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

Thank you for your reply, Storm. My argument proceeds as follows: First, not all dangerous activities serve necessary economic and social roles; we don"t ban them because the freedom to participate is a kind of moral right. Mountain climbing or spelunking, for example, poses the risk of death or injury while hikers and explorers can encounter dangerous wildlife inhabiting undeveloped parts of the country. Activities entered voluntarily are a part of our body of freedoms and deserve continued protection because they develop self-definition and encourage the personal pursuit of happiness, whatever that may be. There are of course many illegal activities, but the vast majority of these activities are illegal precisely because they inherently pull in the participation of unwilling participants. This is not the case when it comes to high school football. If you believe that the potential harm of high school football alone suffices for its ban, then you have also implicitly justified an extraordinary encroachment on basic freedoms and established a precedent for governmental intrusion into a whole new range of personal conduct. To your point about personal transportation: a solid public transportation infrastructure would eliminate the need for personal transportation, and even a few cities already have systems that could adequately replace personal transportation. We could even replace most of the cars with bikes for healthier lifestyles, less traffic, and a safer commute. We don"t ban cars, however, because we believe that free movement and personal choice for transportation is a quintessential liberty. The right to get away from the city and explore the countryside is just as important. Second, concerning the benefits of football, I don"t think you have successfully refuted my original point. I readily conceded that other sports helped instill many positive values, but the more important plank of my argument concerned football"s dynamicism. Specifically, football needs all kinds of different players with all kinds of skill sets and no other sport demands the same diversity. For specifics, looks back at my original argument. Also, because football needs diversity, football teams allow more people to join than any other sport, which also means its positive values reach more people. While yes, football can be more dangerous than other sports, I think at this point I should address your concerns about the nature of the harm. The first thing you should realize is that while injuries can be common, permanent and extreme injuries are rare. Death by heat stroke, for instance, is extremely rare and can happen to anyone who plays an outside activity. High school football injuries are tragic, especially because it can severely damage growing bodies and brains, but its participants remain aware of the risks and can quit anytime. Also, the number of deaths from car accidents and other legal activities far outpace deaths and sever injuries from high school football. While parents pressure some children to play the sport, cases of Billy Elliott are extremely rare; in fact, I"ve never met one. The vast majority of football players play because they love the game. Many will go on to play the game in college, and few to the NFL after that. This leads me to my third point concerning demand. I am aware that demand is not a good justification for an activity"s continued existence. However, I was more importantly pointing out that this demand doesn"t go away when the game is banned, and could lead to more dangerous consequences with more unofficial games played. If you want specifics, look back at my original argument. Lastly, concerning peripheral issues of funding, as I said before, this could only be relevant if you could provide evidence for a specific trade-off, and I don"t think your speculation has provided this. If money is indeed saved from a football ban (and I doubt it would be "millions"), there are a number of things that could happen with that money; for example, it could be returned to the county and the whole school budget lowered; perhaps, teachers get a raise. The list is really endless. Also, I don"t think you have proven that other activities suffer persistently from funding shortages. As I stated before, some clubs may not exist because student demand does not exist.