Poll regarding letting your kids play touch football if things go south real fast (faster) with all the CTE.

[PancakeBlockPaul]

I’ve been wondering what I would do if I had a kid or kids that wanted to play FB. Everyone’s been so scared ****less because of all the media coverage of it. The Netflix thing on He Who’s Name We Cannot Speak, showed a very extreme side of it and I’m sure there’s TONS more that never get diagnosed either till it’s too late (after a Chris Benoit or AH like event) or when someone dies of natural causes and their brain is looked at. I know the media prides itself on making boogey men up but I feel the severe/numerous concussions these guys have, are what makes em do bad ****. It’s not %100 CTE I feel though. After that book I wrote, are any of your kids wanting to play like they did before? Honestly I feel like nothing has changed with then in that regard. The scare tactic may have worked with the little ones and their parents but eventually said kid will probably go back to playing Frosh year of HS. If I had known about CTE back when I played in H.S. and College, I wouldn’t have given 2 ****s about it. I played mostly C and OT and was never concussed. Torn MCL, Hyperextended Knee (mother****er bully did this to me Sophomore year…I still wasn’t my revenge), sprained both knees again later along with both ankles. other painful injuries like a hip stinger and rotator cuff. All recoverable but none damage the brain (the psyche/ego, maybe). If someone loves the game, they will play it. We need to stop listening to the fear mongering being pushed by the media and not the NFL because they’ve known of it for a long time before mentioning it and could have been doing a ton of harm prevention rather than nothing other than “boohoo another guy killed himself”. So fck them first off. I’m I for one would let my kids play if they wanted and would show them some of the bad that comes with it (for ****s sake the pros are gigantic grown men trying to kill the other team). Education is the ONLY thing that will help get it under control and putting little Johnny and Lilly in field hockey or rugby is just as injury prone. Anyways, off my rant/soapbox. Whomever gets the acronyms, wins. The first one is standard fare but good luck on the second one…

 

[everlong]

I have daughters and yet had to make this choice back when my eldest was in 3rd grade. She's a really good athlete and wanted to play flag football and I was talked into coaching. She was by far the fastest and most athletic kid on the field at the time, some of these boys just hadn't matured yet and ended up being really good athletes a few years down the road.

So on defense I showed her how to read the quarterback and just play centerfield. She ended up picking off or breaking up anything which wasn't a screen pass. So the pop warner coach comes up to me after this one game and says is that your daughter. He said would you consider letting her play PW? I was quick to say no. He asked why and I said bluntly, she has no filter whatsoever. She'll ever knock herself or somebody else out, probably both. I wasn't going down that road. She was angry at the time but now thanks me because she knows I was right.

She took enough contact in soccer and lax as it was.

Funny story from the first game. I rotated the kids around all the positions so everyone had a chance to do everything. So first practice this one boy, really nice kid but he was young, says why is a girl playing. I can see the smoke coming out my daughter's ears. I taught her how to throw the proper way so she could really throw hard for that age. So as I'm rotating it's her turn to throw and it aligns that the kid who said it is going to get a slot receiver route for that play where he runs a two yard out. As I give the play I see her eye him and I'm thinking oh crap I know where this is going no matter if the kid is open or not. He runs the out and she puts the ball right between his eyes. He barely got his hands up in time to protect himself, thank god, but the ball hits his hands so hard it pushes them back into his face hard enough to leave a welt and he lands on his ass. The kid is welling up but keeps it together and comes back to the huddle rubbing his face and ass. He looks at me and then at her and says, she throws really hard for a girl. It's Christmas eve on her face.