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

Thank you, Storm. I will address your study after I"ve had a chance to defend my core positions. Forgive me if I dismiss the original structure of the arguments, but I am trying to tie certain points together here. I would like to re-focus my first contention to a more principled debate, specifically examining the issues of personal choice and safety. Yes, high school football can be dangerous, but I don"t think my argument overlooks the harm. Rather, I am trying to show that despite risk, there are other values at stake. Surely, it is difficult to weigh an immaterial value against injury statistics, but I think that self-determination should be thought of, for the most part, inviolable, as it remains a critical component of our heritage and community ethos. Just like adults, high school students have rights, including free speech, freedom from illegal search and seizure, and even a high degree of self-governance depending on parameters set by their parents. It should be mentioned also that many high school players are legally adults since they reach 18 during or before their senior year of high school. As a side note, even if you could make a case that some high school students should not play based on their status as minors, you could not justify an outright ban since you would be counting legal adults. At most, you should be restricting certain players, and not the sport entirely. More importantly, if an activity"s harmfulness were the sole criterion to determine its legality, many high school sports would face severe restrictions or bans based on this precedent. To say we should only ban football formulates a contradictory precedent, both legally and morally. According to Business Insider, Men"s Baseball has 4.6 casualties per million (partcipants) Men"s Track and Field-4.7 casualties per million Men"s Wrestling-9.1 casualties per million Men"s Lacrosse- 12.7 casualties per million Women"s Gymnastics- 13.7 casualties per million While football ranks high at 19 casualties per million, it is by no means the highest as hockey tops the list at 25 casualties per million. Note: "casualties" includes fatalities, permanent disabilities, and non-permanent brain/spinal cord injuries, such as concussions. Why is it important we allow high school students to access dangerous sports, including football? Personal choice is about creating self-definition, learning your own limits, and developing responsible habits, all of which critically play a role in becoming a mature adult. While I would by no means trivialize the injuries suffered, data from Business Insider indicates that since 1982, only .00002% of players experience permanent injuries, death, or non-permanent concussions from high school football. This means that you would be denying the sport to the unaffected 99.99998% of players, players that are learning teamwork, finding inclusion, and building self-esteem. Football may not be the safest sport, but schools and organizations are all the time trying to create rules and enhance safety equipment to prevent injury. Football is rough, yes, but it is a highly regulated game, where players" safety remains the top concern. Also, you did not address my additional point from the last round that for many students, these same values cannot entirely be iterated in other sports due to those sports" lack of dynamicism and inclusion. For clarification, please see my last argument. To clarify an earlier point, I was using the example of cars to show that even though they are not necessary in certain environments or situations, we do not restrict their usage or ban them outright. If cars were legal solely because of economic or infrastructural concerns, we would heavily restrict their usage, for example, prohibiting drives across country or at certain times during the night. That we don"t, demonstrates the value we place on freedom. Also, mentioning possible bans on spelunking, mountain climbing, or hiking was meant to show that the ethos of your position is wrong. We don"t regulate many voluntary dangerous activities not because they are necessary, but because we pride ourselves on supporting personal choice. Along this same vein, I do not understand your reply to my first point, as you say that these are "adult activities" or "involve a stronger adult presence," which is not true as high school students can and do undertake these activities without adult supervision. I would also like to suggest that high school football has even more adult supervision than many of these other legal activities; referees can penalize or eject unruly and abusive players. Given the amount of scrutiny and regulation that high school football receives, I would like to reiterate my earlier point about "unofficial" football games. Your reply seems to suggest that we do not have to endorse it on an institutional level, but I will respond by saying that we should if it serves to enhance safety, which is your primary concern. Motorcycles, for example, are dangerous and fun but very unnecessary. You must, however, get a motorcycle license to operate one because the state realizes that banning them would be improper, so if people are going to drive them, they should have to go through a special designation. Football is just the same, because letting unofficial games run wild would mean less regulation and safety equipment, which means more injuries. Now, as to the separate issue regarding funding, I stand by my previous point in saying that unless you provide evidence for a specific trade-off with other activities or benefits, you can"t claim this as an advantage to your plan. You don"t know where the money would go, if it would even still be applied to the school"s budget. Applying the money directly back to the county isn"t always a good thing. Maybe it goes toward tax breaks for companies that pollute the environment or some other nefarious purpose. More importantly than this point, you are taking money away from the school. Lots of alumni donate because of the football programs create so much pride about the school in general. It attracts other interested donors; my school had a new science building built by the grandparents of our football quarterback. Not to mention, if you take away the salaries of coaches, they might have to turn to the public welfare system because of their devalued skill sets. These impacts are only immediate, and I could reasonably guess also that college football programs would suffer loss of viewership as recruits without four years preparation become dramatically less skilled. Televised games produce millions in revenue, which means jobs. How would the NFL fare after their players" skill trajectories have been set behind by four years? Lastly, I would like to briefly address the study you posted. First, I was not able to find a free full pdf version of this article, which means that I am replying based upon reading the abstract. If you can provide the full free version, please provide a link in your next post. Second, this article doesn"t really bring up anything new that we haven"t already assumed in our conversation thus far, and I think you are extrapolating too much in what you are claiming the article provides evidence for. Yes, football players take a lot of hits, most of which are sub-concussive; this is the nature of the game, and really the nature of many other contact sports like lacrosse or hockey. This article though does not articulate the relationship between sub-concussive hits and cognitive decline later in life, only saying that the potential relationship could "raise concern." Brain science is tricky and determining causality for adults with cognitive decline who played high school football years ago gets even trickier. Note that the article also seems to argue for new safety considerations and not an outright ban on the sport entirely. If this becomes a bigger issue, then I can respond with more. I yield back to Pro.