Is it unethical to watch football with your kids? - Printable Version
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Is it unethical to watch football with your kids? - JohnR34231 - 02-02-2020
Some writer thinks that is at least debatable.
https://time.com/5770136/football-dangers-children/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=20200202&xid=newsletter-brief
RE: Is it unethical to watch football with your kids? - Mr. Baseball - 02-02-2020
Is it unethical to drive your kids in automobiles?
RE: Is it unethical to watch football with your kids? - OutsiderFan - 02-02-2020
I'm pretty sure if we dig deep enough we can conclude anything we ever do is unethical.
RE: Is it unethical to watch football with your kids? - SamuelMcF - 02-02-2020
I ate bacon this morning, and a significant portion of the world's population thinks that's unethical. I'm sure at least one writer in said population has written an article about it.
RE: Is it unethical to watch football with your kids? - CowboyIndian - 02-02-2020
Pretty sure "The Golden Rule" covers all of this.
lex24 - lex24 - 02-02-2020
Yes, the kids much better off locked in his room with a computer. Certainly nothing bad can happen with that.
RE: Is it unethical to watch football with your kids? - 81alum - 02-02-2020
251 AD
1st Father: "Do you think it's ethical to take my kid to the Coliseum?"
2nd Father: "Absolutely. When young people watch religious heretics be devoured by lions it helps them understand right from wrong."
RE: Is it unethical to watch football with your kids? - Mick - 02-02-2020
I think the Super Bowl is when articles like these tend to come out. Slow news days.
One of my sons loves to watch football and is in multiple fantasy leagues. The other son couldn't care less. Neither of them (happily) played football, because they were long, lean and lanky and were drawn to other sports (basketball and volleyball). I don't regret exposing them to football.
RE: Is it unethical to watch football with your kids? - 2006alum - 02-02-2020
I thought the article in this week's New Yorker, "Exactly How Dangerous is Football?," captures the dilemma rather succinctly:
Quote:The body of evidence linking head trauma to C.T.E. is now damning. “It’s like smoking and cancer,” Bruce Miller, a neurologist and Alzheimer’s expert at the University of California, San Francisco, told me. “It’s as clear as day.” And yet the exact mechanisms through which repeated blows to the head result, decades later, in tau buildup and neurological symptoms, remain unknown. Not everyone exposed to repeated head trauma will develop long-term neurological problems; the danger within any one group of players seems to be distributed unevenly, in the same way that some lifelong smokers get lung cancer and others don’t. (None of the players studied by the Buffalo researchers had developed obvious symptoms of C.T.E.; on the other hand, many were still young and, because they were still alive, their brains couldn’t be examined for tau buildup.) It’s also unclear how many athletes, over all, are at risk. The prevalence of C.T.E. in the pro-football population is unknown—estimates vary, with some approximating two per cent minimums, and others fifteen—as is its prevalence in the population as a whole (people get hit in the head in other ways, too), although the general expectation is that it’s rare. There is even less clarity about C.T.E. risk among college, high-school, and young athletes.
Last year, Fisher-Price was forced to recall the Rock ’n Play Sleeper, a wildly popular collapsible crib in which babies lay at a slight incline. The incline, it turned out, was dangerous; if a baby’s head fell forward, or if she rolled to the side or onto her stomach, her airway could become blocked. At least thirty-two infants had died in the Rock ’n Play since 2011. The decision to recall the sleeper was consequential—nearly five million had been sold—but it was also uncomplicated. When parents buy a sleeper, they expect it to be absolutely safe. There is no such thing as an acceptably risky crib.
High-impact sports occupy a different location in the landscape of risk. Their hazards are part of their attraction. We’ve come to realize that football is more dangerous than we thought—and yet we always thought it was dangerous. Players, coaches, and parents must now ask themselves a series of difficult questions with amorphous answers. How much risk is too much? How much scientific knowledge is enough, when the details are still emerging? How much do you have to know before making up your mind?
RE: Is it unethical to watch football with your kids? - AlbanyCardinal - 02-02-2020
(02-02-2020, 08:53 AM)OutsiderFan Wrote: I'm pretty sure if we dig deep enough we can conclude anything we ever do is unethical.
Nah, that feels too facile to me. The writing's on the wall for football. It will be hit hard in the coming decades by increasing lack of participation at every youth level, including h.s. How many of us would encourage our sons to play h.s. football today, let alone allow them if they wanted to? How many of us would even blink if they instead wanted to play tennis, water polo, volleyball, baseball?
RE: Is it unethical to watch football with your kids? - Scooter_Stepford - 02-02-2020
(02-02-2020, 12:57 PM)AlbanyCardinal Wrote: Nah, that feels too facile to me. The writing's on the wall for football. It will be hit hard in the coming decades by increasing lack of participation at every youth level, including h.s. How many of us would encourage our sons to play h.s. football today, let alone allow them if they wanted to? How many of us would even blink if they instead wanted to play tennis, water polo, volleyball, baseball?
Not disputing your broad conclusion re: football, but...
This year, my niece suffered two concussions playing high school water polo. Her brother played high school football. He suffered none.
Plenty of concussions happen in volleyball. Weren’t repeated concussions the reason the very talented Hodson left the Stanford program a few years ago?
RE: Is it unethical to watch football with your kids? - AlbanyCardinal - 02-02-2020
You're right that concussions happen in many non-football sports, hockey especially (of course) but also soccer. From that pretty comprehensive h.s. sports study, though, I don't remember water polo or volleyball being in the top 5. I think statistically there's a big difference.
