I agree to an extent, but over the long term, (we're talking a few decades here), there's bound to be some real problems because parents are eventually going to start steering their kids away from the sport. If you had a son, would you really push him towards playing football? Not like if he actually wanted to play, that's different; I'm talking about a parent just signing their kid up because, well, they're a kid and you want them out of the ****ing house, and most of the best athletes in the world have been going at their respective sport since at least their early teens, or even earlier. I can't even begin to imagine the number of kids that wind up having a long career through HS and college because their parents pushed it on them from day one. That's definitely going to shift as time goes on and the NFL has to make sure that doesn't happen. Yes, the league is a money making machine, but that's only right now and it hasn't always been that way. If it doesn't ensure that over the long term it's going to have the best athletes in the world composing its rosters, it's only creating a means for its end.
Word. In the incredibly unfortunate hypothetical circumstance by which I end up with children, I wouldn't let them play football until post-puberty. I'd start them with soccer (to develop the white muscle fiber in their calves), then I'd unleash my little psychopaths on a football field only when it behooves their juvenile efforts to get to third base with that hot sophomore cheerleader.
To be serious, I agree that eventually the league will take its turn in the popularity dip that baseball and basketball have experienced. I'm just not sure that injuries will be the cause. The concussion emphasis, troubling though it is, gets offset in suburban homes by the supermajority of dads who played football and came through sans brain damage. I have a female friend who just pulled her twins out of Pop Warner because--quote--"[she] read an article on Yahoo." You already see the NFL countering this sort of thing with that clever Ray Lewis' mom commercial, and I'm sure you'll see more of that. Then, they'll introduce the new helmet and everyone will forget, at least in the near term, that giant dudes running 4.3's into each other is pretty deadly. Overall, though, I think it's just a media thing that will subside. Parents pulled their kids out of football after Theisman, then after Dennis Byrd, etc. They come back.
Well, that's the internet, man: 9 billion tough guys who secretly want to touch your pee-pee.
