Football teaches dedication, hard work, adaptation, cooperation and teamwork. It teaches pain and suffering are always necessary to growth and success. Most importantly it teaches the ability to overcome adversity and keep fighting toward a goal.
The loss of football simply continues the demonization and the feminization of the American male. The coddling of the “Snowflake” generation renders them incapable of competing a a tough world, where nobody cares about your sensitivities or wishes.
In the real global competitive environment, tough people survive and prosper, Snowflakes melt.
9
Who in the world would need cognitive skills in their 50's?
1
The heart wants what it wants. My 13 year-old son has been obsessed with football since he could pick up a ball. We tried to interest him in other sports. He was nationally ranked in karate and excelled at basketball, but his first love is football. When we asked him his goal for 8th grade, he said he wants to study hard so he can get good grades and get into a good college to play football. We’ve invested in a 529 plan so he doesn’t even need a scholarship unless he goes to an outrageously expensive private school.
Despite his objections, we insisted on him playing only flag football from when he was 5 until this year. He just played his first tackle football game yesterday and slayed it. Are we worried? Yes, of course we are. But, while friends of his are becoming increasingly lost in their teenage years, football is providing a focus for him to stay on a good track and get good grades. He actually did studies every day this past summer so he can stay on a good academic track. At this point, his love of football is bringing a lot of other really great things that will constructively guide him through his teenage years. His heart wants what it wants, despite the known risks.
7
Such a complicated dilemma. Thank you for spotlighting it. There are no simple answers. But better schools, more access to college, more funding for college, and changes in the sport of football are key. Free college education might help. I'm increasingly wondering how the European trend of separating higher-level athletics from school would work here in the US. In fact it is happening in high schools (and middle schools) to some extent as many top athletes participate on travel teams outside or in place of school teams. Then go on to get recruited and gain college entrance based in part on their athleticism, so sports are not so separate at the college level. This begs the question of how to unpack athletics from academic paths from not just the bottom of the socio-economic and educational ladder, but at the very top as middle class and affluent kids gain access to 4-year and more selective colleges via athletics. It's the model we're stuck with right now as questions swirl about the role of athletics (and athletic-related funding) in universities and the attendant scandals. Of course the risks of football are a separate but related issue, a crisis in fact, but untying athletics from education is an issue in need of more discussion. It's going to take more public discussion and solutions.
2
The cheers of the millions of us who depend on football to divert us, entertain us, and challenge our ability to prognosticate will begin anew tomorrow. The dollars behind the spectacle will roll to all corners of our country. The men who sacrifice their bodies and their brains for our entertainment hold a gladiator's place of honor in our culture and they are everywhere- over a million highshoolers will play hoping to be one of the 91,000 collegians hoping to be one of the 200 pros each year. That we have uncovered the data to quantify the risks and damages, that we have stories like these to tell that break our hearts, will mean little when the whistle blows and your favorite team kicks off- how beautiful it is to watch this clash of titans and how human it is to feel sadness, regret and confusion in its aftermath.
9
It's a shame that in this great country we have made so little progress in an equal opportunity for an education of all our citizens. The paradox is that we send our children to school to improve their minds, not destroy their brains playing football. We should have educational boot camps and offer college preparatory courses, to level the playing field for those who attend disadvantaged schools or come from family backgrounds that do not provide conducive learning environments. Once that is done we can then offer free college educational opportunities to all who qualify, or the option of technical/trade school programs for those not pursuing a college degree. That would be one major approach in making America great.
16
Football will never disappear, no matter how dangerous it is proven to be. The fact still remains that American society worships athletes. Fans throw money at athletes. Women throw themselves at athletes. Football players are invariably the most popular students on any given high school or college campus. I have no doubt that countless young men will still voluntarily subject themselves to the sport even if they don't financially need it, simply because of the prospects of riches, social status, and fawning women.
43
@Sarah Johnson
Do you really believe athletes are the most admired people on a major research university campus. It simply isn't true of most students at the University of Michigan. Football is the autumn entertainment and basketball is tje winter entertainment, and neither is to be confused with education.
8
@Sarah Johnson Hardly. I am female and football and football players have always repulsed me. A 2017 Gallup poll determined that 62% of American men and 52% of American women identify as pro football fans. Which means that nearly 1/3 of all men and 1/2 of all women are NOT.
2
@Sarah Johnson
Yes, there will always be stupid people who idolize athletes.
3
“Great Migration”? “A country where the margin of error is especially thin”?
A good article but a shameful use of the victimization card. Focusing on playing in professional sports for your livelihood is unlikely for over 99% of us.
Professional athletes are the real 1% and deservedly so as they are a rare example of natural ability, training, genetics, parenting, coaching and luck.
Sports used to unify us, now, through politics they are dividing us.
11
@Norville T. Johnson The Great Migration is a Historical Fact. During and after both World Wars, millions of African Americans left the Jim Crow South for better way of life in the North. They brought with them their labor, athletic skills and the Blues. The margin for error for black males in America is self evident. As driving, breathing, eating, sitting and swimming while Black is a constant in our daily news cycle. The Author is accurate. Maybe you are reading this article while White?
6
@Michael W. Espy
Sure, these things are constants in our daily news cycle which is not the same as being constant in reality. The continuous drumbeat of “everything is racism” (see Mr. Blow or the Starbucks non-event) hammers the idea into peoples’ heads that sports is the only way out. The biggest change will have to come from within African American culture. Maybe you are reading this article with an entrenched victim mindset?
Hoop dreams redux?
Education needs a better path than only through sports.
4
I'm still not convinced that these two boys need football. I see parents pursue the sport for the elusive college scholarship that very few get. It is highly likely that these two won't get one either, and then what will the battering be for?
I am spending my fight trying to change the funding structure of public schools. Yeah, a losing battle, I know, but any moreso than football?
6
No one needs football especially kids. It's hard enough to make your way in this world without brain damage it's an altogether different matter with it.
7
Football may end up on the margins of American sports, in much the same fashion as boxing. The ugliness of American football and it’s racial caste system will hopefully disappear. African-American men deserve something better than destroying their bodies and minds playing this thuggish game.
7
Play baseball!
2
“when mostly black players sacrifice their bodies for the entertainment of mostly white” on-lookers/fans, at home or in a stadium, each of US, actively-complicitly,
passively-complacently, enable and foster a WE-THEY culture which violates a selected, targeted, labeled “the other!”A complex-person with a name, a range of identities, similarities as well as differences from each of us, becomes “commodified” as a FUNCTION for an unpredictable amount of time.Functions aren’t human.Even as humans function, cope.Adapt. Flawed as we are.Given who each of US is. Isn’t. May never BE come. Given the types, levels and qualities of interacting available and accessible, internal and external, resources which are basic for daily well being! This much needed description of a socio-political enabled “Sporting Jim Crow,” with its body-brain, entertaining-economics, suggests that for a specific less-economically fortunate non- white, athletically gifted, youngster there is only an either/or option to “make it” in a racially divided culture. Country. State. City.Conceptual myopia may be a side effect of willful blindness.Deafness. Willful ignorance about viable, sustainable options for needed changes.In an era which seeds and harvests alt-facts.Black-bodies are for sale. As a way IN. Because known, and hidden, policymaking-Bodies of individuals, and systems,are permitted-enabled to “play” their harmful unsportsmanlike games.By words and deeds. Daily! Personally unaccountable players!Coaches!
Everyone’s a victim these days.
7
This is a dying spot either way.
Wealthy white and even second tier schools have abandes it for lacrosse and soccer. Only the poorest of high schools still push this as a sport.
Brash and barbaric, kids are choosing a thinking mans sport where you need a mind to win not just to jar around inside of a helmet.
5
Subject concerns aside, this is one of the most negatively-biased articles I have ever read in my decades of following the New York Times. Shameful jounalism.
9
If these boys were middle-class and white...would we be so eager to make football their way out and up?
Or of Asian descent...? After all, being who they are and all, they have better more culturally agreeable options, right?
Is the author telling us that we need to accept the facts that for black male youth, a means out of disadvantage is once again thru the selling of and abuse of their bodies? That because football can be a means out - for a ridiculously small number - we should protect it as inviolate? (what about young black females?)
That being gladiators in our rich whiteman's games is sacrosanct and part of what it is to be black? That they should be sacrifices for what still is a majority white audience spectator sport? To be sold and shuffled around a league, that still doesn't take their health - beyond the game - seriously enough - by rich conniving, cowardly rich white males. Who are also afraid of another old cowardly white male in a white house, who can influence their audience...
I'm not sure what exactly the goal here is? Would the author sell this pitch about gladiators in ancient Rome. "Well, they now know the risks, and some of them make it...very few, but some do..."
Football ain't going away, but lets not pitch it as an inviolate way-out and up for a minority of a disadvantaged minority group. I'd rather see them provided more options and then see if they want to still play and risk injuries.
Is it a "need",or rather all they have, or are allowed?
4
Could Nike’s plan be to undermine football and build up basketball where the athletes promote Nike shoes? Watching football implode is probably a step forward for public health, but a lot of people who envisioned making millions playing pro football are going to be surprised when the money gets small. Los Angeles is building a $4 billion stadium for the Chargers and Rams, but by the time it opens in 2020, it may be a white elephant.
2
Largely black or brown players performing for a largely white audience. Remind you of anything? How about gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome? The only real difference is that today's gladiators take longer to die.
2
@TyroneShoelaces
Another difference is the huge salaries paid to professional football players. There are definitely issues here but vitriolic nonsense persuades no one.
3
What good is a college education if one's brain has been ruined by CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy?
4
I echo many commentators below when I say the conclusion here is horrifying. The educational system is a racist system, therefore the solution is football??? How about: therefore the solution is dismantling institutional racism.
8
"Football reflects this country’s racial caste system: mostly black players sacrificing their bodies for the entertainment of a mostly white audience"
really? It wasn't that many years ago that blacks were oppressed because they couldn't play in the MLB or NFL. the reason players are mostly black is because at the skill positions they are better athletes. Is the NBA a racial caste system?
Maybe we should have equal opportunity for whites to play in the NBA and the NFL. after all if the percentage of employees does not represent the percentage of their race in society then surely discrimination must be the cause.
Articles like these that present athletics and the military as the only option for minorities are misleading.. Johnny manzel (sp) a.k.a. Mr. football comes from a wealthy family. my four white nephews all from a wealthy family all played football in high school it would have played in college had they had the athletic ability.
9
I love how you bring in racism and how the deck is so stacked against these boys. None of the issues with these inner city schools has anything to do with the culture or values of the parents, it’s all because America is so bad. How is this country going to survive?
