Posted on 12/01/2013 8:03:42 AM PST by MinorityRepublican
For Eddie Mason, the decision wasn’t difficult. The NFL veteran’s 10-year-old son, Tyler, won’t play tackle football until high school.
Mr. Mason’s decision wasn’t a result of the burgeoning national discussion about football’s role in brain injuries. Instead, he believes children should learn the game’s fundamentals without tackling. Mr. Mason, who played three seasons at linebacker for the Redskins before retiring in 2003, sees a problematic culture infecting football’s lowest levels that’s inextricably connected to the safety concerns.
“This brash kind of mindset, the underdog mindset,” Mr. Mason said, “this hard-core attitude kind of deal about who hits the hardest [is part of the issue]. If you look back over the last eight to 10 years, players showing up in the NFL are technically unsound. We’re eight to 10 years behind developing fundamentals for how to play the sport.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Coaches that verbally abuse the kids should be out of there.
Modern helmets give players a reward for a certain style of play (hitting with the head). Remove the reward and the behavior changes.
Sounds like he has a level head on his shoulders, good for him. Society puts waaaaay too much emphasis on sports.
If kids want to play football, they can do it the way we did and go out in the grass themselves. Nothing does more to raise a generation of wimps than to etch in a child’s mind the idea that they can’t do any of these things unless they’re being supervised by adults.
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my son and the neighborhood kids played pick up football for years. They loved it.
Yeah, my son is a Tottenham fan. Wants to go see them play Arsenal next spring. The way Arsenal has been playing, I’m reluctant to spend the money...
Yes.
finally quit after my second knee surgery.
I advise boys to try the game and see if they like it. If they do like it, I tell them to play until their second serious injury and then hang up the cleats. Yes they will probably have lingering effects but such is the case for many physical professions.
Just because tackle football wasn't right for you doesn't mean it isn't right for others.
Coaches that verbally abuse the kids should be out of there.
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Well it didn’t happen. People slowly dropped out, or went to other sports. What was supposed to be a reasonable experience turned into a drudgery and chore.
Back injuries are difficult to cope with. I've long had a suspicion that many back injuries are congenital in nature with some risk factors detectable via xray/mri/ctscan.
All these contact sports are fine if it’s really what the kid wants, but all too often, its “daddy” who is looking to “live vicariously” through his kid that drives youngsters to “make daddy proud” of him or her. Funny thing is, when a child is injured, daddy isn’t hurt at all physically.
That's always a problem. If a boy really takes to football, there are many positive things to be said about a parent then getting involved. I agree that it is never a good thing for a parent to push the kid into things the parent wishes they could have done when they were young.
Finally in his last season he said, I don’t want to do this anymore, I have a lot of things I like to do, dirt bike, hunt, fish and see friends
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Generally he does. When he sat down and talked to me about it he made a lot of sense. I did the best I could to replicate my childhood for the kids, and to some extent we did with long hours playing games in the yard with other kids. But there was not nearly enough pickup football, basketball,soccer or hockey. Not nearly enough.
Please forgive me if I call hogwash on that. There is no other way to learn how to deal with the level of humility that comes with a 108-22 thrashing, other than to go through it (not unless you had to walk around with a dog collar and leash around your neck -- and people who do that are usually into humiliation). Not losing a Student Council election, not the high school band losing the state championship, not your boyfriend or girlfriend dumping you, not your prize pig being turned down for a blue ribbon at the State Fair; none of those things compare. No, unless you've been that thoroughly defeated and humiliated -- in public -- you didn't learn that lesson.
I wouldn't change a thing, either. There was no "mercy rule" back then...you took your butt whuppin' and held your head high as you left the locker room, even though you knew every eye in the gym was watching you and your teammates. I learned from an early age that life ain't fair, and all you can do is deal with it. It seems to me that's a lesson two whole generations of Americans should have learned long ago, on some distant Little League ball field or basketball court. We might have a lot fewer 27-year old fast food workers whining about not being able to make ends meet on their Burger King wages, and how it's not "fair" that they don't make $15/hr. The Obammunist may have never been elected if there were fewer whiners, and more doers in our nation.
"What made that even better was that my friends and I played to our expectations, not the expectations of an adult who had his own agenda (even a well-intentioned one). "
As enlightened as it sounds to say you and your friends weren't playing to the agendas of adults, well, that also falls flat. Living up to the expectations of others -- your boss, your platoon sergeant, your wife/husband, your shareholders, etc. -- is something we have to do all our lives. As a kid, I learned that not living up to the expectations, and agenda, of the coach resulted in my butt riding the pine. Not living up to your platoon sergeant's agenda gets you extra duty. Not living up to your boss' agenda gets you fired. Not living up to your wife's agenda gets you divorced. We all have to meet expectations and help advance the agenda of someone, our entire lives. Learning that lesson as a kid, on the field or hardwood, is a much less expensive and painful way to learn it than any other.
Finally, saying you gave it your best is a convenient excuse to not give it your best. Give it your all, each and every day, on the field or wherever, and if you lose, don't make excuses. Instead of saying, "I did my best", say "I'll have to do better next time".
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
I don’t think that could possibly withstand a legal challenge. You’d be denying someone work based on height and weight, which with the ADA it’s no stretch that those would become “disabilities.”
How about going back to having to play both ways? The need for speed in pursuit would reduce the size of some of these behemoths.
bump
right..se played tackle all the time at the park and I love college football. But if you look at the massive injury lists, it is bad.
Bravo, bravo sir! Can I get an Amen?
“What a model pose for a Frank Frazetta painting of a Valkryie wielding a war hammer or axe.”
Ha! Good call. FF was a very, very physical guy, I think that’s why he could capture action in such a tremendous way.
FReegards
Uh...BZZZZZZZZZZZT! Wrong...I served in the Cav, MOS 19D, from 1985-1996. M-113s, M-901 ITVs, M3 Bradleys, and finally Humvees. "Scouts Out!" was, and probably still is, a rallying cry in the Cavalry. "Cavalry Ho!" is something fun I like to say, invoking the memory of the horse cavalry, John Wayne in "She Wore A Yellow Ribbon", etc.
BTW, don't tell members of the 1st Cavalry Division Horse Detachment that the horse cav was deactivated in 1943. They'll wonder what they've been doing, riding horses all these years.
I have my spurs, too...even though they were also phased out a while back. You probably won't find them in AR 670-1, but you'll find them on those Scouts that have earned them. It's a Cav thing...if you were never in the Cav, you wouldn't understand.
SCOUTS OUT! CAVALRY HO!
Look at the injury list for any physical profession; police, firemen, construction, loggers, military, etc.
Spot on...metal on metal.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
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