OT sorta: California to debate banning tackle football for 12 and under

The best available research show it's not about concussions as it is about repeated micro trauma.

The most important part to remember is the trauma that happens in practice; when and where there are no ATC  or appropriately training medical professionals around to intervene when there is an event; and there are many.

School systems load up on game day medical personal, but the damage is already done.

As a youth football coach we teach the HAWK tackling fundaments, which is rugby tackling with the shoulder and is supposed to take the helmet out of the tackle.  My team has also been promoting the Guardians which are the Caps that go on the helmet.  I see it both ways and have coached flag and tackle.  In the years that I have coached this age, I have not had any head injuries on the 3rd and 4th grade level, they just don't generate that much speed and power.  Not saying they don't happen...but collisions happen in every sport.  I will say it is actually more dangerous when you take a kid that has been playing flag football and you put him in tackle against kids that have been playing for years.  The sports are not the same.  Leagues are doing a better job of getting coaches training and certified.  Also the equipment is improved greatly as far as safety goes.  Leave it up to the parents, not lawmakers. 

I have a second grader. This summer, we walked to his school playground, and I saw kids smaller than him practicing tackling. I realized it was 3rd Grade CYO, his upperclassmen. I saw these kids run toward a moving large tire, tackle it. Each kid hit it hard, bounced with the tire, and most hit their head afterwards on the ground. I’m not a neurologist, but this is not ok for kids, let alone adults. I love football, but I will not let my kids play tackle football. Football has great lessons for life, but their brain is a necessity.

There’s pretty good science behind the 12 year old cutoff for tackle. I know a couple of former Michigan football players who have that rule for their kids.

Others have said this, but transitioning from flag football to tackle football isn't trivial for a young athlete.  They are different endeavours.

I'm admittedly in the "let parents decide what they want for their children" camp ...... I don't think this issue requires regulation.  CA politicians, for better or worse, tend to like more regulations than less.

Both my kids played flag (the only football available) until the beginning of middle school. Then tackle started, around age 11 or 12. I wish flag had continued for those who still wanted to play but weren't interested in pursuing football in any serious way. It just wasn't a thing in our neck of the woods. Same thing with hockey -- checking began around the same time, and that's when my son opted out, like he did with football. 

Kind of silly tbh.  Football is least dangerous in younger kids, and parents should be able to make this decision.  Hopefully it doesn't pass.

FWIW my parents didnt let me play until HS and I will likely do the same with my son if he even wants to play, but this shouldn't be legislated.

The thing is, under 12 is when tackle football is actually pretty safe. So dumb. 

I don't understand this at all. It doesn't even start to hurt until around age 12 or so.

That's when I quit playing. And one of the reasons I admire adults for playing through pain like they do.

soccer, particularly womens/girls soccer should be banned in toto.  it has the highest incidence of concussion.  

nanny state, engage. 

Absolutely should be banned before age 12 everywhere. Proper tackling techniques should be mandated and strictly regulated from then on. 

California is a joke. 

Not surprising, but unfortunately it's an overreaction.  Couple of my thoughts - I played football from 4th grade through HS, I have coached at several levels over many years, and I have established and run a youth football club for 3rd thru 6th graders...

Football is safer now than it has ever been:

• Rules and penalties (both in-game and suspensions) for targeting ("spearing") are far more aggressive than they have ever been greatly reducing the number of "knock out" or "head shot" hits.  Watching a receiver come over the middle today, you can see the defensive player doing everything in his power to AVOID hitting the player in the head (and the penalty and/or suspension that comes with it). Yes sometimes they happen. So do cycling or skiing accidents causing concussions.  We don't outlaw either one of these.
• Equipment technology (helmets and mouthguards specifically) are cutting edge and have made incredible progress.
• Coaches are now trained in proper tackling technique that minimizes concussive hits.
• Every club, coach, and league that I have seen recently has greatly reduced the number of full contact practices, which is where MANY of the repeated head injuries causing long term damage occurred.  It used to be 4 days of full pad practices, now it is almost always 1 or 2 days a week with remaining practices in shorts.
• Every club, coach and league has specific protocols in place for concussion detection and recovery.  These are science based and are vastly effective at preventing and treating repeat concussions.

In short, today's football is safer than soccer as far as concussion avoidance, detection, diagnosis, recovery, and treatment.

The men who you read about today that have CTE due to playing years of football played for years without ANY attention to equipment, diagnosis, care protocols, recovery, and rules that have eliminated almost all head shots from the game.  This is very sad, and very dramatic on the news, but it is almost a completely different game than it was when those men sustained these injuries.        

There certainly are and will always be the meathead coaches and parents of the world that want to ignore the realities of concussions and promote the head shot mentality, but those are few and far between IMO.  

Can't WAIT to see how this goes in places like Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, or just about anywhere in the Southeast region of the United States. 

I get both sides, honestly. My wife and I, personally, are not keen on letting our two sons play tackle football at least until they're teenagers. I'm hoping they would rather play basketball, baseball, soccer (which our oldest is starting for the first time next month), but if they tell me they want to play football in high school, who am I to stop them? 

I will say I lean more towards letting parents make their own decisions on these fronts, but I do think those who do opt to have their younger children participate should be required to receive a very extensive education in the dangers this potentially creates for younger children in their developmental stages.

In other words, they should know what they are signing their kids up for, so if something horrible should happen, they shouldn't be looking to anyone other than themselves for wondering "how could this have happened?" You want the freedom to make choices for yourself and your family? That's fine by me. But that also means you bear the responsibility for whatever happens next. 

I like banning it until 12, personally. It's not politicians deciding for adults, but for kids too young to really get the long term ramifications. They can play flag or other sports and then pick up hitting later. I only started playing in high school and ended up having eight great years. There's other sports to play as a young kid

The great dichotomy of our time, as far as sports go, is the amount of enjoyment we all get from football versus what we know it does to those who play the game, especially during formative years as a child. We know we're watching people racking up lasting cognitive and physical harm. It may not come around until they're much, much older. But that's what happening. Remember the show Friday Night Tykes about the Texas youth football league? It was cringe-y to watch those kids fling themselves around, helmet first, when the helmet was just about as big as they were.

If we're going to keep doing this, it's a good thing to encourage youth football to build skills with the non-tackle game at a young age, then transition into contact when the lasting impact would be lessened.

I know it might challenge the tender sensibilities of the "get your government hands off my Medicare" crowd, but honestly, this is a good idea.

I know California gets a lot of shit for some laws and regulations, but this is one I 100% can get behind. I think even upping it to banning tackle before high school would be ok as well.

Not only will banning tackle football until age 12 prevent a lot of both major injuries and smaller repetitive blunt hits, it opens the door to lots of kids playing who otherwise wouldn't because their parents think football is too dangerous otherwise.

Throughout elementary and middle school, I was always the fastest kid, and while I did not weigh a lot nor was I all that tall, I was probably slightly above the 50-60 percentile for my age. However, I had parents who were convinced you needed to be super strong and beefy to play football, so they never let me play no matter how much I begged. By 8th grade, they finally let me, and even they said they would have let me play sooner once they saw me play.

A bill like this could really cause parents to allow more kids to play - which will be good for the sport in the long run.

Weird cutoff to allow it for the last year of middle school, might as well limit it to high school and up. I support this, flag football is great.