Should your child play football?
The Doc Smitty and the concerns of repetitive trauma, concussions
San Francisco 49ers linebacker Chris Borland retired yesterday after a very successful rookie season.
He’s not hurt and had a presumably bright future in the NFL.
Why did he retire?
In light of the recent focus on repetitive trauma, concussion and brain injury, he decided that it was in his best interest to stop playing football.
Consider it this way: After years of playing football, starting a very young age, succeeding in high school and later at the University of Wisconsin, he reached the pinnacle of his sport and decided it was better to walk away than to keep playing. Granted, he’s only one player and many, many more will continue to make the decision to go back to training camp in July.
Most football players will never reach that point where they’ll have to decide if the NFL is right for them. I played junior high football, but didn’t move on to high school. I like to tell myself that I was making sure I was protected from injury for tennis season (truth was, I was probably a little scared of being small and getting hit by bigger high school kids. Sorry for lying, Coach West).
If you look at the research, it seems like cumulative trauma is the issue. The older and bigger you get and the longer you play, the number and the force of the traumas increase. The rules are changing in an attempt to make the sport safer. But, I’m sure many of you read this and worry about your young football players.
My sons haven’t asked to play football yet. At 5 and 3, I think the level of risk for concussion is higher when I pick them up and throw them as high as I can in the air barely grabbing them before they crash into the ground. But living in the middle of Texas, football countr,y and having an older son built like a perfect tight end and having little brother with a canon for an arm, I am sure that is a conversation we will have some day.
I wonder if someday we’ll look back on the days when football was played and think, “I can’t believe that they used to do that to themselves.” Or, will the sport look so different that we will barely recognize it?
What about you? Do you have concerns about your sons playing football?