7
Athletically talented children can find another sport that won't make them senile at 35. Football should be banned.
5
How about playing a sport that does not lead to brain damage?
2
The author failed to mention that only 1% of highschool athletes get college sport scholarships.......that is for all sports, for both females and males, to all divsion level schools.
The odds of a student getting an academic scholarship is higher.
3
Actually 150,000 athletic scholarships are awarded each year worth $2.9 billion.
1
Football is violent and racially exploitative and has no place in education at any level. Team spirit can be learned in a plethora of other sports and activities that don’t inflict brain damage. What does it say about the nasty voyeurism of those who watch this “game” that we KNOW is so dangerous? Football.....we have not evolved beyond desperate primitive men attacking each other over an inflated animal bladder for sustenance.
4
I played one year of organized football (Junior High ) an athlete in other sports as well, the game is relatively tame compared to practices. Ask any football player at any level, the drills that pit one player against another, coaches screaming “hit him, hit him harder” are what scared me more than the actual game. How many kids get hurt in practices?
3
"The system is girded by property taxes, leaving residents of poorer neighborhoods with underfunded schools."
In New Jersey this is not a fact, the highest spending districts are the in the poorest communities, in Essex county that means Newark, East Orange and Orange. New Jersey has many terrific public schools and many schools that don't get the job done, spending per pupil is not the key, these districts spend tremendous sums because the needs are high but money does not solve the problems (although it certainly helps). The solution to our educational inequality is income equality--if people have a good wage and a fair shake in society many problems will be addressed. Football should be allowed to die, if people stop watching it the money will head to a different sport. If you are disgusted watching people destroy their brains, you won't buy a ticket. We must get the message out.
1
The author has a very faulty point of view. As others have pointed out, young black males need to work on their academics, not football. Private colleges are trying very, very hard to recruit academically talented black students. Very generous financial aid awaits minority students from underprivileged backgrounds, but who demonstrate a commitment to academic excellence. Is it possible that the students described in the article simply prefer playing football to hitting the books hard?
4
If they are smart, they shouldn't need football to get college scholarships.
2
Exposing young people to repetitive head injuries is child abuse. What's needed is uniform and helmet research to prevent injury where possible. Until such time as 10 or 12 year olds can safely run full-speed at each other ithout expectation of concussion or other harm, football should be banned. We don't allow kids to hit each other in the forehead with baseball bats. Young heads are exposed every day to equivalent blunt forces in 'sports.'
1
Perhaps some research money should be diverted from the DoD war gizmo and instead find a helmet design that at least begins to lessen the damage being done.
3
I think the really important point of this article is to show how unfair, unequal and corrupt our educational system is in America today. Is there any rational reason that some students have more opportunities for a better education than others? Why should students from wealthy families get a better education? Why should a system of capitalism apply to who gets an education? Why should some kids risk their bodies and brains and maybe their lives just to get a good education? Why should kids who are better athletes get a better education? In my opinion, sports ability should play absolutely no role in school admissions, including in high schools and colleges. All sports scholarships should be abolished. Our entire educational system needs to be totally restructured. Imagine how many brilliant poor kids are lost in the system. Can anyone deny that our education system perpetuates a system of prejudice and discrimination, and racism? Would any sane and rational person or country design a system like this? I don’t think so.
7
Many who ear the game of football - or preach for others to avoid it - are very wqell-meaning. Others who crave social acceptance from their friends might resort to hating football in order to be Cool and perhaps even Awesome in their local cliques of the unread.
However, the America where football became a popular sport still lives and breathes, with 99% of the kids playing it never suffering brain damage or the training program disasters uncovered by Project Veritas a month ago.
(Oh, you missed it? Perhaps really keeping
up with the news just isn't for you?)
Football teaches self-discipline to young men that they never find anywhere else. Staying healthy and away from drugs is the first rule, and you'd think our progressives would have latched onto that.
This game teaches loyalty to others, trying your hardest for your friends, and is a huge part of school culture. Besides, it isn't NEARLY as likely to land you in the emergency room as soccer.
5
@L'osservatore our school started a JROTC program a few years ago. I was initially opposed, but no longer am. It instills all the values you list, is open to all students, no matter their athletic ability or gender, and promotes teamwork, cooperation and acceptance much more than football does. I have seen unruly kids join JROTC and start attending school regularly, speak respectfully to their teachers, work with our severely disabled students, and even aopogize for past behavior.
All this is to say that their are ways other than football to achieve what you write about.
4
Football: I've lived in this country for 35 years and I still don't understand this American religion. I never steered my kids towards it, and they never had any interest. There are many other sports and physical activities that provide whatever the brainwashed believe that football offers. What it offers is a great distraction from other things and a lot of money that pours in, instead of other directions. Stadiums get built quicker than classrooms and labs on university campuses because of this religion. I would like to live until I see it finally kicked off its high horse.
1
How many young men are drafted each year by the NFL? I don't know but I'm sure it's minuscule. How many of those drafted actually are signed and have a career in the NFL. Even fewer I would imagine. To pin one's hopes on a career that will leave your body broken and your brains rattled for a slim chance at big money is a fool's errand. Use your brains for something other than just something to be scrambled. Maybe you will make it or maybe not. But in a few years when your battered body can take no more you will be thrown out like yesterday's trash. That is no way out of any situation you may find yourself in at 15.
2
A lot of privileged white people are going to write comments here saying that it is for the best that kids aren't playing football, that there are alternatives, that things are done different for their children, and that the risks of football are not worth it.
1
An interesting article, but somewhat disingenuous. Most college athletes do not major in a rigorous academic program.
4
Brownsville still has youth boxing as well. Sponsored by the police department. Even sadder than this story, really, as it’s seen as tool to keep kids out of jail rather than a springboard to college.
No upper middle class kids do youth boxing and in a generation none will be play football.
1
Yes, a few football players will earn college tuition and an opportunity they otherwise would not have. For some, it will build character and enable them to do reasonably well in high school. Being a member of a team can be edifying.
But the main reason they do it is that football gives them an identity. It is hyper-masculine, dramatic, violent, and involves the expression of physical prowess. Adults, as well as nubile girls are watching their fitness.
Gridders exhibit an animal magnetism. The good ones are truculent hail-fellows-well-met with a small following, or a significant one.
It is not much of an identity in the big scheme of things, but an identity nonetheless. To paraphrase Marlon Brando, "They can be somebody and be a contender." Scant reasoning, no no artistic talent, and an absence of spirituality on the gridiron are required. It is a base identity, but it beats the heck out of being the cipher which most adolescent males are prior to college.
Is it worth the CTE? No, but some have determined that benefits outweigh costs, and assumed the risk.
2
When it comes to football, morality has 3 tiers. The pros are grown men and can decide for themselves how much risk they want to assume. And most probably think it's worth shortening their lives by 20 years in exchange for experiencing the thrill of Sunday afternoon combat.
College players occupy a murky middle ground--still callow teenagers when they accept a college scholarship but pretty much grown men by the time they graduate. It's disturbing that university presidents and football coaches treat a 22 or 23 year old red shirt senior the same as an 18 year old freshman. But if you're old enough to enlist the army...
There is no such moral confusion at the high school level and below. School superintendents, principals, faculty--even the mom who sells hot dogs at the concession stand on Friday nights--are all guilty of encouraging MINORS to engage in an activity that they know to be extremely dangerous. These people collectively create a moral blind spot and a climate of acceptance so that they need not question their despicable behavior.
The quality of play in college and the pros would improve if tackle football below college were banned. How many elite high school athletes are cut down each year by career ending injuries before we even learn their names? 100? 1,000?
High schoolers could lift weights, do wind sprints and agility drills, throw and catch passes, etc. Then they could showcase their talents at a college "combine" and entertain scholarship offers.
1
More anti-football blathering by the Times. Reality, as always, is more complicated than the Times wants it to be. The fact remains that football has been played by literally tens of millions of boys and men over the last 125 years and the vast majority have gone on to live full, healthy, and productive lives. 99% of those who play football stop playing after high school. Many of the most successful men in professions across the spectrum - teachers, doctors, Generals, lawyers, police/fireman etc played football and attribute their playing the game to the success they’ve had later in life. It is also true that football will always be dangerous and CTE is real. So what can be done? A lot is already being done - the game is dramatically different now than it was even 5 years ago and more must be done to evolve the game. Most importantly a return to tackling that doesn’t rely on helmet to helmet contact - something that was the norm, but has changed for the worse. These are but a few of the changes that will save the game. It’s a game worth saving
13
First off, plenty of white kids still play football and would kill to play in college. Yes, the numbers are declining but the lure of football is persistent. Let’s not set up the false narrative that football only exists to see black kids smash their heads in.
I’m white and I played high school football and no, I won’t allow my sons to play after all the conclusive CTE research. However, in recent years whenever I’ve bumped into a former teammate who has sons, I’ll ask them if they allow them to play and surprisingly, these educated, successful white male professionals have no qualms about their sons’ participation in the sport and seem to relish and encourage it. Strange, considering these are otherwise very rational men.
Not even factoring in the many, many majority white high schools nationally which still field a football team and are backed by an overzealous fan base and community. So I don’t think we’re there yet as a society where it’s blatantly black gladiators performing for white audiences. Yes, the NFL is less than 30% white, but that’s not from a lack of trying. Maybe in a generation or two, we may see this narrative more resemble reality.
13
interesting discussion- as a former HS and college player- yes we wore leather helmets on the JV- i see both sides of the argument- the attraction of the game and the dangers of the game. You may recall the sport was almost banned because of the flying wedge that actually killed players on the field of play and that Teddy Roosevelt stepped in and insisted on a reformed set of rules. There are ways of safe practice - go to the Dartmouth College football web site for some excellent examples. Whether the entire sport would follow such sound thinking is another question. As to the gladiatorial and master slave aspects of the game as well as the documented health impacts - football joins the internal combustion engine and the fossil fuel economy as a process that devours its own.
1
One thing that seems to be missing from this article is taking a few steps away from the trees to see the forest. Football and its potential scholarships weighed against the risks of permanent physical and mental impairment are only 'options' because of the disparities in wealth and opportunities for advancement.
When a group of people like young, dark skinned males in our culture feel their lives and futures are worth little, they will take the huge gamble of competing in Football. The ones that 'make it' are held up as lodestars for all the others who have dreams of reaching the port importance and independence.
3
Tragically, this is how America fixes problems today---we let market forces, not the common good, rule decision making. We have enough money rolling around in this country to provide equal educational opportunities, but instead, we prefer policies that send huge amounts of money right to the top and leave no monies for an essential pillar of our democracy---education. To leave poor parents with the terrible choice between funding their son's education at the expense of the real probability of incurring a life-long disability is just one example of the moral cancer eating away at those noble ideals written into our founding documents.
