California may soon banish youth tackle football
The People’s Democratic Republic of California is trying to ban youth tackle football before kids are 12 years old. Ostensibly, this is because it’s too dangerous; in fact, it’s almost certainly because the sport is manly.
The assembly committee regulating California sports voted to send the bill to the full Assembly. If it passes there, it goes to the Senate and then to Gavin Newsom for his signature. Says the AP,
Heightened concern over concussions and the growing popularity of flag football are driving the effort to impose the ban, which opponents say would take away the ability for parents to decide their children’s activities, put California youth players behind those in other states and cut off some children from a source of exercise and an important after-school activity.
But advocates say the bill will protect kids from the risk of brain damage, which studies have shown increases the longer a person plays tackle football. And they note children can still enjoy the sport through flag football, which is becoming more popular and even has support from the NFL.
The article also notes that other states have unsuccessfully tried to ban tackle football for kids and that this is the second try in California. It’s the point about it being a second try that is important.
Unlike conservatives who, if they lose on an initiative, slink away never to be heard from again, leftists never give up. And because they never give up, they slowly shift the Overton window until they can effect a significant societal change. They truly take to heart the old adage that, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
The question is why leftists are so opposed to tackle football. They claim that this is because it’s dangerous, but lots of youth sports are dangerous. According to a National Health Statistics Report, basketball has almost as many ER visits as football when it comes to youth sports. (The report doesn’t detail the severity of injuries nor the number of children involved in a given sport.)
Indeed, when kids are little, bicycles are way more dangerous as is the playground itself. And when kids are older (early twenties), basketball is the real risk for men, followed by skateboarding. Legislatures, though, aren’t going after any of those sports.
Nor are legislatures paying attention to gymnastics. It’s true that the sport is less dangerous than it was when I was a kid, which saw us learning on thin mats placed over wooden gym floors. Modern gymnastics training centers are heavily padded.
Still, the statistics for gymnastics injuries are staggering and completely unsurprising, given swift jumps, flips, and spins on unstable equipment high above the ground. Moreover, if you want the really serious injuries—the traumatic spine injuries that disable people for life—look no further than cycling, skiing, snowboarding, and aquatic sports (i.e., diving).
Soccer, too, is a major source of head injuries because players use their heads to field balls moving at high speeds. A little ironically, in this regard, football need not be so dangerous. The problem with head injuries in football is modern helmets.
In the old days of leather helmets, football players didn’t use their heads as battering rams. When the new helmets came along, they led with their heads, changing the game’s dynamics. Change up helmets, and football may become safer again. It’ll be more like rugby, which has a lot of soft tissue injuries but less head trauma.
But speaking of soccer, that game’s popularity on the left, coupled with its freedom from scrutiny, explains a lot about the war on American football. Football really does embody the American spirit. First, football plows forward, while soccer literally runs around in circles…for hours. (I say this as a long-time soccer mom.) Second, there’s something quintessentially “manly” about American football.
If you disassociate yourself from the teams and watch a pro game just as men’s bodies in motion, you see that every man on the field gives his all. These guys use their bodies as missiles, battering rams, walls, whatever. They are the quintessence of dedicated manliness without weapons. It is one of the last bastions of unabashed manliness.
In American schools, boys are increasingly forced to be still, which is antithetical to their true natures. Once on the schoolyard, they’re told not to be competitive, another thing that is hostile to their innate beings.
No wonder that so many retreat to war-play video games (e.g., Call of Duty) in which they can virtually act out their manliness. And no wonder, too, that more and more smoke pot. Rather than channeling men’s physical, aggressive, competitive instincts into beneficial behaviors that create good citizens (courage, controlled competition, etc.), we’re turning them into chemically sedated armchair warriors whose greatest weapon is the speed of their hand on the joystick.
And then there’s football. I’m always amazed and impressed when I see a player run, spin, and leap, eluding attackers and, quite often, still running with at least one person attached to his leg. My lizard brain is telling me, “If this guy were my mate, and I were being chased by anything from a charging mammoth to a Nazi or Hamas terrorist, this is the guy who would be there for me. The soy boy surrounded by a cloud of pot smoke would be screaming, weeping, and begging for mercy, but this football player would lay his life down for me…after first inflicting some serious injury on the other guy (or mammoth).”
And that’s why the left hates football.