Mind of McCabe: A defense of football in their battle with concussions

I started playing football back in 2004 when I was 10 years old, and it was a dream come true. The world of football was always a big part of my life from a young age, but to actually join a team, work towards a common goal, and wear a logo I could call my own – that is a feeling I will never forget.

It was my choice, nobody else’s, and I probably would have been miserable if I was denied a chance to play the game I loved, and who knows where I’d be if I hadn’t.

I ended up getting my first concussion a year later, and while it happened quick, I know it was a poor tackle on my part and really my own fault. To show how much the times have changed in such a short amount of time, not only did I not get pulled from practice, the doctor also gave me a linear two to four week recovery period, which you’d never see now with our knowledge of concussions.

To cut a very long story short, I ended up getting my third diagnosed concussion playing rugby – not football – when I was in grade 10, which forced me and my parents to sit down and make a tough decision to call it quits.

Did I blame the game of football for my troubles and turn my back on it? Not a chance. I knew what I signed up for. Every single day I wonder what it would have been like to play senior football, and a big part of me regrets calling it quits. But I know I made the right decision for me, and that was the biggest thing in my mind – I made the decision based off my own knowledge and how I felt, nobody else did.

What bugs me the most about all the discussion surrounding concussions and the future of football, is that nobody in the mainstream media seems to want players to make their own decisions. Back when I started, I had no idea how bad a concussion could be, but I was a part of the generation growing up who got to find out first hand how dangerous the sport was.

But why was it surprising? Once you find out about the ramifications, you’re common knowledge alarm starts going off. Of course, smashing your head against things isn’t going to help your brain. Just the same as working in the factories of Hamilton will surely knock a good 15 years off your life. People still have the right to choose what path they want to tow, and I think it is a shame that kids are largely being told that football is a bad sport and not worth participating in because of concussions.

Funny story, I also got a fourth concussion. How you ask? Playing ultimate frisbee. It really wasn’t funny, but my point is that you can get a concussion playing almost any sport, and you’d be surprised how many different ways people have found to get them in everyday life.

Instead of acknowledging that there are many ways you can suffer a concussion alongside football, they would rather focus on the NFL lying their faces off for decades and the stories that coincided – which was absolutely wrong of them – but that is not a reason to vilify an entire sport and the people within it.

Headshots still exist, and unfortunately always will, but there are many ways to take the head out of the equation and still have a hard hitting football game – it just isn’t going to happen over night, and I’d rather the media focus on the evolution of tackling at the grassroots level, than reiterating how dangerous and how corrupt football can be – because we already know that, it isn’t new info.

The NFL has reacted poorly by becoming a fine happy league to appease the media’s complaints – which is a story for a different day – but there is always going to be fans who love the contact involved in football, and kids who want to play. Instead of allowing outside forces to tear the sport to shreds and tell those kids they shouldn’t, we as a football community need to make a conscious effort to make the game as safe as possible, while not allowing the mainstream media to destroy the very foundation.

Football will never be “safe” to play, no sport will ever be, but the main point of this whole rant is to say that people should be granted the right to make their own decisions in life, and then live with the consequences of said decisions.

The information is out there now, and as society we are educated enough to make the calculated decision whether we want to put our bodies on the line. Some people do, some people don’t, but we can’t let the people who don’t ruin a game that is the perfect marriage between physicality, intellect, and teamwork.

I understand at a young age a lot of these kids don’t have the mental capacity to make a rational decision, which is why I am a big proponent of flag football until the age of at least 13. The key would be to foster safe tackling education from the first day they sign up, so by the time contact football comes around, hopefully they are more prepared with the proper technique for the physical part of the game.

I learned more about proper values in life from my football coaches than the majority of teachers I ever had, and that is because there is no sport like football. It’s a game that can humble you in ways that you didn’t know were possible, and forces you to be accountable for your responsibilities, because if not it’s your teammates who will suffer. There is a tough exterior, but tough love is sometimes the best way to learn life lessons, and while the rest of society looks for ways to damper aggression, football is the perfect way to channel a natural human instinct for physicality and competition.

Although I have had my battles with concussions, not a day goes by that I don’t wish I could strap on a helmet and go play again. I know what could happen, but the positives I’ve learned along the way have molded me into the person I am, and it is hard to imagine where I’d be without the game.

My main concern is that a lot of kids are being steered away from the game because of bias coverage from the media that likes to focus in on football as the capital of concussions, which is a shame considering how much positive energy the football community can generate when they’re given a fair chance.

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Advocating for football prospects one story at a time.

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