Because radical Democrats had their way, a 9-year-old in New York State may not only take puberty blockers, but have them covered by the taxpayers through Medicaid. But there’s something preteens won’t be able to do if Empire State Democrats have their way again: play tackle football.
All this, mind you, is being done “for the children” in the name of health — even though research shows that tackle football is safe for kids when proper equipment and techniques are used.
Per Fox News:
The John Mackey Youth Football Protection Act, named after an NFL player from New York who died from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in 2011, would ban tackle football for kids 12 years old and younger.
Assemblyman Michael Benedetto, a Democrat who represents the Bronx in New York City, has been trying to get the bill passed for more than 10 years, but he finally has a sponsor in the state Senate, Democrat Luis Sepulveda.
During a press conference in Albany on Thursday, Benedetto called it a “vitally important bill” that will protect young athletes.
“While the Super Bowl is an awful lot of fun, it’s not fun when you see young children run around, playing a game that they are hitting their heads, dozens to a hundred times a week — brains that are rapidly developing,” he said.
Whether Benedetto has taken one too many shots to the head himself was not reported, but his numbers appear way off. Just consider research on youth-football head-impact data published by the National Institutes of Health’s website PubMed.gov in 2020. Reporting on a study of 20 members of the Summit Youth Football League in Summit, New Jersey, the site wrote:
All 20 players participated in all practices and games throughout the season. No player suffered a concussion throughout the entire season. There were 817 recorded impacts throughout the season. This was an average of 41 impacts per player over the course of the season and fewer than 4 impacts per player per week. Only one impact registered as “high.”
Now, The New American does believe, and will go out on a limb to assert, that even under Common Core math “4 impacts per player per week” are actually far fewer than the “dozens to a hundred times a week” Benedetto claimed while trying to make a political impact. Yet there’s more.
“We demonstrate that there are few head impacts over the course of an entire season at the middle school level,” PubMed writes in its “Conclusion.” “Guardian Caps, safe tackling techniques, and the age of participants may have contributed to the very low number of impacts recorded and the complete lack of injuries.”
Of course, middle-school kids would in many cases be older than 12. But note that when mentioning the participants’ age, PubMed actually means that younger kids suffer fewer injuries because, being relatively weak physically and of low weight, the forces they generate just aren’t that great.
As PubMed puts it, their study “provides data demonstrating that youth football, when Guardian Caps and safe tackling techniques are enforced, does not appear to result in significant head impacts causing immediate head injuries.” But, the researchers add, this “study cannot comment on the safety of playing football at the collegiate or professional level” — where the forces are far greater.
This was echoed by ScienceDaily in 2020, reporting on a Virginia Tech study. It “is important to note that the overall head acceleration exposure in youth football is much lower than in adult football,” the site wrote. “…Younger, lighter players collide with less force than adult athletes, so they’re less likely to jostle their brains enough to cause serious injury.”
For the record, I have no horse in this race (except the Truth). Not a fan, I neither played nor watched football. But I did as a young boy play “Capture the Flag” in camp — with tackling — and without any protective gear. It was loads of fun, and none of our small bodies ever suffered serious injury.
There’s an irony here, too. There’s an argument stating that kids will actually be in greater danger if they begin tackle football later because they won’t learn proper tackling techniques while young. In response, it has been asserted that John Mackey’s own life refutes this claim: He didn’t start football “until he was 14 or 15,” after all.
But this anecdote actually hurts the anti-youth-tackle-football argument. For Mackey didn’t play football as a preteen — the group the New York bill targets — yet he still suffered CTE.
Should we ban football, period?
Some on Benedetto’s side say that even if just a “few” kids suffer injuries, their prohibition is worth it. Yet this “If it saves just one life [or body or leg, etc.]…” argument is a recipe for tyranny. Children die playing soccer, baseball, and lacrosse, and while enjoying many, many other activities. Why, a 14-year-old just got killed doing rodeo. Life is fraught with risk. Should Big Brother mandate that all kids be ensconced in bubble wrap?
As ScienceDaily put it, with football, “as with any sport, there’s still a risk of injury.” The “remedy”? Effective “protective equipment is critical — and that’s the practical value of this study [they reported on],” the site continued. For sure, the focus should be on better equipment, not bigger government.
This is especially true when that government endorses and funds “transgender” intervention (e.g., puberty blockers) for preteens. As to this, take a gander at the video below of a 10-and-under football game and then ask yourself, “What’s more dangerous for kids: football — or statists who would put kids on a path toward genital mutilation?”