2
Football has been a hard habit to break for us. After all, my wife and I met at a college football game in 1962! Both our boys played flag football when we lived in Texas, with one of them playing in middle school. Fortunately, soccer intervened, as our older son played in high school and at the D-1 level in college.
Since soccer in the U.S. has become higher profile, we've pretty much given up football, except, of course, for continuing to watch the Patriots. Nevertheless, our sport appetite is now largely satisfied by this great international game, which, despite its own risks, is satisfying for watching competition, for its international components, and for its relative safety.
4
The only thing that will change what is described in this article will be when people who fork over money to watch the sport stop.
Should 70,000 seat college football stadiums begin to edge toward less than half full and television ratings no longer attract the advertising revenue to justify rights payments to the various leagues, colleges will be forced to drop the very expensive sport.
Will this happen?
Yes. However it will be in a couple of decades when kids who are yet to be born will be playing electronic games, as opposed to stepping out on the field.
Hopefully there will by then be other ways for all kids to get a complete higher education without having to risk their health, or pile up a massive amount of crippling student debt.
3
While I do appreciate the author offers a perspective of the student athlete who might not otherwise make it to college without football, given the risks associated with the sport, I think it careless to allow boys to play before significant changes occur to better protect the athlete. What the article doesn't discuss, is that many of the athletes (read African American boys) have slim professional options after the sport. Seldom, even with degrees from the best high schools/colleges, is their education received vs other students who don't devote virtually all their time to the sport, enough to make them competitive in outside fields.
This can be an issue with other academic athletes, however football, which maintains the highest number of professional athletes of any major US sport, (~1700 of which 70% are African American) most are already hindered by generational effects of racial discrimination in this country. That, coupled with potential significant brain degradation, makes it much more difficult to function in the world as a normal adult.
I simply don't see the upside. Most of these athletes would be superior athletes in other sports if given the opportunity. The lessons learned in football like teamwork, mental toughness, working through adversity, and many others, are all lessons that can be learned in other sports. My 4th grader played and loves football, but my wife and I are no longer willing to risk his brain for our enjoyment on Saturday afternoons.
5
The football tail wagging the education dog.
Purely based on the potential for permanent injury I would never have encouraged our son to play football. To excell at this sport it is necessary to start playing not later than than around 10 to 12 years of age and preferably younger. At that age children are simply not capable of making an informed decision about the risk/reward ratio of playing football.
7
Both parents are Ivy League lawyers and we keep our elementary school age son in tackle football for a host of reasons, despite the hype and the risks. Such an amazing sport for teaching discipline, sportsmanship, athleticism, teamwork and grit.
4
And may your heart not be broken one day when the damaging punishment your son is taking takes its toll on him.
3
How dare you decide to allow your kids to learn the tremendous life-long positive lessons football instills in kids.
Hard work, overcoming challenges, physical and mental endurance and toughness, teamwork, and the joy of accomplishment in a sport that rewards the abilities males seem to genetically possess.
Your “betters” demand you avoid anything and everything that has the potential to harm your offspring, after all the world is all cupcakes and lollipops.
I say good for you. Your kids will be running corporations and kicking butt, while most others will be taking the anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills to deal with their unhappy and unfulfilled lives.
5
Most likely, both of the students featured in this column are eligible for free college tuition at a state university in their home state of New York. They would still need to pay for books, other fees, and living expenses (which many students do with student loans, or they simply commute to school). If they have decent grades and do well in their high school years, they would probably also earn additional academic scholarships on top of need-based aid. The problem in counting on sports scholarships is that are typically not that generous, averaging only a few thousand dollars per athlete. A tiny percentage of players end up in Division I schools, and an even smaller percentage of players end up in the NFL.
16
All good points that the author failed to even acknowledge. Truth is, though, excellence at a sport is an academic shortcut to higher-ranking schools (and I say this without judgment - I'm from a family of athletes). SUNY Binghamton, apparently, isn't good enough for the kids the author is talking about and, frankly, the vast majority of them wouldn't be able to distinguish themselves on academics alone.
Joining the army (which is another way to get a college education) is even riskier. There is no free lunch.
3
There you go: the ignoramuses or haters. Education should not be considered a ‘free lunch’. It should be free and merit based only.
Parents make decisions every day designed to protect their children without having all the relevant facts at hand. For example, driving their kids to school which exposes them to the risk of being involved in a crash because parents fear that their kids might be abducted, the risk of which is very negligible in comparison.
3
I recommend Steve Almond's excellent book "Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto" for a comprehensive, well researched examination of the many ways in which the NFL is morally compromised. Mr. Samaha's narrow focus on racial issues and player injuries is just the tip of the iceberg.
5
I played only in High School. No Pop Warner in my small town. Then on to college, but no football - never considered myself talented enough, big enough or fast enough. But, did play soccer - a club sport. My sons and grandson played football in High School. All better athletes than me - but they stopped playing after High School. Now, have rugby here in town - grandson and grand-daughter playing - girls and boys mixed - age and weight divisions. There I think is the answer. Expect Rugby and Soccer to move to the front of the pack in High School and College. Flag football will probably continue as a P.E. activity and an intramural sport in College. Tackle football will continue to shrink. Reality.
7
We get what we pay for in this country.
Sports pays and we have some of the best sports players in the world.
And what are the odds of making it to professional sports or even getting a meaningful college education.
We can fix education and reduce poverty.
Or we can continue paying for welfare, police, court systems, and prison.
2
In 2015, only 23% of NCAA Division I football players were first-generation college students (and that number has been decreasing for years, and is likely even lower today). Football is, overwhelmingly, not a vehicle to education for families like those presented in this article (which makes their mistaken belief, and their sons' sacrifice, even sadder).
https://theundefeated.com/features/gentrification-of-ncaa-division-1-col...
9
No kids "still need football." I played it as a kid and still enjoy my season tickets to watch the West Point Black Knights home games. Of course, none of the cadets who play do so for a scholarship (all cadets attend the service academies for free), or with visions of a pro career dancing through their heads. They're off to lead men and women in combat after they graduate, which is why they chose West Point over Ohio State. No, they play football for the love of the game.
What all children need is an education, which will enable them to find and keep a job in today's competitive work environment. West Point grads get one of the best in the nation. Sports, especially violent ones with high rates of injuries, are not anyone's ticket to a secure future. But there is money to be made, so colleges will field teams to get a share of the NCAA pie, thereby corrupting their core mission of educating our young adults.
And families who prostitute the health and well-being of their children in the hopes of gaining a short-term scholarship are mortgaging their futures for fool's gold.
10
Since when do military cadets attend the academies for free? They pledge their lives to military service and might pay for their education with it.
Nobody needs football. Full stop.
18
When, oh when, will America grow out of its juvenile infatuation with the NFL??
14
Wouldn’t that be great and a bunch of billionaires profiting shamelessly from a brutal dangerous game a little less wealthy.
1
If these people put their energy into helping their kids pursue academic endeavors, these same kids could undoubtedly get scholarships or financial aid sufficient to pay for a legitimate college education. This kind of mentality is why you end up with somebody like Trump as President.
4
The public school educational opportunities in black and brown students in nyc are limited. Parents have to look for better or more educational opportunities for their kids. The parents look at athletics catholic charter and private schools for a wider educational opportunities. In matter of fact. Many parents move out of nyc to the suburbs or down south. The best solution to this issue are for the parents to keep their kids in their communities and nyc Dept of ed to FIX the schools. More kids of color would get into the specialized Hs but the parents and kids just want the Dept of ed to make their local schools better. Dept of ed can keep the test just fix the schools especially on the elementary and Jhs level. These are the solutions that the DOE can implement: more resources; link affordable housing policing community involvement and schools together; have parents and teachers working together in elementary PTA;specialized Hs tutoring program from 5th grade; bring back trade schools; create 10 to 15 specialized hs
without an entrance exam; stress creative skills in elementary schools for all students- Phys ed, art and dance theatre coding and music; let teachers teach; stop state testing as the main assessment of schools teachers/admin and students; take students on trips; stress more problem solving critical thinking in the curriculum and teaching and have the teachers and parents more say in the schools and more afterschool programs for students and parents
This is a delusion. Only a tiny fraction of high school players will win a college scholarship, and almost none of those lucky few will ever be paid a salary as a player.
If these kids want to succeed in life, they will drop sports and spend the time studying.
11
Standard NYT fare. Enormous generalizations based on attending games in New York and Northern New Jersey and focusing on two kids. In many places in the United States, football remains a largely white sport. The narrative that white parents are pulling their kids from the sport in droves while black kids fill the void is overstated. Look at the state champions outside of metro NYC for some context.
20
Yes, in Kansas it is very white at high school football games. It’s very well attended, publicized, and covered on local news.
No one spends much time talking about the brain injuries.
2
They don't need football, they want the benefits of their skills. Plenty of poor people with brains can go to college for free and have success.
9
Consider for a moment that sports in general can be considered one of the last bastions of true meritocracy remaining in the US. Being recognized for your skills at football or any sport does not require having a proper pedigree or a strong network and the team often acts as a second family. Nobody cares about your background or race - only the results and work that you put in.
The same cannot be said of the standard academic path or corporate world which we seem to fantasize these young men breaking into with all the barriers, nepotism, and inefficiencies.
For the ones that can actually get into the NFL it's a life changer that would have never been obtainable through conventional means. For the ones that can make use of the free ride through college it grants opportunities that would not have been available. I don't blame the football players who push their own kids away from the sport, but I question whether or not they would choose differently given the opportunities the sport opened up for them and their families.
4
I understand what the author is saying, that a talented player opens doors for himself. But I wonder, if we substituted "gladiator" for "defensive end" if the argument would hold.
We are rewarding kids for risking their brains. For risking the meat that makes up their sense of self. For risking the ability to be a doctor or lawyer that the game and scholarships provide.
I don't blame or fault these kids for jumping on whatever opportunity our society presents. But I do fault our society for the bad bargain we force them to consider. No young person should be given a choice of two doors, one with a lion behind it. and another with a tiger.
15
When I enrolled at MIT in 1963, collegiate football had been banned for more than half a century. We were told because the temptation to reduce academic standards to build a winning team was an issue. Much afterward, football re-appeared, partly due to the school acquiring the gear abandoned by another great tech school discontinuing the so-called sport. Now, with the evidence looking conclusive, I expect more reconsiderations at schools that do not use disposable gladiators as a herd of cash cows.
