Safety of Flag vs Tackle Football- Medical Study

If "safety" is the big issue on getting kids in flag vs tackle
The data doesnt support it

And they think there aren't bad or discouraging coaches in youth flag football?

You're not wrong, there are issues with the study. But it's currently one of the few pieces available for the puzzle. We have the anecdotal observations of thousands of youth football coaches - almost all volunteers with no financial stake in the argument - that youth football is safer than many of the alternatives touted out there. And the Mayo Clinic study that injuries become more common and severe as kids age and move into HS.

And this is a LOT more than the anti-youth football crowd has; there is no data supporting their arguments whatsoever.

Realistically, it all comes down to perception anyway. We will not know anything about whether sub-concussive head trauma is an issue for youth sports until there is a significant breakthrough in medical technology. Everything else is just opinion and noise. And those opinions aren't really even educated opinions - there's just no data out there to be educated on. What we don't know dwarfs what we do know. NOBODY is an "expert" in this stuff - the knowledge simply isn't there to be learned.

That's actually what I'm referring to.

NOBODY is an expert in youth concussions or sub-concussive trauma, such expertise doesn't exist.  There's just nothing out there whatsoever because we simply don't have the medical technology to figure anything out. It's all observation based, and every one of us can do that just as well as some "expert" can...

My last post didn't quite come out right.

Certainly there are learned medical and scientific professionals who have studied the anecdotal evidence and come to some educated conclusions that we would be wise to pay attention to. I'm all in favor of some level of overreaction to something like this when the stakes are so high.

That said, I am against an extreme reaction that isn't based on anything but fear and hysteria. There is simply nothing out there that favors a ban of youth football over banning all football for individuals under 18 years old. That fact is, every piece of safety data I've seen would supports banning HS football to a greater degree than banning youth football. And I'm not for that either. I've lived it. I'm a player safety coach, been through all the USA football trainings and certifications, etc. and so forth. I'm a Dad whose son had 3 concussions between 8th and 10th grade. And made a decision based on his overall well-being to keep him in football despite that. Right decision? For now (he's 19 and soph in college), yes, long-term I have no idea.

That's all we can do - use the information we have and make the best decisions we can about life. Our decision - me, my wife, and my son - was that the good brought by football outweighed the very real risks. Others may make a different decision, and that's fine. But we should have the option to make that decision, absent more compelling data to act on.

Where's your area, and what ages? I'm interested not only as a former rugger, but also because I've fantasized about what assemblyman Benedetto would think if he got his ban enacted & then all the youth football clubs in NY state converted to rugby. Actually I've thought more about how it'd be if the kids kept playing football, and just all the adult supervision went away. Or how it'd be if the clubs realized "tackle football" was undefined in the bill, and made some minor tweak to their game and said, "What we play isn't tackle football." And if Benedetto said it applied to any game with tackling, & then found out that meant it also outlawed adult-supervised youth rugby, soccer, wrestling, etc.  Of course this is all just fantasy, because no type of adult-supervised (let alone unsupervised) contact sport has ever been, or ever will be, made illegal.  If football goes away, it won't be because of statutes.