BigBeauford
Member
Probably been discussed, but the end of high school football means the end of college football, which means the end for a lot of women's sports, which receive funding via these big sports.
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VICE Sports: The Case For Abolishing High School Football
- Thread starter ElectricBlanketFire
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Skellig Gra
Member
Yeah lets just ban all sports, nothing good has ever come from them.
Ninja Scooter
Member
Those are multi billion dollar businesses, let them figure that out. Why should public schools feel obligated to be a feeder system to the NFL?
Deadly Cyclone
Pride of Iowa State
Why would lawsuits force shutdown? Why wouldn't it just make schools create waivers for parents to sign?
I'd be more for making it non-tackle football up until Junior year. That way they at least get two years of contact football to prepare for college, and you don't have Junior High kids playing football at 13.
Ninja Scooter
Member
How many actually play in college though? I don't understand the logic of admitting that something is dangerous for a 13 year old but okay for a 16 year old.
Hari Seldon
Member
School districts are going to get the shit sued out of them which will drive up insurance costs which will lead to schools not being able to afford to pay for the programs.
No other sport gives all the players brain damage.
Skellig Gra
Member
It's not "all the players". European football has plenty of concussion issues as well. Should we ban that too?
ElectricBlanketFire
Member
Quite the straw man there.
Skellig Gra
Member
That's the point
One outlandish argument countered with another stupid one. In reality we should look to modify the rules from football at younger ages and ramp up allowable contact as people get older not just ban it outright.M0nochromatic
Member
Football makes to much money and is essentially a religion to many. Good luck trying to stop the harm it's doing to the kids that play it.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
Unfortunately we've heard too many stories where an entire town turned it's back on a family or individual all cuz their sport was being "threatened".
It would be more than just the NFL. As has been mentioned several times already in this thread, there are a lot of school programs that are helped by the existence of high school football.
I don't think this should happen. I know a bunch of people who raced dirt bikes or engaged other dangerous sports when in high school too. Certainly there is a risk but sports also have many benefits to the people that play them. Every effort should be made to make it as safe as possible but it shouldn't be abolished. I loved playing football and would be really pissed if it was abolished when I was in high school.
Dr. Black Jack
Member
As someone who had his knees destroyed by it: good. Fuck this stupid sport and the permanent damage it causes to kids who don't know any better.
DudeWithNoName
Member
Yep. No more public school football programs, and instead they can play with club/traveling teams.
Dsyndrome
Member
I played football from 6th grade through the end of high school and started every year. My brother did the same. I'm a former nuke and will have a masters in EE next year, my brother's a helo pilot.
That brain damage we both got sure did fuck us up in life.
ElectricBlanketFire
Member
You're getting a masters in electrical engineering but don't know the difference between anecdotal and scientific evidence?
Snowman Prophet of Doom
Member
You are not going to get a law passed completely banning minors from being allowed to play tackle football, I don't think.
It should not, however, be funded by taxpayer dollars. The optimal solution would be a tackle-free form of football for public schools, with tackle football reserved for privately-funded leagues. If people wanna screw with their kids' bodies and brains, let them pay for it.
It should not, however, be funded by taxpayer dollars. The optimal solution would be a tackle-free form of football for public schools, with tackle football reserved for privately-funded leagues. If people wanna screw with their kids' bodies and brains, let them pay for it.
Dsyndrome
Member
The quote said everyone, how is that not hyperbole?
Like what was said before, families should decide, outright banning will not happen.
bonesmccoy
Banned
'The communities need it' comment actively ignores the fact that there are dozens of entertaining, popular sports that do not put young people's health at risk that these schools could start offering instead.
Hari Seldon
Member
A state could completely ban tackle football at the high school level easily. There is no such thing as High School Boxing, because each individual state has banned it from being offered. It is probably going to happen in the north east first and eventually the deep south and texas will be the last ones holding out.
Edit: I may have misinterpreted what you said. A state can ban a public school from offering it obviously as the states control their own public schools. Private school or clubs would be another matter.
Presumably adults can consent to the risk, like boxing.
Snowman Prophet of Doom
Member
I am dubious that basketball, soccer, lacrosse, baseball, or any other common sport could be as big and lucrative as football currently is. The very things that make football so dangerous give it drama and glitz that other sports have trouble competing with.
Snowman Prophet of Doom
Member
You could, theoretically, but I don't think it will happen. Maybe a few states, but simply phasing it out of public education is a likelier outcome.
