Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Poll: Parents uncomfortable with youth football
Associated Press ^ | Aug. 28, 2014 3:43 AM EDT | Kurt Voigt

Posted on 08/28/2014 2:25:24 AM PDT by Olog-hai

Parents are worried about their children playing football, but most haven’t decided to keep their kids from putting on a helmet and stepping onto the field.

According to an Associated Press-GfK poll, nearly half of parents said they’re not comfortable letting their child play football amid growing uncertainty about the long-term impact of concussions.

In the poll, 44 percent of parents weren’t comfortable with their child playing football. The same percentage was uncomfortable with ice hockey, and 45 percent were uncomfortable with participation in wrestling. Only five percent, though, said they have discouraged their child from playing in the last two years as concern over head injuries has increased at all levels of the game.

The majority of parents said they are comfortable with participation in a host of other sports—including swimming, track and field, basketball, soccer, baseball and softball, among others. …

(Excerpt) Read more at bigstory.ap.org ...


TOPICS: Society; Sports
KEYWORDS: football; liberalagenda
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081 next last
To: gatorhead

We didnt’ even need a football to play this. One person would be it, then whoever tackled him would be “it” after that.


21 posted on 08/28/2014 5:09:00 AM PDT by MuttTheHoople (Ob)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

To: ohioman

I suspect you recanted once you read my history. While young men of my generation played kid games, I fought for my country in a year and half of real warfare. I spent a year in the hospital healing up enough to walk again.

It’s my choice if I don’t want my children’s brains damaged in school sports. It’s their choice whether they choose to join the Marines like I did.

Nothing more pathetic than those guys who spend their lives reliving school football.


22 posted on 08/28/2014 5:15:09 AM PDT by Chainmail (A simple rule of life: if you can be blamed, you're responsible.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: defconw

I think the problem is the helmet. I am uncomfortable with youth football because the adults do not seem to have common sense anymore. My male peers who played football when we were elementary aged played flag football. They started tackle football in junior high. They played in September to November. Now they start in August and seem to think that a five year old is becoming tough by wearing full gear with helmets for three hours straight in the August sun. The helmets are designed to be “safe” except for the oven factor because they are so full of stuff to prevent cracking heads that there is no air flow inside. It is too much trouble to take helmets off the young ones, so they make them keep them on. Crazy!

Anywho, helmets do not do anything for what happens inside the skull. And idiots cannot see any boo boos on the outside because the fancy helmets have protected the head from cracking open. But the inside damage still happens.


23 posted on 08/28/2014 5:21:26 AM PDT by petitfour
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: octex
When I was in 8th grade (’56), boys would get to school about an hour early in good weather. About 30-40 boys would play ‘tackle the man with the ball’..

Back in the 60s, we called the game "Kill the Guy with the Ball." This may explain my passion for rugby.

24 posted on 08/28/2014 5:21:56 AM PDT by Labyrinthos
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Chainmail

Well...The military and football scholarships have opened many doors in my family. It is sad to see the left slowly destroy both our military and our favorite past time.


25 posted on 08/28/2014 5:23:54 AM PDT by ohioman
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: Olog-hai

My mom was not comfortable with it four decades ago.
Did not stop me from playing (or at least sitting on the bench).


26 posted on 08/28/2014 5:23:57 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Olog-hai

And they are also comfortable with field hockey and volleyball, no doubt.

Meanwhile, in Texas 1200 high school teams will take the field tomorrow night. That’s one of the things that makes Texas great.


27 posted on 08/28/2014 5:38:44 AM PDT by txrefugee
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: petitfour
I agree with you. My father played football. (I'm a woman BTW). He would not let my brother play tackle football until Jr. high. He had a fit when my sister let her son play flag football at 6. He was way to small.

I have been against the helmets for all these reasons. But most especially this reason. I did enough dumb things on my bike, skateboards, etc without a helmet and elbow pads. I think wearing all that stuff would have made me feel safe to do even stupider things.

Pain is there for a reason. It says STOP!

28 posted on 08/28/2014 5:39:24 AM PDT by defconw (Both parties have clearly lost their minds!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: SoFloFreeper

Beheaded is a future they are comfortable with however.


29 posted on 08/28/2014 5:50:01 AM PDT by The Toll
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Olog-hai
When I was growing up my cousins, their friends, and myself would play sandlot football. All of us were teens. One game I wasn't there for had a bad accident. A tackle went bad and a guys nose hit cousins knee. His nose had been broken about a month earlier in a car wreck. This time he went unconscious a few minutes later and a week later died.

