Ryan Craddock had seen his share of tragedy during two decades as a coal miner and firefighter.
Then came the toughest heartbreak of all: his own.
Craddock and his family are mourning the loss of his 13-year-old son, Cohen, who died from brain trauma last month after making a tackle during football practice at his middle school.
Cohen’s death, and the death of a 16-year-old Alabama high school player from a brain injury on the same day, have sparked renewed debate about whether the safety risks of youths playing football outweigh the benefits that the sport brings to a community.
Between every yard mattering and giving the kids 30-60 seconds to rest between each 5-20 sec play, there’s just not much that can be done.
It’s inheiritantly unsafe for multiple reasons.
It’s worse to stop, recover, and continue after a hit to the head just to take more.
Ever play is 100% full speed.
Every hit is maximum effort.
Illusion of safety from pads.
You couldn’t design a sport to maximize head trauma and do much better than football.
Ironically rugby alleviates all those issues, and as a result is much safer despite obviously still have some dangers.
Like, I saw a guy get his tooth broken off and stuck in another teammates head. I touched it, it was fucking stuck. But we were in the middle of a tournament and were already going to be down two people. So the guy who lost the tooth drove the guy with his tooth in his head to the ER. We couldn’t spare a healthy person to drive them.
No sport is going to be 100% safe. But to make football safe, it’s not going to resemble modern football in any meaningful way.