This week marks the end of the 2018 high school football season in Wisconsin with tournament championship games being played at Camp Randall.
Football is a sport in decline. Participation rates for players in high school and at younger ages both nationally and in Wisconsin have been declining for years and some schools have had to cancel entire seasons or drop the sport altogether for lack of players. While the sport remains by the far the most popular among young athletes, the trend is pretty clear.
The root of the problem seems to be safety. Parents are rightfully concerned about brain damage and other injuries. But Wade Labecki, deputy director of the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association, pushed back on that assumption in an email to me. Labecki offered data showing that the decline in high school football participation mirrored the overall decline in enrollment. Over the last decade or so, participation in football is down 12.9 percent but high school enrollments are down 12.8 percent. He also points out that participation in other sports like wrestling and girls’ basketball and softball have fallen even more than football.
But Labecki did include concerns about head injuries in a list of possible causes for the decline in football, though he wasn’t aware of any studies that teased out the relative impact of any one cause. And he did share concerns about head injuries especially for the youngest players. “I am on record stating that there should not be tackle football below 7th grade. Many of our successful schools (Edgar is going for a record eighth state championship) don’t have tackle football until 8th grade,” Labecki wrote me. The WIAA does not govern youth football below the high school level.
But as we learn more about the long-term effects of repeated head trauma, even at the sub-concussive level, it becomes a public policy issue: should we even allow football to be sanctioned at public schools or at any school that receives public dollars?
If the idea of ending football seems far-fetched to you, consider that in several states, including neighboring Illinois, bills have been introduced to ban organized tackle football for kids younger than 12 years old. Former Wisconsin standout Chris Borland, who retired from the NFL after only one season because of his concern about head injuries, testified in favor of that bill. While the Illinois bill or those introduced in other states have not passed this will be a public policy discussion in Wisconsin soon enough.
You could make a fair case that nothing much would be lost if football went away. After all, there are plenty of safer alternatives — soccer, basketball, baseball, volleyball and track, just to name a few.
Still for some, there’s just something about football — the strategy, the intricate plays, the combination of gracefulness and strength that’s required. And — a note for the Wisconsin Badgers — many teams have even learned to successfully mix the forward pass in with their ground game. Amazing.
So, are there ways to make the game safer without banning it altogether? Here is a list of ideas taken from several news reports from around the country.
Flag football for young kids. One recommendation is to stop playing tackle football until high school. A youth football organization is experimenting with a new form of the game that makes it more like flag football without quite going that far. That’s because research is showing that the earlier a player starts to play the game the greater the risk of severe brain damage.
No tackle practices. The basic idea is simple: less contact, less injury. Dartmouth has pioneered this program with great success. They report that injuries have been reduced and players are fresher for the games. And they’re winning.
Limit player size differences. It used to be that players were either big or fast. Now, with year-round training programs and full-time strength coaches we have developed athletes who are both very big and very fast. The result is high-speed collisions of heavier bodies. Some schools are experimenting with “sprint football” where there is a maximum weight limit for players. In the college version of the game that’s currently 178 pounds. That strikes me as too light, but a 200-pound limit seems reasonable.
Eliminate kickoffs and punts. These are the most dangerous plays in the game because players are running at full speed down field. In fact, the special teams that cover kickoffs and punts have been called “suicide squads.” College football is already changing the rules to discourage kickoff returns, so why not get rid of them altogether? At the start of games and after the other team scores, teams could simply be given the ball to start at the 25-yard line. Instead of punts, teams might elect to give the ball to the other team at half the distance to the goal line.
Eliminate the three-point stance. A big reason for the violence of collisions among linemen is that they are pushing off with tremendous force using their biggest muscles. If plays had to start with everyone at a standing position that would greatly reduce the power of the initial impacts. And, in fact, current NFL rules may lead to the de facto elimination of the three-point stance even without an explicit rule change.
Will any of these changes take place for Wisconsin high school football? Labecki said that a Wisconsin coaches advisory committee meets in December and then a national high school rules committee will meet in January. The WIAA will follow the national rules. Labecki is the Wisconsin representative on that national committee.
This isn’t the first time football has gone through this kind of thing. In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt convened a White House conference to essentially save college football. By that time it was routine for 18 or 19 players to die on the gridiron each season. Schools were dropping football altogether and newspapers were editorializing for its demise.
The reforms Roosevelt pushed for resulted in formation of the NCAA (a mixed blessing if there ever was one) and in rule changes that eventually made the sport safer and, it could be argued, saved it altogether.
While it’s impossible to imagine our current president following in TR’s footsteps, the leaders of the game, including the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association, should recognize their own best interests and start making fundamental reforms that bring the game’s rules into sync with the latest information on brain injuries.
In the meantime, let’s hope there are no serious injuries or long-term damage done to the players in this week’s final Wisconsin high school games.
