![]() The expectation that athletes play through pain and overcome physical hazards has often contributed to inadequate oversight of players’ welfare. In football, as in war, young players are frequently expected to withstand significant physical harm and demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice for the greater good. ![]() An 1892 Harper’s Weekly article described the sport like this: “If there is any game fitted to the training of the soldier, it is this one.” It characterized football as “a mimic battle-field” in which players were expected to display “a spirit of self-sacrifice.”įor more than a century, such views have shaped Americans’ understanding of the life lessons that football is intended to impart to young people. The military analogies that Shoot described permeate football and have a long history. The opposing coach told People magazine that “it was just a regular JV football game … nobody should feel at fault.” The story ran beneath a photo of Christman wearing a hoodie, with a backpack and a big smile full of braces. The Colville High School senior was “the kind of kid who would always hold the door for you,” said his coach.įive months later, Tyler Christman, a 14-year-old freshman at Carthage High School in New York, also died of a head injury sustained during a football game. Sometimes football coaches are just modest men with big hearts that break, and players too easily lauded as young men are merely boys, teenagers asked to make sense of a world that increasingly does not.”ĭale Martin was 18 years old when he died from a brain injury sustained during a high school football game in early April. Dale Martin’s untimely death revealed a softer truth. Players are likened to hardened, battle-tested soldiers advancing through hostile territory. “Coaches are compared to generals and field marshals. “The glamorization of football and war lends to misguided metaphors,” wrote sports reporter Jason Shoot in the Spokane, Washington, Spokesman-Review. Exclusive analysis of biotech, pharma, and the life sciences Learn More
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