jdolbeer t1_jaru3kf wrote on March 3, 2023 at 4:38 PM

Will be interesting to see how reception of this goes (both the bill, and my comment).

Youth tackle football is wildly dangerous for kids. The thought of letting kids slam into each other and cause various brain trauma is a bit absurd to me in 2023, with all of the data we have around the results (inc whataboutism in the form of "but it's ok for grown men to blah blah blah"). I think football as a whole either needs to change dramatically or slowly be phased out, but unsure that either will happen and we'll continue to see deaths in youth football that are incredibly tragic and wholly avoidable.

I say this as somebody who has been a fan of football for quite a long time, watched Red Zone religiously for a decade and has won and lost a heap of money playing Fantasy Football. The *game* had been enjoyable for me for a long time (hell, I even played in middle/high school). But it's impossible for me to just continue to ignore the facts of how brutal this game is for people's bodies and brains.

Diligent_Office7179 t1_jas02tu wrote on March 3, 2023 at 5:16 PM

I’m not an expert on this but it’s my understanding that literal deaths in youth football are very rare and are not necessarily higher than in other sports.

I don’t disagree with the overall point though that tackle football at a young age is dangerous and I see merit in this proposed ban

jdolbeer t1_jas1ubu wrote on March 3, 2023 at 5:27 PM

There's a lot of cardiac arrest in basketball (94% of the youth deaths in basketball are attributed to sudden cardiac death), due to undiagnosed heart conditions. After that there's football with traumatic brain injury, exertional heat stroke, and exertional sickling. These latter 2 being a direct result of overtraining/practicing that isn't seen in other sports. Baseball is due to freak accidents with high speed balls etc.