Football, the American version anyway, is much more extreme than ever; bigger and faster kids impacting each other harder. In order to get competitive, a huge amount of training, much of it debilitating to the entire body, is necessary. The time alone, plus the constant toll of injury, reduces the odds of anyone succeeding at collegiate or pro levels, or for that matter, making it to old age in any kind of a decent way. A very skinny bet for most poor children.
Sure, we like our stadium war, our gladiators putting everything on the line. We even like to see blacks beating on blacks for our entertainment. It’s who we are, and it isn’t going to change, but there’s more of a cost than we think.
8
Is this how far we've come? We're now sacrificing our disadvantaged youth, filtering them through the training grounds of gladiatorial sports that whittle away their brains just so they can have the chance to get an education? Ostensibly the goal would be to use those depleted brains in a more lucrative career than would be otherwise available to them. It's sad, immoral, and mindless.
I was a fan of the NFL for over 30 years, watching my favorite team every Sunday like a religious zealot. I gave it up two years ago, no longer willing or able to support something so grossly exploitative and unethical. I hope that others do the same.
13
It's not a coincidence that the remaining hotbeds of high school and college football are mostly in deeply red states where slavery flourished, and where a 'plantation' mentality still exists. The NCAA exploits unpaid black college athletes so rich, white, university administrators and coaches can reap unjust rewards. What does that remind you of? Then, a tiny fraction of those athletes go on to perform for rich, white, NFL team owners. Fortunately for all, the end of the football-as-sport story has already been written. It's not an if, but a when.
18
@markymark
The fact that the “enlightened” states of Michigan, Ohio, Washington, Nebraska and even, gasp, California have major football schools cuts against the argument that football continues because of southern racism
And, a farm system for NY schools? Are they importing southern overseers?
No, it’s not a racist plot against black children. If so, it’s one firmly supported by cheering parents, black and white
Parents should put the well being of their children first but don’t pretend many parents don’t enjoy their child being hailed as a star athlete no matter how dangerous the sport
1
Even though I disagree with their choice to play football because it's ridiculously dangerous - I'm still saddened that the first time Isaiah is spotlighted in The New York Times, Mr Samaha gratuitously insulted both his speed and his size, ruining a keepsake article and damaging his reputation as an athlete from a college recruiting standpoint.
23
I completely agree. I actually don't think either kid's name or picture should've been in here, but that would've weakened an already-weak article. I can't imagine what the coach and students at Poly Prep must think of his brother, fair or not.
3
Imagine for a moment if there were no such thing as football. And then one day a pundit said "we want equal educational opportunity for all races, but black boys aren't scoring well on academic tests, so I have invented a form of gladiatorial combat in which some black boys will get scholarships and others will have their brains scrambled." Everyone would /rightly/ call this out as racism.
/Every part/ of that imagined policy would be racist, not only the part about scrambled brains. Black boys aren't doing well on tests, so we should... invent a special non-academic workaround for them? No! The non-racist solution would be to figure out what's wrong with the tests, or what's wrong with early childhood education.
There's no way football would be allowed for kids under 18 if it were just being introduced now.
And, as other readers have said, the funding of college football is an incredible drain on the academic mission of colleges.
Let's solve our equal opportunity problems the straightforward way. And let's have a guaranteed national income so that no child grows up in poverty.
12
Education, like everything in life, should be earned. I’m a white male nearing 60 who grew up in a low income neighborhood in Queens during the city’s bad old days, flirting with bankruptcy and the nightly 10 o’clock news full of murder and mayhem. I know for a fact that my parents property taxes were a sliver of what people paid in suburban Long Island towns like Jericho, Massapequa and Smithtown. For whatever reasons - finishing school among them (both of my parents had to drop out to help their families survive), they had earned the right to live there, which we had not. And as a result, it would be ludicrous for me to expect to have had the same education, the same playgrounds, the same sports and activities, the opportunity to go to college, the same future as those parents kids did. These days, entitlement is all the rage but I refuse to play along.
8
It’s a sad comment on America that anyone would consider training as a gladiator in order to escape from poverty. Shame on our education system for allowing tremendous chasms to exist depending on your zip code; shame on Americans for supporting this gladiatorial sport.
9
If Hempstead taxpayers pay twice the property taxes as homeowners in NYC, they should expect schools and opportunities that are two times greater. And if taxpayers in Farmingdale pay five times the property taxes as Hempstead, they have every right to demand schools and opportunities five times better than Hempstead and ten times better than NYC. And it follows that if taxpayers in Old Brookville are paying three times what homeowners pay in Farmingdale, they shouldn’t settle for anything less than schools and opportunities that are three times better than Farmingdale, fifteen times better than Hempstead and thirty times greater than NYC. It’s about earning what you get in life for yourself and your family.
@From Where I Sit Look at a property tax bill on Long Island. A majority goes toward schools, but there are many other taxes: police (a significant amount that no one ever mentions), fire, trash, lighting, county tax, open space, etc. In NYC, the property taxes are lower because the city can collect taxes from large corporations and other businesses. The method of collection does not imply that city students are less deserving of a good education.
Should there be discussion of the fact that most disadvantaged boys who are tempted into and encouraged to play football may be from racial minorities?
The question relates to whether there is an unspoken, perhaps unexamined belief that brain and other serious physical injuries are not as important to them. Plenty more where they came from.
Doug Giebel, Big Sandy, Montana
5
As fans criticize the new helmet hitting laws in the NFL this season, they should remember that it is not only in the interest of the NFL to keep the game alive, but in the interest of low income children to keep the game alive. When I was in high school, the game to proved to be a way out of the ghetto for a lot of my teammates.
1
My husband played for 10 years in the NFL. You would reconsider your statement if you lived with him. It’s not in anyone’s best interest for it to continue - not even a little bit.
1
"...Surely we’d feel better as a society if promising kids like Andrew and Isaiah weren’t bashing their heads together hundreds of times a week. But until they see other lanes of opportunity reliably opened for them, they will continue to do so...
Look on the bright side...
If this egregiously-hazardous sport can be banned – especially so in our inner cities – all sorts of park-like green spaces then available for progressive mayors to designate as safe-shooting-zones...
At that point, no more limiting things to elite athletes - everyone in school welcome on the field...
Attendance would likely improve – though literacy and graduation rates, less so...
And – don’t lose the ambulance on the sidelines just yet…
.....
To level-set, not a football fan...
For some time, been following the weekend stats on inner-city shootings and murders much more closely…
Baltimore somehow always seems to punch above its weight…
Though Chicago coming on strong…
It's like the military. My own husband was laughed at by his family when he thought of going to college because they were poor. Even though he did well in school. So people naturally look for other avenues of success. He's a veteran now and a college graduate. What's the cost?
4
@C.B. So you can join the military and get a college education, how nice.
1
One thing to think about, for the young man considering engineering or pre-med: at a major university, being a member of the football team is at least a 40-hr/week job. STEM majors NEED to spend a lot of hours in class, the lab, studying and doing problem sets. Are there enough hours in the week to do both the work required to play football and the work required for a STEM major? Yes, there are STEM majors on major college football teams, but they are pretty few and far between.
10
Besides the trauma aspect, the goal of everyone except for those born to truly wealthy families should be to graduate college without onerous debts. Tally the cost of four years of college, realize that's after taxes, then compare with the median salary in the USA. So why not free college like so many European countries? (Caveat: higher education in many of those countries is far more competitive, slack of in high school and you're not getting in- period. We have far too many students in college, it's a big money making racket!)
Dreams change. Not everyone who's a great athlete at the age of 12 gets a college scholarship. Good luck to Isaiah, but a kid that can't make varsity in 10th grade probably isn't getting a football scholarship. The really talented kids aren't usually playing freshman ball either, unless it's a school policy. NYC isn't exactly a hotbed of football talent either. Sends far less kids to college than a comparably sized population like Ohio or Georgia.
Aim High was my high school's motto. But just like not everyone gets their dreamed for athletic scholarship, not everyone makes it into medical school or a reputable law school. The average salary for law school graduates might shock plenty of folks. There are courses in college that are comparable to the coach saying sorry, you didn't make varsity. In fact the funneling and filtering that occur in high stakes athletics and academics are far more alike than different.
3
If the boys are athletically talented look for a safer sport--there are scholarships to be had there, too. The kid across the street got a free ride to college via Lacrosse.
9
@The Poet McTeagle
Club lacrosse, which is where these kids learn, is seriously expensive.
1
Black and Brown females are graduating from college at higher rates than their male counterparts, none of these women have the luxury of a football scholarship. They are financing their educations by other athletic scholarships, need based scholarships, Federal grants, and yes, depending on family income and institution, student loans.
The Black and Brown young men can choose the same path as their female counterparts, eschewing football and saving their minds.
14
@Richard
Under Title IX women's sports and men's sports need to be equivalent. Because men's football includes so many players, the number of women's sports has to be greater. Very often, football revenues fund all women's sports and all women's scholarships. If football were discontinued, women's sports would be cut in half.
3
@Richard As do white people, your comment is racist by my standards. Here we have free college tuition. In Florida they have free tuition. Nobody with talent needs to play football to go to college. NOBODY!!!
2
@michjas No if football was eliminated women's sports would be mostly eliminated. Basketball and softball might survive.
There are lots of other games to play. This one was always dangerous and boring with all its stops and starts. Baseball, basketball, soccer. All way more interesting.
10
@scientella Baseball and soccer are totally boring to me. Little mental ability in either of them, unlike football.
3
"...will decide the risks are worth it." Seriously? It's a very high probability that the sport will lead to brain damage, not just a "high risk" of that happening. It's ridiculous anyone is permitted to play football in schools anymore, and more so that "some families" are deciding to allow their children to play football. Do they think they'll rely on lawsuits once the damage is done?
2
This is a misrepresentation of reality in keeping with the liberal script. By the way it might make a nice script for a FRONTLINE show.
African American (AA) culture puts a big emphasis in athletics, in particular basketball and football (by the way basketball does not have significant head-injury risks). If in fact that big push towards athletics was significantly representative of an AA emphasis on academics, then it would stand out. Do inner city schools with a big AA-athletic presences also tend to have strong academics?
Having lived in a city with a number of such schools I certainly have not seen it. When I want to see AA youth focused commitment then I can see it routinely on the athletics fields. And only rarely in the library where I tutor.
Undue obstacles for “black” (which is the real issue here) athletes with regards to academics? Simply look at the adjustments to admissions that are common at colleges (and inner city schools) to vanquish that hypothesis.
If you want to succeed at learning, then get after it directly.
Finally a wonderful example of the extreme racial pandering with the line about “this country’s racial caste system”.
9
Financial aid is also available for non-athletes based on academics and family finances. More money than for athletics.
