- My family watches football all weekend long.
- We love everything about the sport, but my husband is concerned about injuries.
Fall weekends are my absolute favorite because of one thing: football.
It starts with the Friday-night lights; we all attend our local high-school game and have a blast tailgating and seeing our community rally together. Our Saturdays are filled with watching our three boys play on their youth teams, and Sunday is when the NFL games are on — we're huge Cowboys and Chiefs fans.
The touchdowns! The camaraderie! The excitement! What's not to love about football? There is one thing: the risk of serious injury.
Players get injured all the time
While we love the drama and energy of the game, there is also a downside because tackle football is undeniably dangerous. It seems like in every college or NFL game you watch on TV, the players are getting injured right and left. The examples are plentiful — from life-threatening cardiac arrests to concussions and ACL tears — and they are horrifying. The sheer number of injured players that medical professionals cart off the field or the cases of chronic traumatic encephalopathy — a neurodegenerative disease caused by repeated hits to the head — are staggering and gave us something to think about when deciding whether to let our own kids play.
We live in a Texas suburb that perfectly embodies the Friday-night lights, so youth football is par for the course here. We knew that, as soon as they got old enough, our three boys would want to join a team. There are many decisions we try to involve our kids in, but we felt that this should not be one of them — because it involves their health.
My husband is a physician who treats sports-related injuries, so he is well-informed about what's at stake. Of course, there is always an inherent risk of injury with any sport, but some weigh more heavily than others. We feel that it's our job as parents to keep our kids safe, and he has simply seen too much to risk it. So, when our kids started asking to play, there was a steadfast answer from us: no tackle football.
We looked for alternatives
Even though we drew a hard boundary against tackle, we still wanted our kids to be able to play football because there is so much to be gained from participating in youth sports, such as character-building, teamwork, athletic skills, and problem-solving abilities. Fortunately for our kids, flag football — instead of making tackles, players pull flags from each other's belts — is also widely popular where we live. In my opinion, it offers many of the benefits with not as many risks. So, we are happy to allow all three boys to indulge there.
I often wonder why we can't convert all youth football to flag or touch. With much safer alternatives, this solution seems obvious, but for some reason, tackle remains the most popular.
Our oldest is entering middle school, and a lot of his friends are playing on the tackle team at school together. Our hard boundary against this came with much disdain from our 10-year-old. He felt left out, so we came up with a plan to work around it: he's the kicker. He still gets to be on the team, but he rarely even makes contact with other players. The risk of injury for a kicker seems to be considerably lower.
I have no judgment for those who've decided the pros of participating in tackle football outweigh the cons. We've made a different decision, and that choice we made on behalf of our kids is unwavering. But that certainly doesn't mean that I love the game any less. On any given autumn weekend, I'll be in the stands or in front of the TV, loudly cheering on my teams. I'll be the one with zero chill, but I'll also be confident in our decision to keep our sons safe while still enjoying the sport we all so dearly love.