New York to ban youth football?

[Greybeard]

Wait till some kid in Utica is killed on the field.

 

I would be willing to bet more kids have died playing Baseball than Football. So that would mean Little League would have to go also.

[San Jose Bills Fan]

As Tcali can tell you, we played tackle football growing up ALL THE TIME.

 

And this was before we were old enough to play little league although some of the kids we played with were older and played little league.

 

There was never any serious injuries.

 

Because of a fairly lengthy combination of factors, kids of a certain age have a way of being impervious to injuries.

[bowery4]

Yeah this is stupid. LLFB was a big thing for me when I was a kid, if I couldn't play I would have played around the neighborhood more with out equipment and had a much lower skill set. Plus the coaches were great and taught a kind of leadership that I embraced heartily (and didn't get at home).

[PromoTheRobot]

our rights as a free society are progressively being taken away....

 

thats because the majority of society is a bunch of idiots that can't think or take care of themselves. This is what happens when the public can't make the right decisions on their own.

 

Being free to do what you want is great until you eff yourself up and then expect the state to take care of you.

 

PTR

[Buffalo Barbarian]

I think it's ridiculous. The general population and the people in place to make these kinds of laws possible are the downfall of society.

 

I second that

 

our rights as a free society are progressively being taken away....

 

and this.

 

Too bad there aren't enough people that realize it and are willingly to stand up for it.

 

I think the only way people would make a stand is if all the TVs, computers, Phones and tablets were taken away. Otherwise nothing is going to change except that it gets worse.

 

Have there been studies linking long-term health problems to youth football? Kids don't usually inflict as much damage. I suspect this is at the behest of some douche bag politician who either feels passionately about something he knows little about or is trying to cash in on the hype.

 

the latter

 

Politicians don't care about us, they just feed us lies of what we want to hear, and then just continue on with their own agenda.

[T master]

Leave it to a NY politician to think up some thing this foolish ??????

Edited February 14, 2013 by T master

[Stealth]

This is beyond retarded. I played tackle football from age 7-18. Yes along the way I suffered a few concussions but I wouldn't trade a single moment of the fun I had doing so in the name of Big Brothers protection. The benefits that come out of playing organized sports far outweigh any of the negatives. Let kids be kids.

[ThurmasThoman]

Sorry, but you aren't "anti government" if you think some politician, who works for you, should be telling you you can't let your kid play freaking football.

 

My two cents.

 

exactly.

 

YOU cant let your kid play football.

 

its not that YOUR kid can't play football.

 

YOU cant let your kid play football.

 

that's the thing -- parents live vicariously through their children. the human brain is the most complex organ on the planet--the forebrain itself doesn't even finish forming until your late teens.

 

i dont think theres a right answer here, but i wouldnt storm the bastille if states made football a flag-only or two hand touch only sport unless you made the varsity team in high school.

 

people always come back to the soda thing, or this that and the third. which is great, but you can't bury your head in the sand when it comes to the public health cost that all this stuff ends up being on the other end. pay me now or pay me later if you will.

 

you think that someone on welfare (paid for with your tax dollars,) and who uses medicare (paid for by your tax dollars,) should be allowed to buy soda, which has 0% redeeming nutritional value, and literally ONLY contributes to health problems? should they be able to buy ciggarettes too?

 

if the public is paying for the upkeep of a park that 6 year olds are playing football on, than the public should have the right to decide how that park is used.

Edited February 14, 2013 by JohnnyGold

[Just in Atlanta]

exactly.

 

YOU cant let your kid play football.

 

its not that YOUR kid can't play football.

 

YOU cant let your kid play football.

 

that's the thing -- parents live vicariously through their children. the human brain is the most complex organ on the planet--the forebrain itself doesn't even finish forming until your late teens.

 

i dont think theres a right answer here, but i wouldnt storm the bastille if states made football a flag-only or two hand touch only sport unless you made the varsity team in high school.

