Norwegian here: Why do American fathers allow their children to grow up playing tackle football?

I guess I was lucky that my parents let me play football. I was talking to my son (he's 29) about it the other day. Something about being 13 years old and having to show up to football practice on a cold Saturday morning at 7am. I still remember the many times I got run over by our superstar fullback when I weighed a buck nothing. Our middle school football was the light heavy weight champion of the Pacific Fleet during WW2 so he was something

Have to say that to this day it had an impact on me playing the sport. Because the football coach noticed that I was always first when we had to run laps of the track for making mistakes he encouraged me to run track and the rest is what it is.

Did I encourage me son to play? No he did triathlons, soccer and cycling. Football is not big in the country we live in so now he just follows the game and is a grieving Jets fan haha.

In England headers have been banned in under 11 football (soccer) starting next year.

I recently spent time in several scandinavian countries. They are like the US but much much colder and with prices much much higher relative to salaries. Healthcare and education have been privatized and are in decline. It's a myth that these countries are paradise. Sweden is nicer than Norway.

Momma, don't let your babies grow up to be Cowboys.

When I was a kid I played football mostly to get laid. It worked. Later I learned to play the guitar and quit playing football because that worked better. The trick is to find a good substitute.

Football (the full-contact variety, not just flag football) is by far the most fun sport I ever played. If I had a son I would strongly discourage, but not strictly forbid it.

Game would be a lot safer if you took face mask off defense. They would learn to tackle

with their shoulders rather than their heads.

I love watching football. Easily the most entertaining sport out there. But none of my kids play football. Not a chance.

I believe in freedom of choice. If parents want to sign their kids up for sports that have a high risk for concussion, they should be allowed to do that. However, they should know the potential repercussions of that decision. I agree that life isn't about living as long as possible. However, football players and boxers/UFC fighters begin to experience symptoms related to CTE as early as their 30s and 40s. If your kid plays peewee football for a few years, they will likely be fine. But even one or two concussions has the potential to result in the development of serious symptoms down the road. Concussions occur not infrequently in high school football as athletes enter puberty and gain significantly greater strength and speed. I did my fellowship training at the Mayo Clinic, which is the number one hospital for neurologic care in the entire world. CTE and neurologic sports injuries are studied extensively there, and this is the consensus among true experts in this area. I suspect that this issue will be viewed very differently by the public 10 to 15 years from now. Cheers!

Rojo, it’s possible to express a differing opinion about something without being mean about it. A neuroradiologist took time to give their expert take on a serious issue, and you dismissed it as “a ridiculous post.” So disappointing.

I’ve been contemplating cutting back on my engagement with this board, and the primary reason is I’m getting tired of its toxicity. The negative tone you set with posts like the one above doesn’t inspire confidence that things will change.

Re: the point of life, that’s highly subjective. There is no single “correct” answer, and even if there was, what makes you think you’re the authority on that subject with the expertise to deem what’s correct and what’s not? Do you think the point of life is to risk serious brain damage playing a sport?

Boxing, MMA, bull riding, bouncer in a bar, firefighting, cops, military, hell driving 70 on the freeway you can't live life all worried about I might get hurt.. You go for it and what happens happens. Everybody knows smoking is terrible so what people still smoke same with drugs and alcohol, so what people still use drugs and drink,

I played 4 years of tackle football, I wouldn't trade those memories for anything. I can still remember plays and games still remember my teammates. All boys should play tackle football it's a fantastic sport. ,

I do buy coachs need to make a real big deal out of hitting with your helmet, talking if you do you are out of the game, ah for high schoolers. Obviously winning means more than safety at the NCAA/NFL level, too much $$$$$ involved

For the same reason they elect Donald Trump

Our oldest son wanted to play football in 5th grade. My wife and I went back and forth about whether to let him specifically because of the concussion thing. I finally said I doubted kids that young and small would hit each other hard enough to do any sort of damage and there's no harm in letting him see if he liked it. It's just a normal thing for boys to do. He did not really take to it, considered going out again in sixth grade but decided not to.

Our youngest one considered going out for football too when he got to ninth grade. But he was very seriously into baseball and basketball. He played in a fall baseball league and I reminded him there would be schedule conflicts with football that would keep him from playing baseball and that if he got hurt badly enough playing football that he was still hurt when tryouts for basketball happened he'd likely not make the team. He decided to give football a pass. Ironically he went from first guy cut to last guy kept when one of the guys they planned to keep ended up not being able to play because a bad football injury didn't let him.

My wife and I were happy that things played out as they did. I don't know what we'd have done if one or both had really taken to football but I'd have had a hard time denying them a normal part of growing up in the US. There's danger crossing the street. Would we not let them drive because there's danger? My dad played football in high school. He had no later life problems from doing it nor did guys he'd played with that I'd gotten to know.

Football is actually far more popular as a spectator sport now than it was in the 1950s. Pro football was still in its early stages, and college football was barely televised (with most interest coming from alums of the schools...in an era when most people didn't go to college). Baseball and other radio-friendly sports got way more national attention.

Football was a popular participation sport because it required so little skill from most positions. Kids could go out for the team in high school having never played a competitive game, and they could learn the basics quickly. Americans were much, much poorer back then, so kids weren't doing organized sports and getting professional coaching from a young age. Because because high school football was government funded, it was basically the only sport that existed in a lot of areas. That made it a default form of entertainment in small towns.

I was just talking to another parent about this topic that told me about her son that got a severe concussion during phy-ed at school, fell and hit his head on concrete. Of course, certain sports increase the likelihood of injuries than not playing sports at all, but normal daily life, things happen. This parent said from their research it was like 3% of kids playing hockey will receive a concussion, IDK I am too lazy to look it up. But I have a nephew played all the way through high school varsity and he is currently a PHD student.

I played football as a youngster and loved it. However, I two "diagnosed" concussions playing high school football. Who knows how many undiagnosed concussions I had.

I made the decision early, probably when I realized I was going to be a boy Dad that my boys would never be allowed to play football. I did, however, encourage them to play soccer which I learned could be problematic in the head injury space. None of my boys played soccer at an age where headers were a big part of the game, so I think I pretty much dodged the head injury bullet for my boys.

Very concerned about my soccer club lately. Guys have been going down: one just returned for the last game of the college season after missing 11g's. We weren't told it was concussion but it was our best guess.

I've been concussed a number of times and knocked out (at least) twice over a lifetime. Yes I'm worried. Things are ok now where they will be in 5 years IDK (I hope good).

I'm not up on recent research, but when I was coaching soccer, the evidence indicated that headers were extremely safe from a concussion standpoint. Or rather, the act of intentionally heading the ball is safe, which makes sense. The thing that's problematic is sudden, explosive movements of the head (either acceleration of deceleration) that cause the brain to hit the inside of the skull. An intentional header doesn't do that because the ball is so light it hardly interrupts the head's motion at all. The real danger is going up for contested headers where you can have skull to skull contact. Or (less common in adults, but common in kids) getting hit in the head by a ball when you're not looking.