Football should be banned as an organized sport for high school students

Thank you for that rebuttal Flipz, and for providing a good and respectful debate thus far. I will move down your last post and respond to some points then rebuild my own cases points. Regarding your first point, I would like to point out that the activities which you mention as examples are adult activities or involve a stronger adult presence for the purpose of safety, which football does not necessarily include. Keep in mind the NFL and college football is left out of this debate. Football itself I don't believe to be wrong, but the damage it causes in younger teenagers, I believe cannot be overlooked. Concerning your second point, I feel I should use an attack you made against my own case. You can't guarantee that we can start implementing public transport systems in every city or suburb area. In fact, with the large amount of rural America especially in states like Kansas and South Dakota, it would be irrational to criminalize driving. However, I feel as a whole this argument is distracting from the actual debate, and plans concerning cars should be thrown out on either side. Concerning your point on the benefits of football, I feel that the fact that these lessons can be learned elsewhere in safer environments, this particular benefit doesn't outweigh the harms. The harms I will be addressing as I rebuild my own case. I would also like to address your point regarding something of backyard football. Your argument being that kids will go out and do it anyway without the safety equipment or officiation. Granted, you are right in this scenario, but state endorsement of the sport doesn't need to be added to what will happen whether high school football is to be banned or not. To respond to your last attack, a higher teacher pay, lower taxes, new academic programs, or more money in a school district's budget would all be significantly beneficial. Any one of these would most likely a result of canceling football programs. You're right, I don't have evidence for a plan, but the inevitability is there. Now to move on to some of my main points: I would specifically like to address harms as a reason to ban football. A recent study that I will post beneath showed that football players acquire enough sub concussive hits to change their life. This change is in a bad way, of course. While they may not be getting concussions all the time or dying from concussions, the number of students that actually use football as a career does not justify the number of students who are permanently damaged by football. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... This can affect the students lives in a way they weren't necessarily aware of or that they did not intend to happen later in life. For example, if someone played football for fun and athleticism but wants a job with a high thinking requirement, they're already behind the game just because of the damage their brain took during football. As you stated, few of them will actually join the NFL, so what happens to the rest? The damage isn't actually as rare as you portrayed. It is inherent in the game of football to take hits that permanently damage the brain. In conclusion to this rebuttal, the sport does significantly more harm than good. Maybe the precedent will be interpreted differently than intended, but the precedent intended is that the state will not participate in and fund an activity that significantly harms students across America.