don’t care about winning as long as they are having fun playing the game. And that is just fine because pee-wee sports are not about us adults and our values. They are about the kids and their wants and needs. 

While it might sound trite to some, the fact is, there is a lot of truth and wisdom in the age-old sports saying, “It is not whether you win or lose, but how (and whether) you play the game.” So for those who think the world is coming to an end because we are awarding pee-wee league athletes participation trophies, it’s time to chill out and appreciate the fact that when it comes to pee-wee sports, the kids just want to play and have fun. While providing some sort of recognition of their participation is certainly not necessary, it clearly won’t result in the end of Western civilization as we know it.

Bo Knows Head Trauma

In 1989, NIKE started an ad campaign for cross training footwear featuring Bo Jackson, a former Heisman Trophy winner and the only man to be an All-Star in baseball and All-Pro in football. The ad featured stars in various sports proclaiming that “Bo knows” whichever sport, whether baseball, football, hockey or golf, was featured in the ad.

Apparently, Bo also knows about the association between participation in tackle football and brain trauma. And given that football season is, once again, upon us, it might be prudent to consider what Bo knows.

Jackson created a stir recently when he admitted during a USA Today interview that if he had known what he does today back then, “I would have never played football. Never. I wish I had known about all of those head injuries, but no one knew that. “

He also said, “there’s no way I would ever allow my kids to play.”

While the football industrial complex’s public relations machine is running full throttle in its effort to convince parents that advancements in equipment, diagnosis, testing, protocol and tackling techniques have made the game safe, the cold, hard truth is that these claims are being made with little concrete, scientific evidence to back them up. Even on the most basic of issues, there is widespread disagreement, an example being how long a victim of a concussion should be held out of action. Is it a week? Two weeks? A month? A season? We simply do not know.

Further, all of the attention being placed on concussions is somewhat misguided. The larger issue is the brain damage sustained by repeated sub-concussive blows to the head. Sub-concussive blows clearly rattle the brain, thus causing cumulative trauma and damage, but not to the extent where the negative impact is immediately and outwardly noticed.

It’s brain death by a million cuts. In other words, your child could be slowly, methodically damaging his brain without showing any immediate signs of doing so.

Until it is too late.

While we have little idea of the effectiveness of various treatments and safety measures, what is absolutely not in doubt is that playing tackle football is damaging to the brain. That is indisputable. The only question is the extent of the damage. And, based on accumulating evidence, the extent of damage is becoming much clearer.

Simply consider the most recent revelation from a study published this week in which 110 of 111 former NFL football players were found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E. , the degenerative disease believed to be caused by repeated blows to the head. (Note: C.T.E. can only be determined after death).

So here’s the question: Why are so many people fighting so hard to deny the science and promote suspect and unproven safety improvements to continue to justify allowing children to play what is clearly a brutal sport that has been proven to cause brain damage? And how many more young people will sustain brain damage while we wait for the proof of this link to become irrefutable?

Ask Bo. He knows.