Stating an ominous racial caste system is to blame based on choices made by them and their parents, both aware of the risks, is offensive and implies irresponsibility on the part of the parents, schools and coaches. All people here have the right to participate in dangerous activities and do so on a daily basis. As long as these kids and their parents are aware of the risks, it's their choice to make. Implying that it's their only choice is ridiculous.
5
This article is myopic. There is far more scholarship money available for academic than athletic achievement and it doesn't require the equivalent of a physically punishing part-tome job. If a sport keeps kids on the straight and narrow untl college then there are other sports and activities.
18
The US is struggling to stay competitive. All sports scholarships should be made illegal. Kids should play sports for fun. Competitive sports are a vestige of our primal past. We need professional engineers, doctors and scientists, not professional football players.
13
Playing Football and going to the RC Church as kids are one and the same. Both are done for one reason only: Parents think it is great for character. Actually both are brainwashing of kids by adults and fully detrimental.
12
There is no acceptable trade-off for permanent brain damage. There are other routes to an education and success.
8
Think about it...universities are still at the forefront of all this. Institutions that purport to exist to develop the intellectual capabilities of their students are actively promoting these gladiatorial contests that have been proven to damage those same intellectual capabilities. It's as if churches were engaged in running brothels to support their activities and "get their brand out there." How long will it be before people call them out on this hypocrisy? Most schools aren't even making money on running these sports enterprises in the first place, so why would they continue to do something so clearly in opposition to their claimed purpose?
I know that the alums are thought to like this and write checks as a result (mostly to the athletic department, however). But that's a poor excuse. If "student athletes" were being killed in fiery wrecks on a regular basis, do you think there would not be pressure for universities to discontinue their stock car racing programs even at the risk of alienating alumni fans? Same thing here.
8
It is not just poor youth. Ask most middle age corporate drones if they would have traded their lot in life for an NFL players.
Heck, ask most NFL players. They know the risks. They decided it is worth it. Would I shave a few years off my life to lead the life of an NFL player plus guarantee my family that not a one of them would ever need to work a day in their life? Where do I sign?
4
First: You should want your kids to work. Second: My husband, a 10 year vet of the NFL, would trade places with you if you’d like. He would love a break from feeling insane 85% of each and every day. Third: He actually didn’t know he was signing up for a few years to be “shaved off” - many of he guys didn’t when he played. Now? Yes, they do make a choice. Lastly: It’s not quite as easy as you may assume to play football, retire young, and then lose your ability to regulate your emotions 6.5 years later. Despite lamictal, lithium, Prozac, therapy, group therapy, Wellbutrin, hormone therapies, and a residential program, football seems to have left him with the great gift of a “bipolar” diagnosis in his mid 40’s. Combine this with near constant angst, rage and misery, as well as an inability to find joy in anything - ever, and you have an absolute dream of a life. The really disturbing thing? Our daily life is repeated by more ex-NFL families than you can even imagine. Does that sound good to you?
51
111 NFL players who died with CTE have been identified. All other cases are technically unproven. And the concussion problem in football is huge. The number of players with mental health symptoms is large. The connection to the concussions is logical and seems highly likely. Many players have more mild symptoms -- headaches, loss of balance, memory problems and so on. The connection of those symptoms to concussions is logical as well and seems highly likely. Most players do not suffer from mental health or milder problems. Players at some positions have mores symptoms than others. Linebackers and running backs are particularly vulnerable. And those who played the game at higher speeds with greater abandon have fared worse.
There is a lot of anecdotal evidence among the comments. Still, there are many more who played football without serious injury than with. If the anecdotal evidence of injury were collected, it would help prove cause and effect.
Proof of causation requires more than a collection of antidotes. But the more antidotes the better. Unfortunately, the lack of proof of causation is holding things back. Football goes on because many people want it to and are willing to keep the game going as long as proof of causation remains elusive.
@michjas Is it large as a percentage of all college players?
Actually you are wrong. Lineman are particularly vulnerable as they absorb “small” repeated hits on every single play, which research has shown is more closely linked to CTE issues. You are also very wrong about most not having mental health issues. You’re wildly off on that one - the lawsuit didn’t stem from a single tale. This is a more systemic problem than you could even know. The NFL “family” isn’t all that big - those of us in this world have an uncomfortably close view of how complex and scary this is. More former players have issues than the general public would ever suspect.
2
Can we just all agree not to be complicit with this madness? Please don’t watch pro or college football. Don’t attend games. Examine your local school budget to see how much is spent on football.
It is sad that the families in this story feel that football is their best option. I can see how it would be difficult to know about or navigate the more fruitful paths to college. The painful reality is that most college players don’t graduate, and many aren’t given full access to classes and peers because their job is to play football.
20
As wealthy and creative as we are, there has to be a better way to provide an opportunity to go to college.
9
@jennifer There are many, people don't talk about them Poor people get grants and scholarships as well if they earn them. Do you know about Pell grants?
1
There’s always the GI Bill.
1
Playing football was never my thing The practice schedule was brutal and I'm uncoordinated anyway. I could warm the bench on JV but I wasn't going anywhere. Instead, I got a job working for the football team. Worked all 4 years. Not a bad gig for a high school student. I mostly got paid to stand around and watch football. I even managed to leverage the experience into working training camps for NFL teams in the summer and eventually a college job doing live broadcasts on game day. Good deal.
By the second half of high school I had a decent amount of AV experience. As a result, one of the coaches asked me to take over responsibility for taping the games. These tapes were the raw footage that students used to get athletic scholarships. Local colleges would scout the games. The clip reels I put together though were the resume players could submit anywhere.
There was one young man in particular that was absolutely phenomenal. He could run circles around any special teams we ever came across. Games would easily go 50-0. The young man had few prospects in life if he couldn't catch a ride on football though. I worked really hard on that tape. He ended getting a full ride to college just short of Ivy League by the start of his senior year. The coach had the good wisdom to basically bench him for the entire season so he wouldn't get hurt and lose his ride.
Is football perfect? Absolutely not. However, there are some happy endings.
5
I played high school football in NYC. I hold a Ph.D., I teach high school, I coach 7th/8th grade football now and my oldest son is on the team. High school football is a tough game and teaches tough lessons that transfer to life. I would not want my sons to play college football, but the hysterics about high school are excessive and misplaced.
10
@Hunt
Tough games come a dime a dozen (rugby, lacrosse, etc.). And apart from injury considerations, sports that have more action and less standing around (the two aforementioned sports, as well as soccer, field hockey, team handball, etc., etc.) are more conducive to overall fitness, especially cardiovascular fitness.
3
My husband played pop warner, high school, college and then 10 years as a starter in the NFL. He’s intelligent, well educated, kind and hard working. He also got diagnosed in his mid 40’s with bipolar disorder, an impulse disorder and ADHD - he had no mental health history prior to his mid 40’s. He’s quite different to who I always knew him to be. It’s quite bizarre watching someone you’ve been with for nearly 2 decades change so suddenly, and many other families live this same story day in and day out. It’s a nightmare, frankly. None of our children have or will play football, because we know better now. I guarantee you can teach whatever it is you think football can without doing potential damage. It’s not worth it.
4
Most kids DO NOT need football.
I have a colleague from work whose son, a high school junior, has just had his first retinal surgery.
But he insists he will continue to play football.
Too bad.
9
You can't diagnose CTE without a brain exam. And you can only perform the exam after death. That means you can't diagnose the disease upon onset.. Moreover, once symptoms appear, it is generally too late for effective treatment.
The lure of big money is great in football but often illusory.
Apart from the money, football has a special appeal to many top athletes. Large teams promote camaraderie and a level of racial mixing not seen in any other sport. And football rewards athleticism to the max while it calls for mastery of a complex playbook.
The objection to football as big business is not a part of a sound cost benefit approach. Art is a bigger business, and millions have been paid to Baryshnikov and great actors of the theater.
Rule modifications and equipment modifications are progressing steadily. Efforts to diagnose CTE in the living are moving forward. And the concussion protocol is now much more strictly followed.
It is time give it up for many kids. But for some, the evidence remains too uncertain. The unique racial mixing, the camaraderie, the chance of financial reward, and the sheer love of the game should not be abandoned lightly. There are other sports and other activities with higher risk of injury and death. And. above all, you don't crush the dreams of young men because you object to the salaries, the costs, and the fanatic fans. And you certainly don't pretend you are protecting players when you simply don't like the game.
9
It was obvious early-on that our son was much faster over 50 yards than any of his classmates so when he reached football age he was encouraged to sign-up. Thankfully he had zero interest in team sports, otherwise his mother and I would have intervened as his is tall, with a long, thin neck and a brain much better-suited for science and sailing and stuff like that.
16
Tested a young man who had been red shirted in the football program at a major University. He had over half a dozen concussions in his high school and one year of college football career. After his last concussion he had headaches and other symptoms for over 3 months. His parents pulled him from the University and he now views his football career as the worst decision of his life. He will keep an eye on his cognitive abilities with the plan of catching any early symptoms of cognitive decline. This is simply not a good sport for any kid.
37
Extrapolating from one kid to all is not sound reasoning. If football had no positive value, your argument might be better. But football has more participants than any other American team sport and their lists of reasons for playing run from simple enjoyment to profound self-fulfillment. Your comment is cavalier.
3
I’m part of a group of women who are married to current and former NFL players and the bulk of the topics we discuss are related to living with the results of football induced damage (primarily the brain damage stuff). There are over 2,000 in the group - that’s better than one right? Plenty of evidence out there.
4
Excellent, thought-provoking essay. The racial divide in dangerous professional sports starts so early. Truly, it has been rare for this country to provide educational opportunities to its talented youth without demanding from them a high price -- whether that was military service (GI Bill) or risky sports to entertain us and earn scholarships. And even those demanding routes were mostly available to white men for years -- not women and not men of color. Not even all white men, given financial pressure to support families, religious bias, and other barriers. WHY are we so stingy in our refusal to invest in human potential??
I am white. Both grandfathers were highly gifted men whose families couldn't afford college. One never went to college though he would have loved to; he made sure his sons got the very best education and they did the same for their children. The other went to a military academy and became a career officer, serving with distinction and in great peril during WWII. The many gifted women in my family mostly did not get access to university education before my own generation. My FIL went to a service academy as a recruited athlete and suffered lifelong injuries.
There was a window of time for maybe two decades in the 20th century when we did support good education for most Americans, but it has closed. And we still haven't eliminated the widespread neurological damage done to American children by lead in water, paint, and dust. Shame on us.
