Published in The Day newspaper on Super Bowl Sunday was an article by Mary Esch and David Klepper with the title being a question on whether tackle football should be banned, "No tackling? New York lawmaker seeks ultimate answer to football hits." Interesting that The Day picked Super Bowl Sunday to publish the article: a day given up to professional football. But look at the picture above the article: a pee-wee football game. Again, people judging the game of football by using professional football as the example.

Years ago the Groton Board of Education sent me to attend an all-day workshop conducted by Hartford Hospital. The title of the workshop was “Sports Injuries.” Hartford Hospital had been conducting a longitudinal study on sport injuries at all levels of sports. They offered the workshop because they felt the data was accurate enough to share with adults who work in sports. I believe the study was 10 years old at the time, and may very well be still going. Statistics on every sport were shown with the amount, the location of the injury on the body, and the severity of the injury.

After a full day, the “bottom line” was summed up by the last presenter. He told the room full of educators that there was no difference to the type of injury, the amount of injuries, and the severity of injuries in sports that young people play. They did however find a difference when they studied Division I football and professional football. It did not matter whether the sport was soccer, football, basketball, baseball, etc. Concussions, ankle sprains, broken bones, contusions, cuts were common to all sports without one sport having any more of these than the other. They did say that girls were more prone to knee injuries than boys, but they could not conclusively pin that on the structure of the knee or the training involved. Back then girls’ sports were just starting to grow due to Title IX.

No parent wants to see their child get injured playing sports. But we all try to weigh the positives of participating on a sport team against the negatives which include the possibility of injury. Is it beneficial to have my child be part of a sports team with other players and coaches working toward a common goal, learning skills that will add up to success, building comradery and spirit within the team, and respect for opponents? Is it beneficial to expose our children to the concepts and skills of sportsmanship and leadership with hopes that this will carry on into adult life? The answer for most of us is the good outweighs the bad.

I am tired of the attack on football. We have saturated the television with professional football. Many of us are confused by amateur football as opposed to professional football. I watch the pros, I root for the New York Giants, and I enjoy how skillful and talented these players are. But I am afraid professional football seems to be the biggest enemy of amateur football. It scares parents to the point of not wanting their children play such a game, as articles like the one published last Sunday also does. They are two different games.

Do the authors of the article mean to ban all sports? I think not, but following their rationale, they are. All amateur sports played on every level, except for Division I football (which some question whether it is amateur or not) are no different when it comes to injuries according the Hartford Hospital Study.

Do not condemn amateur football based on what happens in the professional game. Amateur football is a great game that asks the player to give all they have physically, mentally, and emotionally. And yes, we attack opponents to reach the goal of winning the game. But we protect the player with the proper equipment, with rules as to how much contact they can have during the week, with rules that outlaw targeting, with procedures to properly care for a player incurring a concussion. I applaud all of this and any future rules that make all sports safer to play. Because the benefits of playing sports are worth all the support we can give them.

​​​​​​Mike Ellis, a former athletic director and coach at Fitch High School in Groton, coached football fort 38 years.