California moves to limit school football injuries. But is the sport fixable?
| Los Angeles
California just opened the Pandora鈥檚 Box labeled 鈥渇ixing football鈥� a tad聽further this week by聽enacting a law limiting physical contact in middle and high school football practice to three hours a week. And that鈥檚 only during the actual season. Out of season, it鈥檚 nix on the tackle time during any scheduled practices.
These moves are in response to a growing聽concern among parents and former NFL players about the long-term damage done by concussions and other聽impact-related injuries. The Golden State joins a list of 19 other states that have聽placed some form of limit on the time youngsters can聽practice bashing into one another. The list includes Texas, where football is the unofficial state sport.
But as more voices are heard on the issue,聽disagreement over the most effective way to address contact-related聽injury is also growing.聽
鈥淔ootball is inherently risky,鈥� says Dr. Pietro Tonino, former assistant team physician to the then-Los Angeles Rams and chief of sports medicine at Loyola University in Chicago. Limiting practice time may actually make the sport riskier, he says, 鈥渂ecause once the kids are in a game, they have had less time assimilating the moves they need to keep themselves from getting injured.鈥�
Dr. Tonino has four children, two boys and聽two girls.聽He says he made his decision about football and children some 15 years ago. 鈥淚 knew they were just not going to play the game at all,鈥� he says, 鈥渁nd neither of my sons play the game.鈥�
Fellow parent and physician Alex Powers, however, has taken a different approach. Both his sons play football. They聽even participated in a study sponsored by Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, where Dr. Powers is a pediatric neurosurgeon. The聽recent study found that limiting contact during practice did not decrease the amount of contact during game play. But, says Powers, who is a co-author, 鈥渓imiting the practice time did聽significantly cut back on injuries sustained during practice.鈥�
This finding is important, says Powers, because more injuries occur during practice than during games.
鈥淔ootball is not going away any time soon,鈥� says Powers, adding that it is in everyone鈥檚 interest to do whatever can be done to make if safer.
Youth participation in football is down, however, notes Dan Lebowitz, executive director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University in Boston.聽If聽professional football wants to have the kind of robust network of young players funneling up through the various levels that it has traditionally relied upon, he notes, 鈥渋t will have to change.鈥�
The center is in the midst of a year-long study devoted to answering聽the question聽of where the best middle ground lies, notes Mr. Lebowitz. 鈥淗ow do we reduce the risks of traumatic injury without losing the athleticism, the grace, and the character-building that go along with sports in our culture?鈥� he asks.
However, not everyone is devoted to saving the sport, says Irv Muchnick, author of 鈥淐oncussion, Inc.: The End of Football As We Know It,鈥� a collection of his investigative reporting on the unfolding crisis inside the NFL,which will be published this fall. He dismisses the legislative action as window dressing for a fundamental problem.
鈥淔ootball is about violent collision, just as boxing is about punching,鈥� he says via e-mail.
More important, notes Mr. Muchnick, he suggests the California law, which goes into effect on Jan. 1, is a halfway measure that will neither change the nature of the game nor protect children from injury.
鈥淭hese allow football鈥檚 private profiteering interests to default on the real but hidden costs of their enterprise, which inevitably get absorbed by the public sector,鈥� he says.
Every society chooses the kind of entertainment it wants and is willing to pay the price for, says Muchnick.聽鈥淔ootball is what it is: not fixable.鈥�
For the sake of such values and goals as academic achievement, reduction of violent crime, and improved lifelong workforce productivity, Muchnick says聽the football industry must be drastically downsized.
In particular, he adds, 鈥減ublic high schools should not be stuck with footing the medical and insurance and ancillary social bills, all in the name of entertaining their communities and serving as a developmental talent system for the professional college and NFL levels.鈥�
