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Mike Golic’s Optimism for Safe Football Is Pure Fantasy

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Brian Harmon says as long as football continues to attract, “You hit like a girl!” gorillas to teach the game to children, no amount of Heads Up football is going to make the sport safer.

And I can recall dozens of pee wee coaches and fathers downplaying a head injury..

I know a youth league football coach who once duct-taped his 10-year-old son’s wrists together for an entire practice to stop the aspiring quarterback from separating his palms when taking the snap from the center.

I know another coach who admonished his crying, belly-aching 8-year-old boy by shouting, “Unless there’s throw-up dripping from your face mask, get back in the huddle!”

And I can recall dozens of pee wee coaches and fathers downplaying a head injury sustained by a child on the football field by saying something akin to this age-old gem: “You’ll be fine. You just got your bell rung.”

Forgive my pessimism, but as long as football continues to attract these types of “You hit like a girl!” gorillas to teach the game to children, no amount of Heads Up football is going to make the sport safer.

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USA Football bills its “Heads Up Football” campaign as a national initiative to help make the game “better and safer.” While emphasizing proper equipment fitting, concussion awareness and heads up tackling, the program is woefully deficient in its understanding of two important elements of youth football:

  1. The typical youth pee wee football league relies on minimally qualified individuals to volunteer to coach its teams. Passing a criminal background check and being able to get off work by 5 p.m. are basically all it takes.
  2. With football, chaos is at hand in virtually every play. Tackling is a car wreck; it’s impossible to choreograph heads-up collisions involving children — never mind college or NFL players — running full speed at each other.

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Helmet to helmet hits are unavoidable at every level.                                Credit: Eileen Torres

USA Football advises coaches to limit live contact as much as possible at practice. Sadly, there are leagues allowing teams — with players as young as 5 and 6 — to practice in full equipment in the middle of July. These completely unnecessary sessions typically are justified by gung-ho coaches who get their players’ parents fired up with Vince Lombardi quotes and an exclamation to the boys that “This is what champions are made of.”

Dude, relax. They’re first graders.

Former NFL defensive lineman Mike Golic has used his nationally syndicated radio program as a platform to spread the good word that Heads Up is making the sport safer, and that the youth coaches of today are instilling fundamentals that will drastically decrease the amount of head injuries suffered by future NCAA and NFL players.

When LeBron James told ESPN.com that he does not let his sons, LeBron Jr., 10, and Maximus Bryce, 7, play football, Golic, on a “Love it or Shove it” segment of ESPN Radio’s Mike & Mike, reacted with a rant about football safety.

“I completely shove it,” Golic said of James’ statement. “Football to me, especially at the youth league (level) is as safe as it’s ever been. There is such a premium on… concussion awareness, on equipment fitting, on proper tackling. Kids are learning to hit the right way. The next generation of our players are going to tackle better, and have better fundamentals, and have better technique… and hopefully not get hurt.”

This is pure fantasy. Considering that youth leagues and school districts cannot possibly afford what it takes to make the game safer — proper coaching training, certified medical personnel at every game and state of the art helmets and other equipment — Golic’s vision of a brighter and less injurious day for football is a pipe dream.

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Tackling is a car wreck. There is no way to choreograph it. Credit: Eileen Torres

And really, even if all of those measures are taken, tackle football, given its combative objectives, can never be deemed “safe.”

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But that won’t stop the NFL — which has acknowledged in federal court papers that one in three NFL players will develop neurological problems at “notably younger ages”– from trying to convince the populace that football is safe enough.

Ignorance is bliss, and clearly the Golics are akin to it.

In what seems an obvious reaction to a recent decline in youth league participation, the league has held dozens of “Moms Football Safety Clinics” at NFL cities across the country. The clinics run mothers through tackling drills, provide concussion awareness education and deliver instruction on helmet fitting.

Golic talks about the clinics on his radio show, mentioning that his wife Christine speaks at the clinic as an ambassador for the NFL and the Heads Up initiative.

“We want to assure mothers that the game is safer and better than ever before. We want them to participate,” Christine Golic, whose two sons played football at Notre Dame, told the Detroit Free Press after speaking at a clinic hosted by the Detroit Lions.

Ignorance is bliss, and clearly the Golics are akin to it.

For more Good Men Project Sports coverage of the recent concussion-related issues coming out of the NFL and youth sports, check out:

Photo: Flickr/ Steve Baker

The post Mike Golic’s Optimism for Safe Football Is Pure Fantasy appeared first on The Good Men Project.


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