NFL Urged to Build Regulated Youth Football Clubs as 25% of Dead Former Players Had CTE
Updated
Updated · The Boston Globe · Sep 3
NFL Urged to Build Regulated Youth Football Clubs as 25% of Dead Former Players Had CTE
3 articles · Updated · The Boston Globe · Sep 3
Summary
A proposed overhaul would move youth football out of schools and into an NFL-backed private club system, arguing schools should not sponsor a sport with elevated brain-trauma risks.
25% of former NFL players who died from 2016 to 2021 had CTE, according to a British Medical Journal study, versus roughly 3% among people who played no sports in a Brain Pathology study.
The club model is pitched as a gradual exit from scholastic football, giving athletes and coaches more choice while requiring strong national regulation to avoid the lax oversight seen in some youth sports.
The NFL is cast as the only body with enough money, reach and incentive to run such a system, though fragmented local programs and existing pay-to-play barriers would complicate any takeover.
The argument stops short of claiming football can be made safe: it says the sport will endure culturally, but schools are better off without sponsoring it.