Democrats in the state of New York have introduced a bill to ban children from playing tackle football, arguing that it puts them at undue risk of injury.
Dubbed the John Mackey Youth Football Protection Act in honor of former NFL player John Mackey, a New York native who died of traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in 2011, the bill aims to ban all tackle football for children 12 and under. Assemblyman Michael Benedetto, a Democrat representing the Bronx, has been pushing the bill for ten years and now has a sponsor in the New York State Senate: Democrat Luis Sepulveda.
“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,” said Benedetto. “Ninety percent of brain development happens up until the age of 12 years old, give or take a year. During this particular time, why are we putting children at risk for injury to their brains?”
Portrait of young football player standing on field with teammates before game – stock photo (Getty Images)
Benedetto cited the U.S. Youth Soccer National League banning heading among children before the age of 10 as an inspiration for his bill.
“Body checking is outlawed in youth soccer leagues up until the age of 14. Why? Because they want to protect the brain. The question is, why hasn’t football, the most dangerous sports when it comes to this, has not said anything about it yet?” he told CBS 6.
Benedetto said the science shows that children should not be playing tackle football at a young age, but Pop Warner, the largest youth football organization in the country, disagrees.
“A lot of institutions that have studied this have said kids should not be playing football at a young age, so why this has taken so long, I don’t know,” he said. “I was asked to be the sponsor this year, and I was enthusiastic about it. I have an 11-year-old, and I do not want him to have any cognitive impairment due to a sport that he enjoys.”
Fox News noted that Pop Warner said in a statement on its website that no evidence links CTE with youth football.
Football Player Runs With Ball – stock photo (John Giustina/Getty Images)
“Many of the nation’s leading medical researchers point out that there is no proven connection between youth football and CTE,” the organization says on its website. “As parents, players, coaches, and administrators, we need to know more, and we encourage more advanced, unbiased research into this issue.”
Billy Kent, the president of Schenectady-Belmont Pop Warner football, told WNYT that banning young children from tackle football at a young age could actually lead to more injuries due to a lack of proper training when they start at age 12 and older.
“You get a lot faster, you get bigger, you get stronger,” Kent said. “Without the proper techniques on how to tackle and how to hit, then you can really see a lot of injuries on that level.”
“All the coaches are certified, they have to go through a certain amount of training in order to be able to teach these things to the kids,” he said.