Is Pee Wee Football Still Popular in Detroit?

[maxx]

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/comme...e=hruby/101022
"...
Ask yourself this: What happens when communities decide there's something better to do on Friday nights than watching their brothers, boyfriends, sons and grandsons turn their brains into ticking little time bombs?
What happens when mothers trade worrying about broken arms and blown knee ligaments for fretting over depression and suicide, and CTE gets a full eight minutes on 'The View?'... In 1905, a University of Chicago professor called football a "boy-killing, man-mutilating, money-making, education-prostituting, gladiatorial sport." And that was before we knew anything about CTE. A hundred years from now, somebody somewhere will survey the damage -- the broken minds and lives, the public and private tragedies, the countless little hits delivered and endured -- and likely say the same thing. Or worse."

[laurin]

There was a very interesting article about the same thing on slate a week ago. The gist of the article was that it's the constant little hits that do that most damage, not just the big ones.

[firstandten]

Football plays a role in a civilized society such as ours. Among others things it gives folks who probably wouldn't make very much money in their lives a chance for riches beyond their wildest dreams, and it serves as a social safety valve for those who play the game and for watching the game. For those reasons and others I think the game will be adjusted and not done away with. Football has always been a brutal game. One of the reasons the game has the forward pass is because people were literally dying on the field running the football the entire game.

One of the reasons for the problem is I think the hard shell helmet makes people use their heads as a weapon plus the artificial surfaces are harder than natural grass.

Adjustments will be made, but I don't see the game going away for a long time. The only reason Boxing is not what it use to be is that boxing's problems were mostly self-inflicted.

[Hamtragedy]

As for the original post. Is peewee football still popular?

I'm not quite sure how popular it is, but starting in mid July, Stoepel Park is loaded with kids in their green and yellow uniforms playing in the PAL league. The cheerleaders are there too. Evergreen is packed with cars.

And over at Cannon, [[Finney) the Saints practice there well into fall, [[under car light). The Buccaneers are over at Butzel, and some of those kids play both hockey and football.

[English]

Yes, it is still extremely popular, even with working and middle class families who have moved out of the city. My nephew's PAL season starts with practices in July and doesn't end until early November. My niece is a cheerleader.

I've run into several people I went to school with at games, as well as several sorority sisters. It's really the thing to do for boys in Detroit, Southfield, and the vicinity. My sibling has become very active as a team parent, too.

When I mentioned some of the concerns of the original article, my siblings and in-laws protested by saying that the little kids are afraid to tackle and don't really hit each other hard enough to cause damage. Since I'm not a parent myself, I can't vouch for that, but I know that if I had a son, I might want to look into other activities until at least high school.

[BShea]

Good grief -- a freelancer's attention-grabbing hatchet job based on a flawed premise, that football is akin to cigarette smoking.

Football was never marketed as healthy, or not dangerous.

You know exactly what you're getting into when you play it. And the game very quickly weeds out those who can't.

Football is dangerous. Water is wet. And the odds of something replacing high school football on a Friday night, college football on Saturday and the NFL on Sunday are pretty friggin' remote. If ESPN was a journalism outlet instead of a mindless entertainment machine, I'd have been surprised they published such a hopelessly stupid and insulting piece.

The freelancer wrote a scare story, the equivalent of the pre-Thanksgiving "What you don't know about turkeys that could KILL YOUR FAMILY ... at 11, right after sports" on local TV news.

Long-term medical issues are a problem for a fraction of players who reach the top levels of football -- a fraction of a fraction. The bacon double cheeseburger your kid is chowing down with a 72-oz. Bladder Buster pop is a far, far greater and more immediate concern that him getting a concussion from Ray Lewis or being crippled for life by Ndamukong Suh.

The danger is greatest when and where the stakes are highest: the NFL, where the players are bigger, faster and stronger, and more willing to take risks because there is financial and fame rewards involved.

The odds of your kid suffering lifelong brain problems because of Pee Wee football are more remote than him playing in the NFL. Could they get hurt? Hell yes. Odds are, they'll get some sort of injury. That's part of the game. Risk is part of life, even for craven freelancers.

And I say this as a guy who sustained concussions and suffers at this very moment from a frayed shoulder and two shot knees, one of which has been under the knife twice. I knew the risk and rewards. I absolutely would do it all over again, and look to play football any chance I get.

If you're terrified your kid is going to get hurt, lock him or her in their bedroom for 21 years. Or let them become a freelance sports writer looking to get attention, and pining for something safe, feckless and beige like the National Ballet League on Sundays.

[maxx]

There were very few college football games I saw where players did more than knock heads together. Once in a great while someone would throw the ball, and often the ball was not caught. I don't imagine that things are much different at the high school level and lower. So what is being taught? That you get what you want by running someone else over? And basketball used to be a noncontact game, but those players appear to be getting more thuggish too. I find most professional sports very boring to watch.
You mention the high stakes of pro football. When the only object is to hurt an opponent that can throw or catch well, there is something wrong with the game and with the society that lionizes it. And it's naive to think that that attitude doesn't filter down to the younger kids.
As for ballet, those dancers exhibit more strength accompanied with physical control than any thug on the football field. The greatest attributes a football player needs is a lot of body mass and a lack of respect for his body, especially his brain.

[Det_ard]

There were very few college football games I saw where players did more than knock heads together. Once in a great while someone would throw the ball, and often the ball was not caught. I don't imagine that things are much different at the high school level and lower. So what is being taught? That you get what you want by running someone else over?

I don't think you really understand football at all. The strategic and tactical elements are fascinating if you know what to look for.

I would venture a guess that you're not much of a fan of MMA either. Also replete with strategy and tactics, but you'd probably just see people hitting each and being mean.

[BShea]

There were very few college football games I saw where players did more than knock heads together. Once in a great while someone would throw the ball, and often the ball was not caught. I don't imagine that things are much different at the high school level and lower. So what is being taught? That you get what you want by running someone else over? And basketball used to be a noncontact game, but those players appear to be getting more thuggish too. I find most professional sports very boring to watch.
You mention the high stakes of pro football. When the only object is to hurt an opponent that can throw or catch well, there is something wrong with the game and with the society that lionizes it. And it's naive to think that that attitude doesn't filter down to the younger kids.
As for ballet, those dancers exhibit more strength accompanied with physical control than any thug on the football field. The greatest attributes a football player needs is a lot of body mass and a lack of respect for his body, especially his brain.

Um, your typical major college football program will have its quarterback throwing 20-30 times a game, or more. Less, if there's no need to.

The object is to win. Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the game, beyond casual observation, before dismissing it as mere crude thuggery. It would be akin to me dismissing ballet as foolish, fey and silly.

A ballet dancer certainly is physically talented and must rote memorize many moves. A typical NFL quarterback must be able to recognize and analyze and then perform while large, strong, angry men are trying to tackle him. A dancer faces nothing of the sort -- but if he/she did, that form of art would be infinitely more popular. An NFL playbook is hundreds of thousands of pages, and is incredibly complex. Mastering the game takes immense talent, and a perfectly executed play is art.

There are 32 men good enough to be starting NFL quarterbacks at the moment. There are a lot more ballet dancers than NFL quarterbacks.

Bloodsport is as ancient as mankind itself. It's not going away.