12
These student athletes like may take the path to an elite division 3 college program. Eg. Williams, Amherst, Middlebury. Their football skills may not be D1caliber. But enough to be recruited to these programs to have a a chance at the American dream. Hopefully their coaches will guide them thru the recruiting process. As a parent of a former college athlete who attended one of those schools, excelling in a sport is a major tipping point in gaining admission.
5
D3 institutions do not offer athletic scholarships
With a limited number of notable exceptions, relatively few football players at competitive Division I institutions obtain undergraduate educations that prepare them for success as engineers or physicians. Their status as undergraduates, primarily as athletes, and only secondarily as students, makes this most unlikely.
Most football players at upper level Division I universities recognize this. Their goal in playing college football, which most never achieve, is success in professional athletics, not in engineering or medicine.
10
Serious question: Is the military safer than football? Wouldn't it be less dangerous to join the Army (Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, national Guard, Air Force) for its tuition plan than to play a smart that is almost guaranteed to shorten your lifespan? Playing college football is prestigious. Football players get girls and might go pro and make millions. It's a type of lottery.
8
I grew up in the 1960’s and have always loved watching football at all levels — high school, college and the NFL.
But that was before the dangers of the debilitating disease CTE were known. After reading stories about former NFL players like Mike Webster and Junior Seau I now view football very differently.
Football has always been a brutal sport, not even taking into account the ravages of CTE. There have been articles on Jim Plunkett, former NFL and Stanford QB (where he won the Hesiman Trophy in his senior year) who is now in his late 60’s and suffers from severe and debilitating chronic pain. This is the case for many former professional football players as well.
When taking all of this into account, to me football is just not worth the risk of incredible damage it does to the player’s bodies and minds. If I had a pre-teen son who was a gifted athlete and expressed interest in youth football, I would not allow him to play. Instead, I would direct him to a sport where the risk of severe damage to his body and mind is minimal.
10
Here in rural Montana, some of the same kinds of decisions are made by poor, rural white families. As long time season ticket holders to the University of Montana football program, we remind ourselves frequently that for the majority of kids grinding it out to entertain us, football represents their only chance at a college education. We are not willing to second guess either players or parents as they assess what risks participating represent. There are many things that can make us uncomfortable supporting the program, and we certainly are not rabid boosters, but in the end, every year our support translates to support for a few dozen kids getting an important opportunity. Until the cold, hard fact that college is not available to all who would benefit changes, some of us in the stands do our small part this way.
4
@Let the Dog Drive -- What are you doing to CHANGE "the cold, hard fact that college is not available to all who would benefit?" You could just donate the cost of the tickets and stay home. You could support targeted tax increases that would make it easier for students in need to continue their educations beyond high school. Do these individuals really have to risk their health, to perform for you, in order to win your support?
9
@Let the Dog Drive
Why not donate towards a non-sports related scholarship instead?
5
College shouldn’t be available to all, only those who have somewhere along the line EARNED it! What is the point if success if it’s going to be punished (oft by your own government, no less) by handicapping your kids? My boss built the company I work for from the ruins of expired service contracts of a now-defunct, historically well known 100 year old corporation. He lives an outstandingly comfortable life that he has earned but which has been used against him and his family. Both of his sons and three of their kids have been admitted to Ivy schools but due to his success, he had to pay full tuition while some of their classmates paid far less or nothing. In effect, he was helping to carry those who hadn’t achieved all that he has. Now, his granddaughter who has a Harvard Law degree, is supposed to work along side CUNY Law grads for the same pay and benefits.
1
I played high school football, I played a year of junior college football and stopped playing after I had a light concussion. It was one of my best life decisions to stop playing. It is a tragedy football has such an adoring public, as it is played now.
26
This is exasperating. For black kids, the path out of poverty is not limited to football. In most urban districts, merely graduating from high school will earn the low-income black student numerous opportunities for tuition-free college education. Every layer of government and philanthropy is focused on easing access to college for low-income students of color. Even if, or maybe especially if, the high school is underfunded. If the student does well academically, she can write her own ticket. But with high school drop-out rates in some urban systems hovering around 50%, it would seem that the incentives to graduate are inadequate, or something else is preventing low income black students from earning a high school diploma. Conservatives say it’s misplaced cultural priorities, but that can’t be discussed in liberal circles. Instead we get the trope that the system is so unfair that black kids can escape poverty only if they risk brain injury playing football. We know that’s just not true.
79
Gangs. Drugs. Poverty. Violence. Crime. One parent families. Substandard housing. No health insurance. Voter discrimination. Substandard segregated schools. Child abuse. Sexual abuse. Rape. Significant others in prison, Bad nutrition. These are some of the reasons "preventing low income black students from earning a high school diploma."
You can remove your head from the sand whenever you're ready,
2
"Yes, football is dangerous, but so is leaving one’s future in the hands of an unequal educational system."
By simply stating the problem, the solution is proposed: A more "equal" education system, to protect children from feeling compelled to participated in a "dangerous" activity.
10
@Dan88 I live in the District of Columbia, where per student expenditures are, across the board, about the highest in the country. Yet the student outcomes are among the worst in the country. It's clearly not just about money and an "unequal educational system."
15
@airish you can scour my original post and you will not find the word "money." You entangled "money" with "equality," not me. I only referred to improving education by making it more "equal." And although, all things being equal, more money will result in a better education system, that is not always the case, as your district apparently exemplifies.
Football was a means to a college education. I was from a family too poor for the necessary tuition in 1966. i had three spinal fusions, T12 to the sacrum, numerous concussions, both shoulders repaired, both knees replaced, two strokes, 1999 & 2001. i can walk unaided and play with my grand children, but it has been a horrific price to pay. I can not.say I would encourage anyone to choose college and then pro ball.
55
NOW WAIT JUST A MINUTE! There is a history of high levels of lead poisoning in the inner city, resulting in some cases that have been cured, but in other cases where the lead has damaged the kids' ability to learn, modulate their behavior and succeed in school. The evidence that tackle football is too dangerous for children to play is indisputable. Middle school kids who have had concussions have shown the same sort of changes in brain tissue and functioning as professional players who have retired due to CTE, or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. Whatever the job opportunities, children entitled to be protected from foreseeable brain damage. Yes, it will frustrate the career goals of some talented athletes, who can also learn to play other sports that are less damaging. Schools cannot afford the expenses of suits from children permitted to play who get large court awards in the $100s of millions of dollars.
3
We live in a mostly white upper middle class neighborhood. The high school boys engage in tennis, track, and swimming; not football. In this environment, the coin of the realm is cognitive ability. Head injuries as a result of contact sports is a too big risk.
43
That's not how decisions are made.
Mobility is ingrained in the society we live in. So are race and gender. The way up, depending on where you are on the social and racial ladders, follows specific and distinct paths.
If you're Black and have a certain physique, then a specific sport may be the way out of poverty. This is how our capitalism is structured. Race by race, notch by notch in our class and gender structure, we each have defined sets of possibilities for a few among us. Those possibilities, depending on who you are, are limited and shrinking as inequality widens.
No parent, when they're about to fall asleep, thinks of ways their baby will grow up to become rich and famous and settles on a sport that causes brain and other terrible injuries. Yes, people can be calculating. But this isn't a way that is common.
Football has had a rich tradition and the respect of generations of Americans. Until we've come to know for sure what it does to those who play the game, it was a venerable way to move up.
Now that we know, and now that we've seen the plantation mentality of the owners and their response to Trump on expressing civil rights opinions, but mostly on CTE, it's time to ban the game. There is no way to make football safe. Danger is inherent to it.
--
www.rimaregas.com-
32
@Rima Regas
JD, MD, and MBA are traditional ways to move up. From what I see, most black college students major in Film, African Politics, Afro-Amer Studies, or History. If more black college students majored in Philosophy (Law school), pre-med, STEM, and Econ, their lives might change. I say that as a former Humanities professor.
5
@richguy
Start funding public schools in Black neighborhoods at the same level as white middle class schools, and I guarantee you they will. But then, you'll need to explain why they're still not succeeding at the same rate as their white counterparts.
@Rima Regas
They are funded better than the suburban schools. It doesn't seem to do them any good. See the comment above about DC schools.
Football as played on the playground or weekends on the neighborhood streets is fun.
3 Mississippi's then rush.
Touch or tackle if field was soft enough for it.
The difference is in being T-shirts 'n Skins.
As opposed to being fully padded and helmeted.
When one is armored, you tackle and hit in much different manners. Watch Rugby as a good example of a rough 'n tumble sport. Yet they tackle and defend in much different ways. Once a hard helmet and pads are put on, one lead with their head and the intent is to put the opponent down, or out.
Not so in other sports.
Take the brain damaging aspect out of the schools.
If the child and parent want to participate in such activities, then they have outside club sports for just such games.
College 'n University's should be about advanced learning.
You want to participate in athletics, do so outside of school.
As this story comments upon, parents and children are moving away from childhood football as being played currently.
Football is fun. Watching is fun.
Gambling on your brain...not so much.
But we all make choices. Take risks. If they wish to be all they can be thru such endeavors, then have at it. But to do so for the sake of money seems to take away the beauty of the athletic endeavor. Play for the fun, comradery and competition.
Now excuse me. I need to trim my trees on my 32' ladder, before I resume my job framing buildings. Talk about dangerous, brain damaging endeavors...
12
In an otherwise superb and timely essay, the author included what I consider to be unnecessary information about the eight "elite" public high schools in NYC.
A significant plurality of students at these "elite" high schools are of Asian descent. These young men and women are often the first generation children of men and women who left China, Indian, Japan, Korea, etc. to secure greater opportunity for their children.
Contrary to what I understand Mayor de Blasio may think, white children ARE NOT PREVENTING black and Hispanic young people from slots at these "elite" high schools.
The author is correct that football and (to a lesser extent) basketball are often tickets out of poverty for our young people. The opportunity to attend a major university, to play Division I sports, and to matriculate with a bona fide degree are all incentives to play (and to excel at) football at the scholastic level.
Here in Ohio, several years back Curtis Samuel plied the skills that he learned playing football in Brooklyn to earn a scholarship to Ohio State. Mr. Samuel excelled for three (3) seasons, he turned professional, and he, hopefully, will be more injury free than he has been in the NFL.
Should Mr. Samuel have not earned his degree prior to joining the NFL, Ohio State will enable him to continue his education and obtain his four year degree (as Ohio State continues to with many of his peers) over however long a period of time for him to do so.
Higher education is an equalizer.
4
I wish someone would inform these families that their sons' chances of becoming a social worker, a doctor, a teacher, a scientist . . . etc - jobs that, although some being vastly underpaid for their value to the betterment of society and should at least lift them out of a world of utter poverty, are tremendously greater than earning a living from playing professional sports.