Prototype Viktor
Member
He's fighting the wrong fight, get rid of college football or make it not slavery
Violence Jack
Member
Not necessarily. There are lots of athletes that don't decide to play football until they get to college. Even if high school football were to be abolished or severely cut back, college football will continue to thrive.
Nikodemos
Member
Yeah, I'm also of the opinion that if you want to (ugh) "starve the beast", you need to cut funding to public high school football programmes. Private schools can do what they want, but it's unlikely the people sending their children to those will want to risk their precious snowflakes becoming 'slow' due to one too many bumps to the head.
Banning it is both pointless and going to cause more damage long term. Pointless because if you ban it you just shift the game to privatized youth leagues as the game is too entrenched culturally to dismantle at this point. Damaging because you once you take the state out the equation you severely dismantle reform efforts and leave it in the hands of money driven private leagues to reform at their behest vs their bottom line.
This is coming from someone who both played football and wouldn't let his kids play football.
This is coming from someone who both played football and wouldn't let his kids play football.
CassidyIzABeast
Member
Somebody would just establish a high school level league and get all that money the schools left on the table.
This is how a lot of communities are addressing youth (see below high school) football. No contact or limited contact and no contact practices.
If your children want to play football and you're okay with that, it's totally fine by me. The problem with public funding is that communities with teams that aren't successful suffer from sub par coaching staffs because of big money funding that other programs have. They can't raise the money from boosters and and their towns so ultimately the kids are the ones who suffer.
Safe and effective tackling can go a long way to making it safer at the high school and college levels. I really don't think there's a ton you can do about the pros though. As players get bigger, stronger, and faster the collisions will just get more and more violent.
gamechanger87
Member
High School Football financially supports the other sports at most schools around the country as it is one of the few sports where people will pay to attend games and boosters can raise money.
Eliminate football you eliminate other sports. We will finally hit that Wall-e utopia.
Eliminate football you eliminate other sports. We will finally hit that Wall-e utopia.
A Link to the Past
Banned
What were the dangerous things you did?
Zoe
Member
And all of the poor kids would get priced out.
It won't be immediately banned or anything like that, but it'll probably end up as a transition away from football being offered in public schooling. If more and more information about how dangerous football is and tons of people take this to court, football will end up too expensive for most schools anyways without having to ban it right now.
It can end up more as private leagues for high schoolers to join and schools don't pay for it.
It can end up more as private leagues for high schoolers to join and schools don't pay for it.
LudicrousSpeed
Member
It's a great idea. It will probably never happen.
Football is not a cheap game to participate in, and being forced to go the club route would be damn near a death knell. The end result would be that it becomes something like lacrosse, seen as a sport only for rich white kids.
Maybe the game will get lucky and the cost of football equipment would result in the end of football helmets and shoulder pads, which might actually help out in terms of health (since both are functioning more as weapons than as safety equipment at this stage).
Football is not a cheap game to participate in, and being forced to go the club route would be damn near a death knell. The end result would be that it becomes something like lacrosse, seen as a sport only for rich white kids.
Maybe the game will get lucky and the cost of football equipment would result in the end of football helmets and shoulder pads, which might actually help out in terms of health (since both are functioning more as weapons than as safety equipment at this stage).
gamechanger87
Member
Bull, you only hear about a few kids who do this and they were already freak athletes. 99 percent of college players played in high school especially at the elite level.
Don't let the stories about walk inside fool you.
If HS football dies so does college and the NFL.
TAJ
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Did they do it at school? (Weird school if so.) If not then I don't see your point.
People are also severely overwriting the end of college and then pros if this happens.
Recruiting would be a thousand times easier to coordinate if the free market dominated where and when youth level football was played vs scouring counties in the middle of nowhere for talent. All those little towns fielding teams would just have a county or bi and tri County team to field statewide at higher levels of funding and competition, better facilitating both higher more efficient levels of competition and making it vastly easier for colleges to scout as it drastically eliminates the possibility of someone being missed due to going to a small school.
Private leagues would be a godsend to college football, honestly.
Science eventually brought to light that it has potential to be incredibly damaging to brains, even at the high school level. It can change the white and gray matter after only a season, and cases of CTE have been discovered in high school players (or those that played only high school football but not anything after).
gamechanger87
Member
I got knocked out once playing High School Soccer and once playing High School Lacrosse. Should they be banned? Are they any safer? Or is football just the boogeyman focused on today?
IrishNinja
Member
having played flag: i'm not sure why this is such a go-to suggestion; it's obviously different for the QB & receivers, but virtually nothing changes on the line, where (correct me if i'm wrong) a lot of these injuries occur
geez guy, learn some D
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