Essay on Football: Why Children Should Play This Game

Football is by far one of the most widely known and hugely popular spectator sports not only in North America, but other countries as well. Throughout the decades, this sport has become safer and is now more regulated in terms of player wellbeing. Over the last few years, the N.F.L. has made 39 rule changes to improve player safety. To prevent further injury, there are now individual medical spotters who can call a timeout if they see that a player may have suffered a concussion during the previous play. Despite these growing improvements, football is still dangerous and has the potential to cause serious injury if one is not cautious. 

Allowing your child to play football will more than likely be a beneficial experience for them. Along the way, they will learn to develop better social skills, teamwork techniques, responsibility, and most importantly,  it keeps them active. Above all, your child will learn discipline.  Lauren Steele, a research journalist, says that proper discipline is one of the most important aspects of your child's development. Meaning, discipline allows children to build strong self-discipline techniques, and become more emotionally and socially mature in their later adulthood. Football is also known to help improve concentration, so if your child happens to suffer from A.D.H.D, this may be a great opportunity to help further strengthen your child's attention span. 

Among the most common football injuries are concussions and other types of play-related head blows. American football has been shown to cause chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which has led to player deaths and other long lasting symptoms after retirement, including an increased risk for alzheimer's disease, chronic depression , anxiety, headaches, insomnia and much more. Assuming children would most likely receive head related injuries early on, it is only inevitable for them to develop serious deficits later on in life. Now that the dangers of high-impact sports are becoming more acknowledged, coaches and parents are aware that they need to keep their athletes' heads protected to avoid potentially serious brain and bodily injuries. Although death from a sports injury is rare, the leading cause of death from a sports-related injury is a brain injury. So why start your kid off playing an accident prone sport knowing well enough they may end up suffering from long lasting effects or possibly dead? 

Children should not play high impact sports during their early years. Statistics show that over 775,000 children, ages 14 and younger, are treated in hospital emergency rooms for sports-related injuries each year. Most of the injuries occurred as a result of falls, collisions, and overexertion during sports activities. And Most sports-related injuries, about 62 percent, occur during practice. If your child is more likely to get hurt during practice then they are during a game that they were preparing for in the first place, is it really worth the risk? Is it worth risking their mental and physical health for the many years to come?

I think not. Suicide and brain injury have long been linked by science. A new study has found that the long term risk of suicide increases among adults who have had concussions during their past and most recent years. This partly due because people don’t take concussions seriously. They make the assumption that if it cannot be seen, it must not be life threatening. Considering that children are less likely to mention having hit their heads, it is best to wait before signing them up for football until they are older and mature enough to recognize the importance in taking care of their brains. 

Society is well aware of the popularity surrounding football. It’s exciting, aggressive, competitive, encourages people to come together, and allows a sense of fulfillment. Who could resist such a satisfying feeling? People who care about their brains obviously. Being someone who has played sports since the age of 6 and has received many injuries along the way, I can confidently say that I should’ve stopped participating in contact sports while I was still ahead. I’ve hit my head far more times than I can count, hence the memory loss (including almost 5 concussions).

Although I myself have never played tackle football, I have in fact played powderpuff. From that experience alone, I have received at least two concussions and many bruised body parts. Knowing that football is even more intense and physically demanding, one can only imagine the kind injuries that may arise. Obviously contact sports are dangerous, but it’s the adrenaline rush people get that makes playing so irresistible. The love they have for the sport itself simply makes it impossible for them to quit. So much love in fact, that once a football lover has a child of their own, they’re willing to put their kid on a team to experience the sport all over again. And if parents aren’t careful, things may “spiral” out of control.