A couple of weeks past and we were back out in the front yard playing football again. Our parents didn't discourage it, no one help hard feelings even the boys parents, it was just accepted as part of life. Bad things sometimes happen. We had no helmets etc. This was in the early 1970's.

Todays gear for players on teams makes it reasonably safe much more so than sandlot was in our time. Our parents understood kids did things that had risk but it was stuff that built confidence and character. Our parents had rules and boundaries we had to abide in but at the same time that is what made it safer for us to do things kids today can not experience.

At 14 I was camping alone with boat, motor, and rifle on the lake in the summer. Today that would get a parent a CPS visit or some pervert bother the kid. It seems to be a purposely making kids into compliant wimps as the prevailing agenda so called experts now promote.

30 posted on 08/28/2014 5:58:05 AM PDT by cva66snipe ((Two Choices left for U.S. One Nation Under GOD or One Nation Under Judgment? Which one say ye?))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Olog-hai

And 20 years from now, society will be uncomfortable defending itself from attack. We are doomed.


31 posted on 08/28/2014 5:59:04 AM PDT by Opinionated Blowhard ("When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BobL
early-onset old-timers disease

And they get to sue for money later on, as long as there's no statue of limitations!

32 posted on 08/28/2014 6:13:17 AM PDT by LT Brass Bancroft
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: Chainmail

There are plenty of other team sports available that involve damaging their futures

...and there is one in particular which has found great favor withe the gender-equity bunch which has hijacked youth formation in our culture, and is pushed with fervor and almost religious zeal...soccer...

...this is so obviously a femininist derived push to minimize athletic discrepancies between boys and girls, and yet, even here on a traditional minded forum such FR entire threads are dedicated to following the progress of World Cup games...quite amusing...and the names one gets called for merely expressing a negative thought about the crappy game...yeesh...


33 posted on 08/28/2014 6:13:55 AM PDT by IrishBrigade (')
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: BobL

Why the discrepancy?

Easy, football gives one set of parents BRAGGING RIGHTS over the non-football parents. Worth a bunch of concussions and early-onset old-timers disease, I guess, to most of those parents.

...ah, the beauty of online fora...they afford the opportunity to post utter nonsense...as witnessed by the above...


34 posted on 08/28/2014 6:16:58 AM PDT by IrishBrigade (')
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: fso301

Also, violent ground acquisition games such as football is in fact a crypto-fascist metaphor for nuclear war.

35 posted on 08/28/2014 6:23:20 AM PDT by LT Brass Bancroft
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Olog-hai
Having worked for a neuropathologist at one of the world's most famous hospitals I know a bit about this stuff.The subject of head injuries in sports...adults *and* kids...is an issue to be carefully,and exhaustively,studied by neurologists,neurosurgeons,neuropathologists and perhaps trauma surgeons as well.In fact,that is true of *all* head injuries...whether they're the result of a car accident,or a fall off a ladder,or in the boxing ring,the hockey rink or on the football field.

Politics...left,right or center...shouldn't enter into this.

36 posted on 08/28/2014 6:29:57 AM PDT by Gay State Conservative (Rat Party policy;Lie,deny,refuse to comply)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: octex

Yeah...We called it “Pitch Up and Smear”....


37 posted on 08/28/2014 6:35:03 AM PDT by Boonie ("Nuke 'em all...Let Allah sort 'em out...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Olog-hai

bump


38 posted on 08/28/2014 6:54:20 AM PDT by Skooz (Gabba Gabba we accept you we accept you one of us Gabba Gabba we accept you we accept you one of us)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Chainmail

Exactly. My sister has two boys (I have two girls who both do karate and one is a black belt) who play hockey and football. The older one got a concussion playing hockey and missed a couple weeks of school. They both still play but she is definitely not “comfortable” with it exactly because of the concussion issue.


39 posted on 08/28/2014 6:57:29 AM PDT by Wyatt's Torch
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Wyatt's Torch
Hum yet many parents yelling and screaming about football etc won't think twice about giving a 16 year old a crotch rocket {high performance racing motorcycle} or a car to drive that is meant for experienced operators. Seriously I worried far more about kids in vehicles than contact sports.

Far more kids die or get critically injured in MVA's yet no one bats an eye. Yes I'm a parent who has received one of those calls. I went to the scene of the wreck as they started cutting my daughter out. Six months later after the surgeries etc she was driving again.

40 posted on 08/28/2014 11:54:31 AM PDT by cva66snipe ((Two Choices left for U.S. One Nation Under GOD or One Nation Under Judgment? Which one say ye?))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson