It's all about the $$$. No one cares when random defensive player gets injured. But when Aaron Rodgers incurs a season ending injury getting knocked down after a throw, it's bad for business. No one wants to tune in to Deshone Kizer chucking up picks for GB. There is already a scarcity of good QBs in the NFL, so the league needs to protect them otherwise the league just becomes full of garbage second string benchwarmers getting sacked and throwing picks.
There isn't enough density in the US for the sport at the moment. If American kids want to become heavily invested in soccer, they (and their parents) will need to do a LOT of traveling just to be able to play against high enough level competition. This is very costly and a huge time drain, a lot of families decide that it's not worth it, and encourage their kids to do other sports like football or basketball. High school football in places like Texas is so exceptional because there is no lack of high quality teams/players.
A tiny country like Croatia is actually a great place to field a soccer team since the most exceptional youth in that country will be able to play against other exceptional youth without a huge burden of travel.
If football falls off a cliff in popularity (perhaps due to CTE concerns), then soccer might be able to have that sort of density of good homegrown talent. I don't think this will happen any time soon, if at all.
If you really US soccer to compete on an international level, some well funded organization will need to hire top international youth coaches. Then the organization needs to scout out all across the US for exceptionally talented kids (elementary school age), then pretty much concentrate them into some soccer boarding camp full time to be taught by these coaches. Room/board/tutoring/coaching will all be provided. Then maybe when those kids turn 18+ they can be good enough to compete on an international level. After that you need to ensure that the coaching of the USMNT is up to par as well.
Secondary option: Scout the very best Latin/South american youth players and give them US citizenship.
We've only just started to make progress on research into the brains of NFL players. Will be a long time before we have research on high school level players.
It is reasonable to believe that a driver of CTE cases is player size and speed. High school kids are generally not big or not fast so impact are less forceful because physics. However, a kid tackling head first is still going to be bad. Repeated helmet to helmet collisions in HS football are still bad.
People keep saying "we just need to teach them to tackle better," but I don't buy that, given the nature of the game, you can't always have perfect tackling form and people put their body on the line all the time to make a play. Even if you play right, it doesn't stop the other kid from driving their head into your skull.
You probably need to go into this knowing that it's not risk free for your kid. The chances of him developing full blown CTE are going to be very low, but we still need to accept that there probably exists some brain injury risk playing at the HS level.
My advice would be to proceed with caution IF your son is enthusiastic about playing, but emphasis safety and hopefully steer him into positions that reduce the risk of injury. Discourage him from playing RB or LB.
Anecdotally, when I played in high school, the kids that end up in the worst shape at the end of the season were the high usage RBs. Even game the would have their body parts athletic taped and they just looked like crap.
We've only just started to make progress on research into the brains of NFL players. Will be a long time before we have research on high school level players.
It is reasonable to believe that a driver of CTE cases is player size and speed. High school kids are generally not big or not fast so impact are less forceful because physics. However, a kid tackling head first is still going to be bad. Repeated helmet to helmet collisions in HS football are still bad.
People keep saying "we just need to teach them to tackle better," but I don't buy that, given the nature of the game, you can't always have perfect tackling form and people put their body on the line all the time to make a play. Even if you play right, it doesn't stop the other kid from driving their head into your skull.
You probably need to go into this knowing that it's not risk free for your kid. The chances of him developing full blown CTE are going to be very low, but we still need to accept that there probably exists some brain injury risk playing at the HS level.
My advice would be to proceed with caution IF your son is enthusiastic about playing, but emphasis safety and hopefully steer him into positions that reduce the risk of injury. Discourage him from playing RB or LB.
Anecdotally, when I played in high school, the kids that end up in the worst shape at the end of the season were the high usage RBs. Even game the would have their body parts athletic taped and they just looked like crap.
Yeah I was a pretty quiet kid, but when I played during sophomore kid in HS I realized that the meaner kids were usually the better football players. At that skill level you can usually just out-aggression the competition.
Just because 1 in 25 picked Nova to win doesn't mean Michigan has a 1/25 chance to win. It just means that 24/25 experts believe that Nova has a >50% chance to win the game, which sounds about right.
In terms of job prospects I think the UM BBA is vastly overrated. You can do more and have way more options with an UM Engineering or science degree. Almost every graduate job that hires UM BBAs will also interview UM Engineerings grads as well, but not vice versa.
I will say though, that the BBA college experience is vastly superior to the Engineering School experience. No class on Fridays (maybe not true anymore?), don't have to travel to north campus, hotter girls in your courses, better social environment, way less homework, etc. BBAs have a lot of fun at Michigan.
BBA isn't a bad degree, especially since you're instate, but hard to tell without knowing all your options.
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ISO 3 tickets to the Championship game at SOFI stadium.
It's all about the $$$. No one cares when random defensive player gets injured. But when Aaron Rodgers incurs a season ending injury getting knocked down after a throw, it's bad for business. No one wants to tune in to Deshone Kizer chucking up picks for GB. There is already a scarcity of good QBs in the NFL, so the league needs to protect them otherwise the league just becomes full of garbage second string benchwarmers getting sacked and throwing picks.
There isn't enough density in the US for the sport at the moment. If American kids want to become heavily invested in soccer, they (and their parents) will need to do a LOT of traveling just to be able to play against high enough level competition. This is very costly and a huge time drain, a lot of families decide that it's not worth it, and encourage their kids to do other sports like football or basketball. High school football in places like Texas is so exceptional because there is no lack of high quality teams/players.
A tiny country like Croatia is actually a great place to field a soccer team since the most exceptional youth in that country will be able to play against other exceptional youth without a huge burden of travel.
If football falls off a cliff in popularity (perhaps due to CTE concerns), then soccer might be able to have that sort of density of good homegrown talent. I don't think this will happen any time soon, if at all.
If you really US soccer to compete on an international level, some well funded organization will need to hire top international youth coaches. Then the organization needs to scout out all across the US for exceptionally talented kids (elementary school age), then pretty much concentrate them into some soccer boarding camp full time to be taught by these coaches. Room/board/tutoring/coaching will all be provided. Then maybe when those kids turn 18+ they can be good enough to compete on an international level. After that you need to ensure that the coaching of the USMNT is up to par as well.
Secondary option: Scout the very best Latin/South american youth players and give them US citizenship.
The same reason why southern states produce way more top football recruits vs New York, which has higher population.
We've only just started to make progress on research into the brains of NFL players. Will be a long time before we have research on high school level players.
It is reasonable to believe that a driver of CTE cases is player size and speed. High school kids are generally not big or not fast so impact are less forceful because physics. However, a kid tackling head first is still going to be bad. Repeated helmet to helmet collisions in HS football are still bad.
People keep saying "we just need to teach them to tackle better," but I don't buy that, given the nature of the game, you can't always have perfect tackling form and people put their body on the line all the time to make a play. Even if you play right, it doesn't stop the other kid from driving their head into your skull.
You probably need to go into this knowing that it's not risk free for your kid. The chances of him developing full blown CTE are going to be very low, but we still need to accept that there probably exists some brain injury risk playing at the HS level.
My advice would be to proceed with caution IF your son is enthusiastic about playing, but emphasis safety and hopefully steer him into positions that reduce the risk of injury. Discourage him from playing RB or LB.
Anecdotally, when I played in high school, the kids that end up in the worst shape at the end of the season were the high usage RBs. Even game the would have their body parts athletic taped and they just looked like crap.
We've only just started to make progress on research into the brains of NFL players. Will be a long time before we have research on high school level players.
It is reasonable to believe that a driver of CTE cases is player size and speed. High school kids are generally not big or not fast so impact are less forceful because physics. However, a kid tackling head first is still going to be bad. Repeated helmet to helmet collisions in HS football are still bad.
People keep saying "we just need to teach them to tackle better," but I don't buy that, given the nature of the game, you can't always have perfect tackling form and people put their body on the line all the time to make a play. Even if you play right, it doesn't stop the other kid from driving their head into your skull.
You probably need to go into this knowing that it's not risk free for your kid. The chances of him developing full blown CTE are going to be very low, but we still need to accept that there probably exists some brain injury risk playing at the HS level.
My advice would be to proceed with caution IF your son is enthusiastic about playing, but emphasis safety and hopefully steer him into positions that reduce the risk of injury. Discourage him from playing RB or LB.
Anecdotally, when I played in high school, the kids that end up in the worst shape at the end of the season were the high usage RBs. Even game the would have their body parts athletic taped and they just looked like crap.
Yeah I was a pretty quiet kid, but when I played during sophomore kid in HS I realized that the meaner kids were usually the better football players. At that skill level you can usually just out-aggression the competition.
Just because 1 in 25 picked Nova to win doesn't mean Michigan has a 1/25 chance to win. It just means that 24/25 experts believe that Nova has a >50% chance to win the game, which sounds about right.
In terms of job prospects I think the UM BBA is vastly overrated. You can do more and have way more options with an UM Engineering or science degree. Almost every graduate job that hires UM BBAs will also interview UM Engineerings grads as well, but not vice versa.
I will say though, that the BBA college experience is vastly superior to the Engineering School experience. No class on Fridays (maybe not true anymore?), don't have to travel to north campus, hotter girls in your courses, better social environment, way less homework, etc. BBAs have a lot of fun at Michigan.
BBA isn't a bad degree, especially since you're instate, but hard to tell without knowing all your options.