I'm not into sports. I never really have been. But it had never crossed my mind to not allow my boys to play football. However, that is where Garrett and I ate at right now.
Garrett, being from a small town, was into sports. He was especially into football. As a result, he had several concussions before the end of his high school days and I'm not sure how many other injuries that still affect him today, including a shoulder injury. All this before the age of 18. And for what? He certainly doesn't make a living off of football. A ll he has to show for such a rough sport is a 24/7 headache that he is convinced is from those numerous concussions he had. He's lived with this headache for almost 4 years now. It doesn't go away. Ever. He's been to about every specialist, including the Mayo clinic. Nothing has helped.
Aside from just Garretts stuff, I've seen stories in my news feed of MIDDLE SCHOOL football players being taken off the field on stretchers amd taken to the ER. High school students with multiple reoccurring injuries. Fresh college students whose potential football careers ended before they could even begin because they've injured themselves so much and had to have multiple surgeries in such a short amount of time.
I swear I'm not going to be that parent that never let's their child do anything fun because they **might** get hurt. But Garrett has opened my eyes to how scary football can be. There's no reason he should be showing my videos of gradeschoolers playing full contact football and knocking each other out.
Garrett lives every day with a headache
We don't want that for our boys. They can play baseball, basketball, track, golf, you name it. Just not football. I know injuries occur in any sport, but at least they aren't throwing themselves full force at one another intentionally.
I also want to clarify that I don't think it's wrong for people to allow their kids to play football. So please don't think that. There are plenty of kids who play football and are perfectly fine!!! =) Garrett just feels very strongly about this and I can't blame him. So I'm backing him 110%. But I don't think I'm better than anyone else, or that you're a horrible person if you do. This is just one thing we are choosing to be the overprotective parents about!
This Grandma hates football. What a relief that I don't have to sit ass on a cold bench and watch my grandsons become permanently disabled by such a dumb sport. It's just a bunch of over weight men patting each other on the rear end and making testosterone sounding grunts at each other. Not my thing. :) Have a nice day, football fans.
ReplyDelete