Studies have shown that around half, if not more, black professional athletes come from middle to upper class backgrounds. It is they, who from pre-natal to adulthood, receive the best resources needed to achieve, from nutrition to education.
At collegiate or professional level, having great physical ability is like having a pretty face in LA and asipring to become an actor - plenty of those in the sea. What usually separates the elite middle/upper class athletes from the poor elite athletes, however, boils down to their cognitive and non-cognitive abilites - Sports IQ. Poor elite athletes, who grew up in education desert environments at home and in the neighborhood, with mothers who abused drugs or nourished themselves poorly during pregnancy - these players have difficulty really "understanding" the game, reading defenses, controlling their emotions . . . etc.
Black culture and the (mostly white) corporate culture that feasts on the lionization of black athletes needs to be discussed in schools and in families.
16
In Washington State, low income students attend the University of Washington tuition free, for 25% of all undergrad students, no football needed. There are Pell grants and other options to minimize college tuition.
Football is an exciting game to watch and to play. Using college scholarships as a rationale for taking the risk is simply not valid these days.
18
If a parent knew with certainty that his/her child would suffer brain injury, would the parent encourage the child to play football and ignore the consequences?
If those reading my question are parents, I'd be interested in answers.
Long ago I briefly played high school football when protective gear was minimal. I have in the past been entertained by watching football games. I have known some who have suffered football-caused brain damage.
Doug Giebel, Big Sandy, Montana
3
If ever America needed yet one more argument in support of universal access to a publicly funded education, K-16, this is it.
Why should any bright young man (or woman) who aspires to become an engineer or business major (or an arts major for that matter) be denied a higher education because of their social or economic background?
These young men are our future. Give them the educational opportunities they need to succeed. Support higher education at state schools _for all students_ willing and able to do the work.
52
Sorry, but some of these posts are incredibly naive. Filling out financial aid forms is complicated, overwhelming and intimidating. A lot of these parents probably don't have the time, energy, capacity to do it. How can you read to your kids and play board games when you work 2 or 3 jobs? You get home late and, best case scenario, you have time to make dinner and make sure homework is done. Football is a brutal sport, not to mention the culture, and there are other ways and other sports, but yes, it is better than joining a gang as one poster mentioned. Let's be realistic - it is unlikely that football will ever be outlawed. We need to change the sport. I've always felt I would still watch professional TOUCH football. The athleticism is still amazing.
17
@AMM Yes, what you say is true. It is extremely difficult to be a good parent when dealing with all of the challenges of poverty. It's hard to find time to encourage your child academically with things like story reading and visits to the library. However, most of these parents find time to encourage and facilitate participation in football. Many can be seen spending time attending games and practices. Also, some Asians are also in very low-income circumstances and still manage to produce academically skilled kids. Just food for thought.
@AMM
Don't have (multiple) kids if you must work 3 jobs to support them. Helping a child succeed is part of parenthood. If you can't help a child succeed, should you have a child? Kids aen't pets.
2
At last a comment that doesn't assume football players' families are morons.
We all weight up risks and benefits in life, and the shame of football injuries lies with a society that provides vastly reduced opportunities for poor people.
1
I wonder what, if any, encouragement and support these kids are getting from their high schools to focus on academics rather than football. Not much, I suspect.
11
@Katherine Not much encouragement from their parents or local culture either.
It took me a long time to understand why football still holds it's appeal (and thus, why schools continue to field teams, and why children like these take this opportunity).
It isn't the football itself. It is the whole "Friday Night Lights" extravaganza, which in addition to the team, includes a few hundred additional students who march, twirl, dance, or play their instrument. Plus the fans. All that hoopla is great fun. It brings all different elements of the school together and if you can ignore the dangers to the team (which I can't), it is a wonderful thing.
Until we all decide what sport is going to replace football's central role in our communities football won't go away.
I wish these boys well.
13
@Lydia
Yes, Friday nights do all these fine things.
But, they don't need to be centered around a dangerous game.
There are other games that could serve as well.
5
@Joe Sneed
There seems to have been no movement toward doing so, and that is the point. Districts can't make the change on their own.
@Lydia
Sure they can.
Just drop football.
Rugby went through major challenges to players' safety. The tackling rules were changed, and are constantly being modified to safeguard players, and the game is much better for it. Surely the same can be done for the American sport. Players safety, surely, has to be paramount.
13
@James Devlin
True. Both college and professional lacrosse (box and field, women's and men's) have had stronger safety rules implemented. Families don't have to be as concerned about their children wrecking their brain due to the sport.
Now we just have to encourage the NW universities to field varsity lacrosse teams (besides the UO women).
No one should have to choose between CTE and a college education. The game should change to avoid head trauma. But did this line strike anyone: "First, the boys would trade their football talent for financial aid packages from local private high schools."? Am I alone in thinking that eighth graders aren't capable of choosing to risk their brain health for a private high school education? And could we please start a discussion about whether high schools should give athletic scholarships in the first place? I'd much prefer that scarce scholarship funds be used to finance budding scientists, engineers, writers and mathematicians.
62
If it is a private high school, it is their right to determine the basis for scholarships.
3
Do you know why boys play football? Because it is fun. Do you know why boys play hockey? Because it is fun. Do you know why boys like to wrestle? Because it is fun. Yes, there is a possibility they could get hurt. There is an even better possibility they they will find an acceptable outlet for their need for physical contact in a controlled environment; ..... and its fun. Of course if you are not a boy or have never been a boy, you probably won't understand.
20
@W.A. Spitzer Reading a book is fun. Solving a math problem is fun. Doing a biology exp3riment is fun. Working with a team to build a robot is fun. With the proper resources all schooling is fun.
3
@W.A. Spitzer
Right, because girls don't enjoy playing sports? Geez. Football is a game of aggression and tackle. What is fun about that?
4
@W.A. Spitzer No one plays organized football for very long for fun. I was a boy, a long time ago, but I remember both casual (touch) football and organized football. Casual football may have been fun, but organized football was work. Even at the junior levels, kids are driven to their limits and beyond. Those who are most willing to sacrifice their bodies are rewarded. Many suffer permanent injuries at the high school level and below. Bullying is common as a coaching technique. Boys only play organized football as a stepping stone out of poverty, and most got nothing out of it. So trust me, I understand: Your vision of organized football as fun is a pipe dream.
4
If football is your best--perhaps only--road out, go for it. Otherwise, play another sport such as soccer. It is more rewarding and can be played into old age. I know people insist that soccer contains its own risk for serious head injuries, but this risk is far less than in football. Further, there isn't, broadly speaking, a contact sport that doesn't have risk--whether that contact involves another person, the ice and snow, rocks or simply the ground.
1
@Bursiek There also isn't the funding for university scholarships that football has.
4
My father was born in 1906. Due to football injuries to his knees he could never run and play with me or my brother. He walked with a cane until he ended up in a wheel chair. Granted today's sport medicine is better, but my vote is always against football.
132
I don’t understand why kids among this group who do reasonably well in school need to turn to football in order to afford college because they would all get financial support based on family income.
118
@Larry Feig
You are guilty of being logical and unwilling to blindly accept the author's narrative.
14
If you're good enough to get into Harvard, they have the funds to pay 100% of the gap between what you can afford to pay (according to the government financial aid organization) and what college costs. Many less well-endowed colleges don't do that. UMass Amherst, for example, funds 80% of need. Often academic scholarships fund tuition, but not room and board. UMaine Orono gives National Merit Scholars a scholarship that covers all tuition, but not the cost of living and eating.
So, good students who aren't in the small class of people likely to get into an well-endowed, tippy-top tier college are probably better off going for an athletic scholarship. The fact that football skills matter more than being a good student is a sad commentary on American values.
7
@SAO
Likewise, football money is not guaranteed and not a 100% free ride at most schools. Outside of the Big 5 conferences in Division I, there is much less scholarship money than the lay public imagines for football, basketball, etc. For top-tier schools, the percentage of players actually getting "full-ride" money is low. In most sports, parents spend more time and money for their kids' sports than they ever get back in college scholarship money.
4
Yes it's amazing what people living in poverty will do to dig themselves out somehow. Having to sacrifice one of their children to dangerous sporting activities is I suppose better than joining a street gang.
7
Perhaps it is also amazing that affluent people, known as well as more hidden ones, diverse as all of US are,help their children to enter the harmful and harming sport of politics with its chronic, infectious, toxicity on unmeasurable pocketless-colorless-souls. Immunizing them.Against enabling equitable sharing.Of available and accessible limited human and nonhuman resources. Those needed for achieving and sustaining healthy wellbeing. In menschlich trusting safe homes. Neighborhoods. Communities of caringness. Civility as a norm and value and not as a semantic mantra. It may border on bring the miraculous that some of these affluents- whatever their assigned % place in their various environments-are not victims to such harmful socio-pathology. “THEY,” seeded and harvested in traditions of BE ing the controlling WE, in the ummenschlich WE-THEY violating paradigm, may/can even learn to practice documented “Gateism!”
Imagine, in realities’ uncertainties, unpredictabilities, randomness and lack of total control positive, helpful, unexpected outcomes for needed changes are possible when each of US, ourselves, and with others, makes an effort.
1
Disagree! This is a racist approach that demonstrates why minorities still have little representation in the engineering fields. These guys are exceptional athelets who will be able to excel at most of other sports that are less dangerous to a body: gymnastics, lacrosse, soccer even. It is because football is so heavily subsidised by the schools, these young men see no other choice than to submit themselves to a dangerous practice. My personal trainer who went to college on a full ride with football, forbade his son to be recruited. His words: "I want him to use his brain."
57
Why does the United States require unfortunate youths to risk their health to earn an opportunity to a good education that the fortunate have access to. The likely long term costs to their health mainly benefits the NFL billionaires and NCAA coaches who profit from the athletes risky endeavors. The NFL and NCAA contribute little towards the long term negative health costs these individuals and society will bear. The billionaire owners count on being able to exploit the predicament of these unfortunate students as demonstrated by their opinion of NFL players.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/magazine/where-does-the-nfl-go-after-...
7
The risk kids and their parents take playing football and incurring brain injury is one reason why the US needs to provide free tuition to state colleges and universities.
A couple of weeks ago at the local high school stadium I saw young kids, and I mean very young kids about eight or nine years old, fully geared up and ready to play organized tackle football. The parents allowing them to play with the knowledge that the game leads to brain injuries borders on child abuse.
It's not worth ruining your brain in return for a college scholarship. What will their time in college do for them if they have brain injuries from football?
