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‘“My kids aren’t playing,” Sam Taggard told me. Taggard played football years ago at Bentley University, and he says his 44-year-old body is still bearing the damage: He had back surgery two years ago and still feels the wear and tear of football on his body. He also did a clinical doctorate in physical therapy and has seen how debilitating head and neck injuries can be. Football requires kids to endanger their brain every single game, he said: “In football, you’re literally trying to decimate the person in front of you. If you’re not, you’re not playing well.”’

Good on this country’s football universities for decimating their students’ brains! Plus there’s their commitment to social justice: Consider the lovely racial angle to the current game, detailed here.

Margaret Soltan, February 2, 2019 9:48AM
Posted in: sport

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7 Responses to “‘“My kids aren’t playing,” Sam Taggard told me. Taggard played football years ago at Bentley University, and he says his 44-year-old body is still bearing the damage: He had back surgery two years ago and still feels the wear and tear of football on his body. He also did a clinical doctorate in physical therapy and has seen how debilitating head and neck injuries can be. Football requires kids to endanger their brain every single game, he said: “In football, you’re literally trying to decimate the person in front of you. If you’re not, you’re not playing well.”’”

  1. Stephen Karlson Says:
    February 2nd, 2019 at 6:50PM

    The Atlantic’s writers have been on the racialized political economy of football for several years now. The article you link to elaborates on the phenomenon. Well-to-do parents have been holding their kids out of football for some time, and seven-player leagues, which used to be the way for small towns, primarily in Texas, to get in on the action, are now the varsity of last resort for small towns in my part of Illinois, where a combination of people leaving the state and fewer kids trying out for football make fielding a standard eleven-player team, even with kids playing both ways, more difficult than it used to be.

  2. charlie Says:
    February 3rd, 2019 at 1:31AM

    The same can be said of professional boxing. Just look who does that brain destroying sport…

  3. Margaret Soltan Says:
    February 3rd, 2019 at 4:49AM

    Charlie: I almost wrote that in the post: boxing also comes to mind.

  4. dmf Says:
    February 3rd, 2019 at 9:21AM

    like the military largely made up of the left-behind and the thrown away, desperate people doing desperate things, hell the better off (too the obscenely wealthy) won’t even pay taxes to support wars now they certainly aren’t going sacrifice their children to the spectacle.

  5. charlie Says:
    February 3rd, 2019 at 11:58AM

    One of the links has data indicating 1.1 million high school boys play football. Unfortunately, that means the game isn’t becoming obsolete any time soon…

  6. dmf Says:
    February 3rd, 2019 at 1:03PM

    from NYTimes
    “Hours before the sport’s biggest game, President Trump joined the growing ranks of parents anxious over tackle football”

  7. Margaret Soltan Says:
    February 3rd, 2019 at 1:35PM

    dmf: Yup. Just saw that.

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