No Game for Boys to Play Debating the Safety of Youth Football, 1945-2015

Book excerpt: Tackle football has been one of the most popular sports for boys in the United States since the mid-twentieth century. This dissertation examines how debates over the safety of football for children at the high school level and younger have changed from 1945 through the present. After World War II, the expansion of youth tackle football leagues, particularly for pre-pubescent children, fostered a new range of medical and educational concerns. Yet calls for limits on tackle football were largely obscured by the political and social culture of the Cold War, including beliefs about violence, masculinity, and competition. A broad range of groups and individuals were involved in debating the safety of youth football throughout the remainder of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. These groups included doctors, coaches, educators, lawyers, engineers, parents, athletes, journalists, and sporting goods manufacturers. Their arguments over the risks and benefits of youth football involved not only the sport's effects on physical health, but also on social and emotional well-being.