Flag on the Play

Super Bowl Sunday: the day that many Americans will gather around the television, bowls full of chips on the table and select beverages in hand, yelling and eagerly watching two teams compete to be the next Super Bowl Champions.

Football is celebrated in America and has been for decades, but with new aged medical technology and studies, a debate has been sparked about the safety of tackle football in youth. Many kids, traditionally more often boys, have an interest in playing football. According to ESPN, 1.23 million children, 6-12 years old, played tackle football in 2015.

This debate is easily split between two teams: those who believe the risks of the game outweigh the rewards and those who don’t.

Football is a physically demanding and exhausting sport, and like any contact sport, there is a risk for injury.

What sets American football apart from other contact sports though, is the head injuries. The CDC reported in a study that youth who participate in tackle football experienced a median of 378 head impacts within a single season. Meanwhile, the number of head impacts for those who played flag football was significantly lower, with a median of 8 per season.

Many parents and pediatricians are concerned about the impacts of repeated brain injury. In a 2019 article, The Washington Post reported that youth who engage in tackle football are at a higher risk for cognitive deficits and behavioral issues.

Assistant professor of public health at Muhlenberg College, Kathleen Bachynski, claims that the American Academy of Pediatrics confronting youth tackle football is “more urgent now” than in 1957 when the committee first questioned youth’s safety in participation.

Some people argue that kids' football has never been safer due to new rules and requirements by law. In the same 2019, New York Post opinionated piece, the author compares cycling, which is responsible for more than 40,000 traumatic brain injuries in children, to tackle football, with nearly 22,000 reported incidents.

Tackle football, like many other sports, carries great reward, along with great risk. Some argue that the earlier children learn how to tackle properly, the more it will prevent injury as they age into the game and build confidence in them as players. As tackle football is a more demanding sport, children will develop skills to adapt to the sport that will be useful in day-to-day life, as well as relationships that last a lifetime.