(02-02-2020, 01:32 PM)Scooter_Stepford Wrote:(02-02-2020, 12:57 PM)AlbanyCardinal Wrote: Nah, that feels too facile to me. The writing's on the wall for football. It will be hit hard in the coming decades by increasing lack of participation at every youth level, including h.s. How many of us would encourage our sons to play h.s. football today, let alone allow them if they wanted to? How many of us would even blink if they instead wanted to play tennis, water polo, volleyball, baseball?
Not disputing your broad conclusion re: football, but...
This year, my niece suffered two concussions playing high school water polo. Her brother played high school football. He suffered none.
Plenty of concussions happen in volleyball. Weren’t repeated concussions the reason the very talented Hodson left the Stanford program a few years ago?
RE: Is it unethical to watch football with your kids? - JeffInCorvallis - 02-02-2020
(02-02-2020, 03:04 PM)AlbanyCardinal Wrote: You're right that concussions happen in many non-football sports, hockey especially (of course) but also soccer. From that pretty comprehensive h.s. sports study, though, I don't remember water polo or volleyball being in the top 5. I think statistically there's a big difference.
(02-02-2020, 01:32 PM)Scooter_Stepford Wrote:(02-02-2020, 12:57 PM)AlbanyCardinal Wrote: Nah, that feels too facile to me. The writing's on the wall for football. It will be hit hard in the coming decades by increasing lack of participation at every youth level, including h.s. How many of us would encourage our sons to play h.s. football today, let alone allow them if they wanted to? How many of us would even blink if they instead wanted to play tennis, water polo, volleyball, baseball?
Not disputing your broad conclusion re: football, but...
This year, my niece suffered two concussions playing high school water polo. Her brother played high school football. He suffered none.
Plenty of concussions happen in volleyball. Weren’t repeated concussions the reason the very talented Hodson left the Stanford program a few years ago?
No doubt that football is the worst offender with regards to head injuries, despite its current popularity the sport will have to evolve or be left behind. However, no sport is completely safe. My daughter plays high school soccer and all the parents are well-versed in the concussion protocol because at any given time there may be one or two or more players sitting out games and practices due to concussion symptoms. As noted in this thread, basketball, volleyball, water polo also see concussions, hopefully at a lower incidence rate.
Don't even get me started on ACL injuries for girls.
RE: Is it unethical to watch football with your kids? - Phogge - 02-02-2020
Is it unethical to prevent your kid from playing?
RE: Is it unethical to watch football with your kids? - AlbanyCardinal - 02-02-2020
Luckily my son's a soccer and tennis guy, but this dad wouldn't have hesitated to prevent him from playing tackle football had that been his preference.
(02-02-2020, 03:15 PM)Phogge Wrote: Is it unethical to prevent your kid from playing?
RE: Is it unethical to watch football with your kids? - 81alum - 02-02-2020
Lots of sports have concussions, but the latest evidence is that concussions are not the only problem...or even the main problem. It appears to be the constant accumulation of sub-concussive injuries that keeps the brain inflamed and leads to much of the damage. Those come from inertia changes that throw the brain around within its sack of fluids and which often go completely undetected as an injury. Even a completely normal tackle or just falling down could contribute. It is a little like deafness, which can result from a few extremely loud sounds, but which more often results from the constant drone over long periods of time of less loud sounds.
At my university, water polo and gymnastics had a higher incidence of concussion protocols per participant than football. But those sports might well have fewer of the sub-concussive events--who knows? It needs to be studied, which is the whole point of those mouth guards that measure change of direction that we were using.
RE: Is it unethical to watch football with your kids? - BostonCard - 02-02-2020
Our kids may find a lot of what we do unethical, just as we find a lot of what previous generations did unethical (the converse is also true; behavior that may have been abhorent to previous generations is acceptable and behavior that we find unacceptable may one day be commonplace).
BC
RE: Is it unethical to watch football with your kids? - Mick - 02-02-2020
(02-02-2020, 12:57 PM)AlbanyCardinal Wrote:(02-02-2020, 08:53 AM)OutsiderFan Wrote: I'm pretty sure if we dig deep enough we can conclude anything we ever do is unethical.
Nah, that feels too facile to me. The writing's on the wall for football. It will be hit hard in the coming decades by increasing lack of participation at every youth level, including h.s. How many of us would encourage our sons to play h.s. football today, let alone allow them if they wanted to? How many of us would even blink if they instead wanted to play tennis, water polo, volleyball, baseball?
My dad put immense pressure on me to play football in high school. Having skipped a grade, I was a year younger than the other kids. I went to a small school that didn't have a frosh team, so we played junior varsity. I was the lightest kid on the team by 20 pounds, and 40 pounds lighter than the average player. I broke my arm on the third day of practice.
I skipped two years of football, then played my senior year. Received two concussions, and I gave out two. In general, the thing I remember most was that the coaches and referees alike let a lot of savage behavior slide, between plays, during plays, after plays both during games and practices.
But here's the thing I remember most: In 1983, a few years after I'd started college, I watched my alma mater's football jamboree. This was an exhibition in which each team played each other for a short quarter. Points were given for regular scoring and first downs.
On the first play of the jamboree, the sophomore son of the head football coach at a high school in Santa Clara County dove headlong into three players blocking for the runner. Instantly, he became a quadriplegic.
Dangerous, dangerous game.