The NYT War on Football Continues

Everyone should buy a Volt and play soccer. Life would be great.

 

And the New York Times loved the Volt. Loved it.

 

Ragu I think that you are generalizing too much in regard to qualifications of coaches. I used to coach in a league that required annual concussion certification training for coaches, weekly training sessions on proper technique taught by HS coaches in winter and weekly helmet checks for all players by certified trainer.

I do feel strongly that proper teaching is a great deterrent for concussions and serious head injury.

 

Some of the issues raised here are not unlike the debate going on in Canada about what age is appropriate to start body checking. You have the blood and guts types who say the kids will be pussies if they do not hit by certain age and the seemingly more reasonable approach that says waiting until the boys are a bit older makes more sense.

FWIW I have a 1 year old son who will most likely be big for his age (he already is a bit of a brute) I won't forbid him from playing football but probably won't encourage it either.

 

Barack Obama:

I'm a big football fan, but I have to tell you if I had a son, I'd have to think long and hard before I let him play football. And I think that those of us who love the sport are going to have to wrestle with the fact that it will probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence. In some cases, that may make it a little bit less exciting, but it will be a whole lot better for the players, and those of us who are fans maybe won't have to examine our consciences quite as much.

I tend to be more worried about college players than NFL players in the sense that the NFL players have a union, they're grown men, they can make some of these decisions on their own, and most of them are well-compensated for the violence they do to their bodies. You read some of these stories about college players who undergo some of these same problems with concussions and so forth and then have nothing to fall back on. That's something that I'd like to see the NCAA think about.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112190/obama-interview-2013-sit-down-president#

 

The terrorists have won

 

Obama's saying what many other parents are saying in regard to their kids playing football. I know when my 15-year-old last year said he wanted to play, my wife and I, and him, thought about it long and hard. We let him, but not without reservations. I'm not sure, though, if my 10-year-old son wanted to play that we would let him.

 

Well you voted for him (at least you said again and again and again you were going to).

I guess he turned out to be a pansy-ass surrender monkey, eh? Who coulda guessed it.

 

Fucking commie.

 

I actually agree with him on this one. It's not worth the risk.

 

This season was especially insane -- I linked to it awhile back but there was a Pop Warner scandal in Orange County about player bounties, guys hollowing out their pads to make weight, dangerous weight-reduction regimens, etc.

Coaches at that level, by and large, give lip service to concussions but don't care much about them. "In my day, we never had concussions!" Yes you did. You just didn't know what they were.

 

Well then he probably shouldn't let his imaginary son play soccer either.