When I was a kid, in a galaxy long ago and far far away, boxing was a popular sport. There were the “Friday Night Fights” on television. Mohammad Ali and George Foreman dominated the news with their antics. The trilogy of fights between Joe Frazier and Ali were legend, starting in 1971. In that bout they went 15 rounds and Frazier was declared the unanimous winner. There was a rematch which Ali won in 1974 and the “tie breaker” with the “Thrilla in Manilla” in 1975. That fight was stopped after fourteen rounds by Frazier’s trainer, giving Ali the win in the rubber match. It was dubbed the “Thrilla in Manilla” because of Ali’s boast, “It’s gonna be a killa and a thrilla and a chilla, when I get that gorilla in Manilla!”

Boxing’s popularity dissipated when the colorful guys left the ring to sell grills and others to slowly deteriorate from debilitating conditions caused by the pummeling they received in the arena. The general public didn’t view it as a mainstream sport anymore. There’s still a niche of followers for boxing and those who watch the UFC fights for their savagery, but fighting has been eclipsed by other endeavors and faded in respectability and youth participation. The question is, will football suffer a similar fate?

Football almost died in its infancy. In the early days of the sport, there were no pads and no helmets. The sport looked more like today’s rugby than NFL football. The Chicago Tribune in 1904 reported 18 deaths and 159 crippling, life changing injuries due to collegiate football. Players suffered internal injuries, broken backs and necks, as well as cerebral hemorrhages. The public outcry was fierce and huge. Theodore Roosevelt was President at the time with a son as a freshman on a college football team. Roosevelt loved football and his son. He was motivated to save the sport.

In 1905 several colleges dropped football and replaced it with rugby. An improvement to be sure but not much of one. President Roosevelt convened a meeting of college presidents and proposed a series of rule changes to make the game “safer”. Discussions were held, amendments offered, compromises adopted and these rules emerged: the forward pass was legalized (prior to this it was illegal to throw the ball under any circumstances), first down yardage was doubled to ten yards and that had to be achieved in three downs (the fourth down would be added later), there would be a neutral zone between the offense and the defense violation of which would constitute an offside penalty and a replay of the down. Head butting was outlawed as were mass formations and piling on a player once he was tackled and down. Leather helmets were soon standard equipment for additional safety and pads for players would be adopted down the line. Football wasn’t “safe”, but it was “safer”, and the games continued.

I played football in Junior High until I got taller, the other fellas got taller, I got taller, they got bigger, I got taller, they got bigger, and I got taller. I was 6’2” tall and weighed 118 pounds (I weigh 209 today). I was 16 pounds underweight to be slender on the height and weight charts of the time. I knew it was time to quit when an opposing team’s fullback broke through our line and I – as a safety – tried to bring him down in the twenty yards between him and the end zone. He wore me like an extra jersey for the touchdown.

When I played, water was forbidden. It was thought that water made a player sluggish and ill. When I played, shoulder pads and helmets as well as mouth guards were required but no other pads were. Receivers and us defensive back guys didn’t like the feel of pads on our legs and felt they slowed us down, so we didn’t wear them.

I’m not old enough to remember Red Grange and leather helmets but I do recall when single bar face masks on helmets were standard and when those helmets were not padded. They were more like hard hats the construction crews wear than the modern day football helmets for today’s players. Professional helmets are even more protective today, especially after the CTE revelations of recent years.

The Boston University CTE Center did a study on 376 brains of deceased NFL players and found that 345 of them suffered from CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy). That disease can lead to memory issues akin to Alzheimer’s, loss of emotional control, episodes of violence and eventually the inability of an individual to care for themselves. Junior Seau’s suicide, by shooting himself in the chest thus carefully preserving his brain for research – as it said in his suicide note, was something of a turning point for the NFL and the public. So was the release of the true story in 2015 (in movie form) of “Concussion”, starring Will Smith, chronicling the efforts of the medical profession to get the NFL to acknowledge CTE. The NFL’s reluctance to accept this medical data has been compared to the tobacco industry’s long time denial of the fact that smoking and cancer had anything to do with each other.

Youth football participation peaked in 2008 and has been dropping since. High school football participation peaked in 2009 and is declining for boys but ironically climbing for girls. In 2009-10 academic school year there were 1.109,278 boys participating in football throughout the nation and 1,249 girls. In the 2021-22 school year, 973,792 boys and 3,094 girls participated in high school football in all divisions (9 man etc.). In an average high school football season 450,000 kids suffer injuries, most of those are concussions which is the most common cause of later CTE.

Some young people play high school sports with an eye on a later professional career. Only 6.8% of high school football players ever play for a NCAA college team and only 0.023% play in the pros. The average NFL career is 3.3 years, which is why the NFL is known as “Not For Long”.

I enjoy football. It is safer than it has ever been. However, last year 20 kids died from playing football; 4 traumatic injury deaths (similar to that of Buffalo Bills Damar Hamlin, who survived his brush with death and also like the most recent head injury to New England Patriots rookie Isaiah Bolden in the preseason game against the Packers a week or so ago), 13 exertional/medical related deaths and 3 non-football deaths (a player colliding with sideline personnel causing the non-player sideline person’s death).

Barron Trump is a strapping young man. President and Melania Trump are proud of their son. While they didn’t trumpet their decision, they informed Barron he could pursue his extra-curricular interests and they would support and cheer him on – as long as it wasn’t football. As more and more parents come to the same conclusion and lay down the same law to their children, it makes me wonder what the future of football will be.

If you had told me when I was a little shaver that boxing wouldn’t be a mainstream sport when I was a Grandpa, I would have laughed in your face and pointed to the greats and icons of the sport. Is football headed down the same inexorable path as boxing? I wonder…