High School Tackle-football Does More Harm Than Good
PRO (4 arguments)
Grabbers:
“We don’t really know what the risks are. There are concerns in general about youth football, but not a lot of data to back up or refute those concerns ,” said Andrew Peterson, a clinical associate professor with University of Iowa Sports Medicine.
“We are teaching hustle, determination, teamwork, effort, discipline, intelligence and that hard work pays off,” stated Jeff Scurran, football coach at Catalina Foothills High School in Tucson, Arizona.
Alternate Weighing Mechanism:
Whichever side can better prove that high school tackle-football does more good than harm or harm than good towards the players from an educational and health standpoint.
Rebuttals:
AT: Dangerous - The risk of death and injury, while important, isn't enough to justify why high school tackle-football does more harm than good. Dan Garza, assistant professor of orthopaedic surgery at the Stanford School of Medicine and the 49ers' medical director, is conducting concussion studies at Stanford with the use of a special mouthpiece that measures force and frequency. He says some of the truths we hold to be self-evident -- most notably, the idea that one concussion makes someone more susceptible to the next -- have yet to be proved scientifically. 529, 837 players get an injury per year in basketball while in football, 460, 210 get an injury per year in football. According to the Guardian, 2 out of every 10 football players get a concussion, while 4.5 out of 10 rugby players get a concussion.
AT: Injuries - “We don’t really know what the risks are,” said Andrew Peterson, a clinical associate professor with University of Iowa Sports Medicine. “There are concerns in general about youth football, but not a lot of data to back up or refute those concerns .”
Football causes serious head damage in high school students. The hits they take during practice and during the game damage their brain throughout the season and leads to a decrease in mental capacity down the road. The bodies of people in high school are still developing, and constantly stunting such growth or damaging the body in day-to-day collisions in blistering heat can be detrimental.
Deaths have also been caused by tackle-football in high a school students. According to American Journal of Sports Medicine, deaths can be caused by cardiac failure, brain injury, and heat illness, and there is an average of 12 deaths per year in high school tackle-football. "During practice and during games, a single player can sustain close to 1,000 hits to the head, in only one season, without any documented or reported incapacitating concussion. Such repeated blows over several years, no doubt, can result in permanent impairment of brain functioning, especially in a child," stated Bennet Omahu, the co-founder and director of the Brain Injury Research Institute at West Virginia University. Purdue University researchers followed a football team from Lafayette, Indiana. The athletes wore special helmets with sensors that measured the number and severity of head impacts. The researchers also put the players in an MRI scanner to measure their brain activity while the students took a test of thinking and memory. After the season was over, they compared the brain scans with the hits. Each player logged from 200 to more than 1,800 hits to the head in a single season. Over two seasons, six players had concussions, but 17 others showed brain changes even though they didn't have concussions. A 2012 study in the journal Neurology, which surveyed the autopsies of 334 deceased NFL players, found that they were three times more likely than the general population to suffer from neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and ALS ( Lou Gehrig's disease). The disease known as CTE was found by Boston University researchers among 50 former football players, including 33 NFL veterans. Less alarming but still concerning is a 2007 study of 2,500 retired NFL players by the University of North Carolina's Center for the Study of Retired Athletes, which found that those who had at least three concussionswere at triple the risk of getting clinical depression as those with no concussions.
For example, not all schools have a debate team even if they have a football team. If you switch the two, there's a higher standard of education in the schools. Debate teaches you to think critically and analyze quickly. While football may increase a mentality like strategy, they're specific to the area of football. Taking away money spent on football programs and giving it to other more educational areas may be part of what's needed to increase the educational standard in America.
The average salary of a football coach is $73,000, and school districts have spent up to $20 million per stadium for high school football. With that kind of money, a significant amount of educational clubs or extracurricular activities could be implemented in schools, which will increase learning abilities.
In tackle football, coaches are always encouraging the players to hit harder and perform better. This violent attitude and disposition could begin to translate into daily life, which is harmful not only to the players, but to those around them that are caught up in their violent habits. By encouraging high school tackle football, we are encouraging violence in the participants. We all have instincts for violence that can be triggered by witnessing violence or being the victim of violence. Have you ever wondered why people actually like watching violence on TV? It seems like humans wouldn't want to watch bad, gruesome things. It's because we have an instinct to be fascinated with watching violence so we can learn from it and protect ourselves. Some sports, like football can also trigger those instincts. Scientists have found that kids who participate in those sports are much more likely to be violent off the field. People who watch those sports are also more likely to beat their spouses, get in fights shortly after playing in a game. In football, one specifically targets members of an opposing football team with the goal of knocking them out of the game. According to Dr. Jeremy F. Shapiro from UC San Diego does not recommend high school tackle football because putting the intention in young people’s minds to hurt others is morally wrong.
A three-year study showed that while male tackle-football players make up 3% of the population on high school campuses, they account for 19% of sexual assaults and 35% of domestic assaults on high school campuses.
If the athletes are injured during their high school years, this will limit their chances of becoming professional athletes and earning scholarships to college. If an athlete gets seriously injured during a game, the athlete’s whole entire life will be changed. For example, they won’t be able to pursue a career in the sports they excel in therefore turning their life completely upside down.
Concussions at all levels of football are a tremendous problem as of 2011, with a growing number of retired professional football players suffering from dementia after repeated concussions during their playing days. Among high school tackle-football players, 34 percent have had one concussion and 30 percent have had two or more concussions. As the University of Pittsburgh Department of Neurological Surgery reports, if you have a second concussion, even a minor one, soon after the first concussion, you might die. A total of 26 deaths, most occurring since 2000, are attributed to "second impact syndrome." The neurological effects of concussions in high school athletes also can result in learning disabilities and severe memory impairments. In addition, only 3-4% of high school players get the opportunity to play college football, and those players are not necessarily the most talented or athletically gifted. To be recruited by any college , players need to catch the eye of the coach, and then prove to have the combination of athletic ability, mental toughness, and intelligence to keep the coach’s attention. And even then, if the player’s skills don’t match up with exactly what the coach is looking for, he’s probably going to be part of the 96% who only pick up footballs that say “NERF” on the side.
Livestrong Foundation