Cleaning Up (or Phasing Out) the Game of Tackle Football

by David C. Brand

We have come a long way from Knute Rockne’s classic characterization: “Football is not a contact sport. Dancing is a contact sport!  Football is a collision sport!”  A Pro Hall of Fame quarterback, having suffered numerous concussions, has put American parents on notice that, if faced with the decision whether to allow their sons to play tackle football, they would be well-advised not to permit them to play.

The Creator did not design our heads for football-type collisions.  Our youth would be far better served with flag football whereby agility and speed (rather than forearms or pumping thighs to the head) are the order of the day.  This writer, after making the decision not to play football his senior year in college, personally witnessed the fracture of a skull caused by a forearm blow to the head of an opposing player.  Why should we be surprised when coaches have encouraged, or, if not, certainly tolerated, a war cry of “Kill!” on the part of the defensive unit?  How could a Christian be expected to participate in such a disgraceful outburst?  Those who questioned such an outburst were simply advised that they take things too seriously.  Players were expected to participate in drills subjecting the head to blows–to which (it is doubtful) that the overseeing coach would have dared subject his own head.

On the collegiate level it is common for players right out of high school to be head-to-forearm with men coming out of military training where they were trained to kill.  It was just such a situation that set the stage for the ugliest injury to a teammate’s face this writer has ever seen.

But even on the grade school level, not to mention junior high, and high school, weaker undeveloped kids came face-to-face with other players whose physical bulk and development far exceeded their own.  This writer’s first experience of seeing “stars” occurred in a head-to thigh tackling collision in the eighth grade.  He can also recall how inwardly relieved he felt, two years earlier, when his father, viewing him mistreat his younger brother, required him to stay home during football practice!  He actually hated tackle football at the grade school level.

The apostle Paul instructed Christians to “put on the full armor of God” and, among the particular parts of that armor, we are instructed to “take the helmet of salvation.”  But Paul was speaking in spiritual terms identifying each piece of the armor that a soldier of his day would need along with the “sword of the Spirit.” [1]  We are in a battle today and that battle involves the very question as to whether we should trivialize our lives with a sport that puts our youth and emerging adulthood at such great physical risk.

Those coaches and institutions which have encouraged us to take such physicals risks and blows to the head will not be there when we are still affected by the injuries suffered to make them look good and for the entertainment of the fans.  As Christians, let us not trivialize our lives or mental and physical well-being by trying to please such coaches or institutions.  It is the Lord Christ whom we serve!  And our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit!  We are to glorify God in our bodies–not some coach who may or may not give a hoot if and after we have graduated!

[1]. Ephesians 6:17

David C. Brand – Author, Profile of the Last Puritan: Jonathan Edwards, Self-Love, and the Dawn of the Beatific, American Academy of Region (Academy Series), Scholars Press, 1991

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