 

people always come back to the soda thing, or this that and the third. which is great, but you can't bury your head in the sand when it comes to the public health cost that all this stuff ends up being on the other end. pay me now or pay me later if you will.

 

you think that someone on welfare (paid for with your tax dollars,) and who uses medicare (paid for by your tax dollars,) should be allowed to buy soda, which has 0% redeeming nutritional value, and literally ONLY contributes to health problems? should they be able to buy ciggarettes too?

 

if the public is paying for the upkeep of a park that 6 year olds are playing football on, than the public should have the right to decide how that park is used.

I see your point. Just don't buy it.

 

There simply comes a point when human beings should be human beings and not part of some regulated collective. This term "public" is a dangerously loaded word. When we give up rights simply because something is public we will end up giving up more.

 

You are saying because a kid might hurt himself on "public" property the public has a right to prevent him from performing the activity that might cause the injury. That's a slippery slope if I ever did see one.

[Dat Dude]

i wouldn't say freshman year but I could get behind this a little bit. Maybe 6th grade or something like that.

[Kemp]

We have learned that kids of high school age are getting concussions at an amazingly high rate.

 

While you may have a problem with government intrusion, clearly some changes might be of use. When I played the equipment served more as protection than as a weapon.

 

If it weren't for some government intrusion we would be at the mercy of some corporations that show no hesitation when it comes to damaging our health. We need the corporations and the government. It is when one side gets too powerful that we get royally screwed.

[BuffaloWings]

thats because the majority of society is a bunch of idiots that can't think or take care of themselves. This is what happens when the public can't make the right decisions on their own.

 

This. It's becoming a little nauseating when legislators are trying to parent everyone else's kids. Our society has gotten to the point where we're trying to be so ultra-safe and protective that we're hindering our kid's ability to live life and learn on their own.

 

We're starting to see the children of the entitlement/politically correct era (those who got trophies for finishing in 6th place, become spoiled, and are now rebelling because they don't get that trophy anymore) become leaders in our society. They never made decisions for themselves and don't want accountability. God help us...

[DJasper Probincrux III]

Legislation like this does seem a bit heavy handed and unnecessary. However, giving the mandatory concussion testing that interscholastic programs now use more parents will choose to not have their children participate in football at the middle and high school level. When you, I and the rest of this board were growing up concussions were still "getting your bell rung". Now there is objective observable data regarding the impact of a concussion on a kid and it's honestly pretty scary when you see a kid who used to be able to perform at X level on an evaluation before he was injured struggle mightily to return to that level afterward. The kid swears up and down that they are fine, and they may FEEL fine (no headaches, dizziness, etc) but they cannot perform the same mental tasks that they could before sometimes for weeks. The treatment involves limiting stimulus which is very difficult for a student, no car, no bus, no music, no loud rooms, no bright lights, no TV, no video games, sometimes no school because they're not supposed to read. Basically sit in the dark and be quiet. Now that parents have this data shoved in their face it's harder to ignore and it's going to cause kids to fall out of the game earlier and at a greater rate than the past.

 

In my opinion, the head injury issue is going to make football like boxing in the next 20 years. In my father's time there used to be a healthy youth boxing system in this country - boxing is still legal and it's still legal for kids to learn. It's just that now there are many many fewer kids who do it and I firmly believe that when parents started seeing dopey old boxers speak on TV that was the beginning of the end. Now parents are getting concrete evidence of the brain damage that's happening to their kids (and that what it is, when you bruise your brain, you have damaged your brain) and football has hit it's zenith in this country. People will still play and kids will still get involved but it will gradually shrink into the socio-economic areas that need it as an out more than as a fun activity for the masses - like boxing has.

[shibuya]

yeah this one is over the top ridiculous

 

With a last name like Benedetto, you just know his motivation is to promote more soccer.