17
While all sports (and daily living) pose physical dangers, sports that deliberately seek to create injuries, especially to the brain, bring significant questions worth discussion. While a school's education programs can be improved, while the lives of our families and children can be improved, are brain-damaging sports necessary? In spite of its popularity and economic benefits to some, is football really necessary at all? For the cheering throngs in the stands who thrill to the most brutal "hits," perhaps their addiction to the so-called sport could be remedied over time. Perhaps some less-lethal version of football could
eventually fill an expensive stadium. Perhaps a near-religious devotion to violence could be tempered. But where sports money talks, but the necessary funds to improve communities, neighborhoods, homes and schools is in eternally-short supply, the Vegas odds do not favor either our disadvantaged children or an adult desire for a decrease in national mayhem.
Doug Giebel, Big Sandy, Montana
4
Perhaps if the parents of black/brown children encouraged their kids to put as much effort to study instead of playing football, they could obtain academic scholarships.
Worked for the Asians in NYC, who often come from poor families, but prioritize education to get into specialized schools. Let’s not vilify the system when those students and families have made the choice that protecting the mind is a better investment than sending their children to gladiator camp.
88
@Chuck Woo
Agreed. And it worked for the eastern European Jews before them. But remember that in both groups most of the immigrants were middle class in their home countries. Many had little money when they left - or fled - their home countries, but they often had what is now called social capital. And scholarship was highly prestigious in both Jewish and eastern/southern Asian societies.
8
@Chuck Woo
Agree wholeheartedly. Outside of the top 20 universities in this country, the average acceptance rate is about 70%. Many, many, many decent colleges and universities would be falling over themselves to recruit these kids if they applied the same effort to academics instead of football. Minorities must learn that colleges and universities are selfishly trying to recruit them to prop up their political correctness-driven enrollment and graduation statistics. You do not need football to succeed or escape the housing projects, you just need time spent reading and applying yourself in ANY hobby or interest.
2
@Chuck Woo, If poor Asians were widely accepted to play football, poor Asian parents would possibly consider letting them in order to get scholarships.
What the ??? "They’re members of the first generation of football players to truly know the physical risks they face, taking the field even as a growing number of adults call for a prohibition of the sport, because their futures depend upon it"
And kids don't know the effects of cigarettes, alcohol, drugs...from seeing adults around them? Yet they still use them!
I knew the effects of falling off a roof when I was a teen, yet I still l loved to climb around on them. Almost fell off a few, had friends who did.
So did the early gladiators in Rome not know what the effects were of them going onto the coliseum floor?
What sort of reasoning is this?
Look, I love football, and I struggle whether or not to watch it. Which is all I do, I don't buy any merch, nor go to games - I wont pay (besides my cable subscription) to enrich the predatory, selfish owners. But "kids" don't know the real and hard risks of playing. No more then they realize that very few of them, a ridiculously small number of them will ever see any glory, let alone any real money. But many more will suffer an injury that either haunts them for a life time, or creeps up on them in middle/old age.
Maybe more importantly - most of them will be instructed by moronic adult males, who will instill absurd notions of manhood and fear of feeling fear. Of not admitting to being hurt, and not seeking help when they most need it.
You want to help these kids, fix the coaching and make it a true certified profession.
26
The kids who still need to play football look like Colin Kaeperick and Barack Obama.
The kids who profit from football tend to look like Robert Craft and Donald Trump.
The NFL and NCAAF players tend to look nothing like Bill Belichek and Nick Saban.
6
@Blackmamba
The kids who are to short to ever really consider sports look like Michael Bloomberg, Steven Spielberg, Rahm Emanuel, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos.
3
It is a shame that in the 21st century minority families still think that sports is the key to leaving the "hood". I had a student whose parents refused to support her college career saying that, instead, she should get married and have kids.
There will be little progress in improving the lives of a vast majority of poor, minority people until the culture changes. Encourage your children to study, learn and grow. Support their enthusiasm about science, business, and other professional pursuits. Allow for the possibility that they will not only exceed your accomplishments, but their own expectations. Then we will truly experience equality of opportunity.
50
@Rich I'm not sure if you were implying that only people of color ( in the hood) push their daughters to marry and have kids - where I live it's the white evangelicals.
Bootstraps are a myth - while many poor kids are holding down jobs to help pay the rent, live in extremely distressing situations, middle class kids are spending time with their SAT tutors.
If you feel so strongly about it , perhaps you should donate your time and mentor.
4
Although the NCAA touts high graduation rates for student athletes it cherry-picks the data and uses a different metric for these athletes than is used for full time college students.
Paul Steinbach points out in Athletic Business (https://www.athleticbusiness.com/Governing-Bodies/record-ncaa-graduation... that there is a substantial negative graduation gap between college athletes and the general, full-time college population. This gap ranges from negative 13.9 percent (football) to 20 percent (basketball).
Research done at USC (https://news.usc.edu/138228/leading-sports-schools-black-athletes-gradua... shows that "The report shows that just over 55 percent of black male student-athletes graduated within six years, compared with 60 percent of all black undergraduate men, 69.3 percent of all student-athletes and 76.3 percent of all undergraduate students."
The best way for student athletes of color to succeed in college is to de-emphasize athletics and for our K-12 to improve its job of preparing them.
30
@Frank Baudino
Good points, but it should be remembered that the vast majority of college athletes play sports other than basketball and gridiron football. When you give a range of -13.9% to -20%, based on those two sports, are you saying that soccer, lacrosse, wrestling, volleyball, etc., etc. all fall in between those two points?
1
@rella
Men's gymnastics has one of the highest four year graduation rates in the NCAA plus it probably has one of the highest STEM graduation rates too. They raise the NCAA graduation rate. NCAA Division 1 football and men's basketball tend to bring it down.
@Frank Baudino https://www.athleticbusiness.com/Governing-Bodies/record-ncaa-graduation... seems to be correct URL for first reference.
USC link is OK.
In 2017, the 2 highest paid employees in Washington State were Christopher Petersen ($3,419,600) and Mike Leech ($3,139,600).
How many boys like Andrew and Isaiah could receive full scholarships for academic achievement if football programs at state universities were separated from the academic organization, the coaches and management thrown off the public dole, and run as the affiliated businesses they truly are?
The football businesses could then pay the university to use its name.
Treating impoverished boys as gladiators in training is beyond immoral.
148
@Myrasgrandotter
The football programs are cash cows for the universities. SEC schools received a mind boggling 182 million dollars from football in 2016. Football pays for a lot of other things that universities otherwise could never purchase.
Not saying that is a good thing. Just a fact.
8
@Myrasgrandotter
Sad and depressingly true.
1
A very timely read as a I just watched a young African American teen in a football helmet being wheeled in on a stretcher to the ER at Massachusetts General Hospital in a full neck and body brace.
76
Football isn’t going anywhere.
3
@Eric Exactly right! Although probably not in the way you meant it.
9
In the early 20th century, football faced similar criticism, as the best of the brightest men from the Ivy League, white men of privilege, were suffering serious injuries and death. The president at the time, Theodore Roosevelt, stepped in and convened a conference at the White House with the presidents of the Ivy League colleges and the football coaches, including Yale's Walter Camp, the father of American football, to solve the problem. The current NCAA eventually emerged from this meeting to establish rules for the sport. Teddy Roosevelt, who promoted and participated in the "strenuous life" stepped in because he believed combative sports such as football and boxing made men of character, integrity, and strength, preparing the future leaders for the military, business, and industry. It seems that the strenuous life of the early twentieth century is no longer important. Even John F. Kennedy promoted its virtue. Now in the early 21st century, the effete life, characterized by physical, moral, and spiritual weakness is championed. Thank you.
5
You do realize there exists on planet earth a variety of other sports and extra-curricular activities to choose from, activities that also build character while promoting health and athleticism.
98
You do realize that the issue of concern is permanent brain damage, yes? This has nothing to do with men being considered “effete”, and everything to do with being physically and mentally hampered for their entire lives.
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@Southern Boy
I am a Neuro Nurse. I see football head injuries often. There is no way strength is built by knocking your precious brain against other human beings precious brains. I believe it takes a stronger not weaker person to reject harming their brain and not following others, but to find a sport that builds charter without permanent brain damage. Thats a real champion .
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Football is damaging to the health of those who play it.
This is true of professional, college and high school football.
All should be outlawed.
There should be no football "scholarships".
There are many safer ways for poor and minority students to be given the opportunity to go to college.
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What a fascinating and beautifully written article. Thank you to the author for his in-depth research and thoughtful analysis. I hope that these two impressive young men can find a safe path to reach their dreams.
13
I understand the wish for college scholarships.Don't do it.Enroll them in music programs,as early as possible.Read to them every night,even when babies.Utilize the public library.Turn the TV off,play board games,take walks.Look at the night skies.Never risk C.T.E. for your sons.My youngest highly recruited starting in 3rd grade.He was a phenomenal athlete,as early as first grade.He lost friends over it,we lost friends,we lost support from our schools.He will graduate this year from college,with wonderful prospects,but no chance of brain damage.He is a wonderful,kind guy.
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Your suggestions, while correct, carry a middle or upper-class perspective. Someone working an exhausting one or two jobs, with little access to decent childcare, would be likely be unable to spend time at public library that has diminishing operating hours, take long walks or perhaps even see the stars at night.
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@Barry ShortI appreciate the truth to your comment.I was a single Mom,for too many years.My work schedule,well certainly nothing that was predictable.Childcare? One of 4 schedules,my real job was my childcare schedule.But when time off,books to be read,clouds to study,public parks to walk.Not easy.Should certainly be more support for this.But parents should not have to choose the sport's route for their kids.Working class family here,but both of my sons doing great,without sacrificing their brains.
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Mr. Samaha's thesis is that the dangers of football are concentrated on children who can not afford college without a football scholarship. What about federal and state loans? That's how I afforded college and graduate school, without any athletic ability. It seems they are choosing the risk of football injury over the responsibility of debt.
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@sligachan
The average student today graduates with $37,000 in student loans which have interest rates between 4.5 and 7%. Most low-income students would need to borrow more than the average, and if grad school is in the picture it means they would be looking at debt of over $100,000 before they even start their professional lives.
Not taking on a debt that looks insurmountable IS responsibility. None of these kids would hesitate to take smaller loans for higher education, and that's something the country needs to address. No one should have to choose between the possibility of permanent brain damage or the certainty of a 6 figure debt to get an education.
28
$100K in debt inclusive of grad school isn't that much. It's pretty standard. You can't compare it to incurring $0 debt, you have to compare it to the increased earnings over time of college/grad school-educated people. It is no more onerous for these two boys than it is for anybody else.
@sligachan Your comment assumes that these low-income minority kids have the same access to educational debt that you had. Did you also assume that the kids also have the same access to good public school education that you had? Please check your bourgeois privilege.
2