Parents poll.....football

Meh. I'll take notice once high school football participation numbers go down significantly.

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Kids are softer 

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If coach would've put you in during the 4th quarter your team would've won state.

I hope to have a son play football just so I can go watch the cheerleaders

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I hope to have a son play football just so I can go watch the cheerleaders

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Football as we have known it will slowly die on the vine over the next 20-30 years.

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I agree. Now that a CTE diagnosis has been confirmed on a former college player....25 and committed suicide so his brain was tested.
Even a few former HS players show symptoms.
Football is facing it's biggest challenge since Roosevelt.

I wouldn't let my kid play football until he's in high school and athletic enough to play varsity.

You don't have to play your whole life (like baseball) to end up good. And there's no point in dealing with all the injuries and concussions that go along with it.

I also wouldn't want my kid pitching until he was in high school. So many of the best pitchers I faced in high school were not good at baseball until they grew. Then all of a sudden they got 90mph fastballs. The best pitchers I faced growing up were all guys who just hit puberty before everyone else. No point in throwing your arm out at age 12.

I coach football but after the things I've seen I doubt I let my boys play. Too many terrible youth coaches.

Football aint going anywhere for two reasons. One, we will make changes before it's too late including requiring wrap up tackles, moving back to soft pads, and possibly limiting substitutions or requiring athletes to play both ways. Secondly, and the biggest reason, is football will be like boxing at worst. Nobody wants their kids to be a boxer but people spends hundreds a year on PPV or tickets etc. Football will always have a market.

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One, we will make changes before it's too late including requiring wrap up tackles, moving back to soft pads, and possibly limiting substitutions or requiring athletes to play both ways.

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The fix for this problem is so damn obvious and yet will be met with the most gnashing of teeth. Anyone who ever played both with pads on and played tackle football in sandlots know this already. You run a FAR bigger risk of severe injury with pads on than with pads off.

Why? A hard helmet with a face mask gives you the feeling of invulnerability. You lower you head and hit a guy at full speed when you'd never hit a guy like that with your face exposed. Those hits injure both players...but they're exciting. As much as leagues are going to try and outlaw those kinds of hits, they will be unsuccessful. The only way to prevent them is to make them essentially impossible.

That's why all of these various new helmet technologies are only rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic until one of them develops a viable soft helmet or hard helmet that gives on the outside...think a mattress with individually wrapped spring coils.

It's doable...but the bitching and moaning will be unbelievable.

Won't discourage. But won't beat him over the head with it either. We will discuss genetics. He will at BEST have my linebacker frame paired with my tackle feet.

Thought he might be left handed. Then it was gonna be baseball. Looks to be a righty now though.

I want him to love golf. I will have to be careful to not make him dread it.