[Mike in Syracuse]

What we should be looking at is ways to make the game safer and rule changes that affect game safety. I think banning football is a stupid idea but here's a few things people need to consider:

 

1. Many of the kids today start playing sports at a MUCH younger age then we ever did. You've got 5 year old kids on football teams now, many of them aren't there because they want to be, they're there because their dad wants them to be. By the time they become Jr's in high school they've been playing football for 10 or more years. That is a HUGE toll on the body at such a young age.

2. When many of us played football it was a very different game. We didn't have year round weight training, speed camps and all sorts of other ways to make us bigger, stronger and faster. If you look at what's happened in the NFL, you now have LB's that are the size of what OL used to be and these guys are running a 4.6. The potential for catastrophic injury is immense.

3. There's a lot of different ways to let kids play football withough forcing them to beat each other to death.

 

yeah this one is over the top ridiculous

 

With a last name like Benedetto, you just know his motivation is to promote more soccer.

 

If the goal is to reduce concussions, Soccer is definitely the wrong sport to be offering as an alternative. The concussion rate in girls soccer is staggering right now.

Edited February 14, 2013 by Mike in Syracuse

[Kemp]

Have there been studies linking long-term health problems to youth football? Kids don't usually inflict as much damage. I suspect this is at the behest of some douche bag politician who either feels passionately about something he knows little about or is trying to cash in on the hype.

http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/7601017/study-impact-kids-football-head-hits-severe-college-games

[Never NEVER Give-up]

Wait till some kid in Utica is killed on the field.

 

Then Cuomo, and other pols, won't be seeing this as absurd.

 

It would have been "absurd" five years ago to think about banning smoking inside one's own apartment, banning large sodas, or pick one of many "absurd" laws that have been passed that intrude on our lives.

 

This won't pass. But it lays the groundwork for the next crisis.

 

While we're at it, let's get rid of bicycles - a lot of people get hurt or killed in bike accidents! Or, let's get get rid of cars because peole get hurt/killed in car accidents!

 

How about we step back, take a breath and impose some simple safety rules so the games can go on. They already have weight limitations so no 10 year old kid, bigger/heavier than 99% of kids his age can play with 10 year-olds, he would need to move up into a different age/weight group. How about, no using the helmet as a weapon - you cannot spear yourself toward an opponent, head first (but if you dive toward an opponent, arms outstretched to make a tackle - this would be OK - just no helmet first). Helmets were designed to protect the head - not allow it to become a punishing weapon.

[Just in Atlanta]

I actually fell out of two trees as a kid. Weird, huh? Think I would have learned my lesson the first time.

 

Suffered a concussion both times. First time, I was hanging on a branch and it broke. Hit the back of my head on a rock wall. Never forget the sound I heard--like a baseball unwinding at super speed past my ears. The second time, I literally fell out of a tree and hit the back of my head (again!) on a branch. Much more of a mild concussion. Should we ban tree climbing?

 

Played tight end as a pee wee. Don't ever recall hurting anything that didn't feel fine within a few hours.

[billsrcursed]

I actually fell out of two trees as a kid. Weird, huh? Think I would have learned my lesson the first time.

 

Suffered a concussion both times. First time, I was hanging on a branch and it broke. Hit the back of my head on a rock wall. Never forget the sound I heard--like a baseball unwinding at super speed past my ears. The second time, I literally fell out of a tree and hit the back of my head (again!) on a branch. Much more of a mild concussion. Should we ban tree climbing?

 

Played tight end as a pee wee. Don't ever recall hurting anything that didn't feel fine within a few hours.

 

No, but it's because of uncoordinated dummys like you that my neighbor used to yell at me when I'd try and climb his tree.

 

"you're gonna fall, get hurt, and then sue me you little *$&%!!".

 

Actually, this scenario has some merit to the OP, hmm....

[Just in Atlanta]

I may have been a dummy, but not uncoordinated. Had no control of the (thick) branch breaking. The second time, my friend was goofing around and roughhousing...pushing me off. I gave him a tity twister afterward.