NJ Bill Would Ban Tackle Football For Kids Under 12

A New Jersey lawmaker has proposed a ban on tackle football for children under age 12, citing concerns about the long-term effects of repeated blows to the head that go with playing the sport.

The bill, A-3760, introduced by Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle of Bergen County, comes as concerns mount about concussions in sports and the effects of football in particular, as cases of high-profile NFL players have put a spotlight on head injuries.

The bill prohibits children under the age of 12 from participating in organized tackle football programs, or in tackle during interscholastic athletics, intramural athletics, a physical education program, or any athletic activity offered to students.

"Studies show that exposure to tackle football before the age of 12 is associated with a greater risk of neurological impairment than exposure to tackle football starting at or after the age of 12," the bill says.

But whether the bill, which does not have any co-sponsors, will go anywhere is anyone's guess.

Traumatic brain injuries — both concussions and CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy — have been in the spotlight for several years now, as more and more athletes and families grapple with the effects of those injuries among both youngsters and adults.

CTE has been cited as contributing to the 2012 suicide of San Diego Chargers star linebacker Junior Seau and the death of New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, who hung himself in 2017 after he was sentenced to life in prison for murder. New York Giants Hall of Famer Frank Gifford, who died in 2015 at the age of 84 of natural causes, also suffered from CTE, his family said.

A study by researchers at Boston University and the VA Boston Healthcare system that looked at the brains of 202 former football players, including high school, college, NFL, Canadian Football League and semipro, diagnosed CTE in 87 percent of those cases, according to a USA Today report on the study published in July 2017 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Those with CTE have an abnormal buildup in their brains of tau, a protein that can disrupt the neural pathways controlling memory, judgment and fear, according to a CNN report.

But the American Association of Neurology has said more research needs to be done to draw a direct causal relationship between blows to the head from sports and CTE.

"There are some athletes who participate in contact sports who do not develop the findings ascribed to CTE," the association said in a 2015 article. "Furthermore, there are people who have headaches, mood disorders, cognitive difficulties, suicidal ideation, and other clinical problems who have neither been exposed to repeated head trauma nor possessed the pathologic postmortem findings of those currently diagnosed with CTE."

A report in the Journal of Sports Medicine said: "the speculation that repeated concussion or subconcussive impacts cause CTE remains unproven. The extent to which age-related changes, psychiatric or mental health illness, alcohol/drug use or coexisting dementing illnesses contribute to this process is largely unaccounted for in the published literature."

The article in the Journal of the American Medical Association on the 2017 study noted it "had several limitations." Among them were the fact that the brains studied all were donated based on public awareness of a possible link between repetitive head trauma and CTE that "may have motivated players and their families with symptoms and signs of brain injury to participate in this research."

"Therefore, caution must be used in interpreting the high frequency of CTE in this sample," the article said, adding that the "brain bank is not representative of the overall population of former players of American football; most players of American football have played only on youth or high school teams, but the majority of the brain bank donors in this study played at the college or professional level."

The JAMA article also said the study lacked a comparison group "that is representative of all individuals exposed to American football at the college or professional level, precluding estimation of the risk of participation in football and neuropathological outcomes."

That has not deterred those concerned about the impacts of traumatic brain injuries, which have prompted wide-ranging conversations about what to do to protect children in particular.

That is the impetus behind the New Jersey bill, Vanieri Huttle says.

"I actually cringe, I get nervous, when I see young kids as young as 6 years old, we’re talking about, playing and banging their heads," she told WBGO.org.

"I have been involved with youth football for 26 years and I have been around long enough to watch kids grow up and become adults, have families, jobs, kids," said Lou Montanaro, president of Jersey Shore American Youth Football, which has 40 town clubs in central New Jersey, with 10,000 youth participants in football and cheerleading. "My first-year kids are now well into their 30s."

"Out of the nearly 1,000 kids I have coached as well as the tens of thousands of kids I have watched play football in our league, I have not heard of one kid who has suffered from CTE from playing youth football," he said.

Jersey Shore AYF offers flag football for 5-and 6-year-olds, with tackle football in the fall only for children age 7 to 14, he said. Flag football is offered in the spring for all age groups.

"I have seen more kids get hurt at home falling off bikes and skateboards than I have had playing football. Every coach out there will tell you the same thing," Montanaro said.

Similar legislation was introduced in four other states this year: California, New York, Illinois and Maryland. However, the Illinois bill has been pulled pending amendments, according to Brainlaw.com, a website tracking such legislation. The Maryland bill, which would have barred tackle football until age 14 and banned heading in soccer in elementary and middle school, was rejected by the state's House of Delegates committee considering it, according to the Baltimore Sun.

Joanne Gerstner, co-author of the book "Back in the Game: Why Concussion Doesn't Have to End Your Athletic Career," said there is a bigger issue that's being ignored with these proposed laws.

"These laws are only legislating health for boys," said Gerstner, who wrote the book with Dr. Jeffrey Kutcher, national division chief for The Sports Neurology Clinic and a leading researcher in the area of sports concussions. Kutcher is the director of the NBA's concussion program and has helped develop the concussion policies of the NCAA, as well as several college athletic programs and conferences.

The laws are "more an example of the vilification of football," Gerstner said. "You're legislating one gender in one sport. What about soccer, where girls are so often affected? What about basketball, or lacrosse? Concussions happen in those sports too."

Laws such as this give people the feeling of that they are "doing something" to protect children, she said, but in the long run they do more damage than good, because the net result for football players is they will not learn the proper tackling skills, putting them at higher risk of injury in high school, where they will be bigger and stronger but not adequately trained.

Football and soccer have been cited as the top causes of sports-related concussions among young athletes, according to a study in the Journal of Pediatrics. But that same study, which looked at the distribution of concussions among children, said fully one-third of concussions are not related to sports at all, but happen from falls or other causes, including abuse. And it pointed out that concussions happen more frequently simply because there are more kids playing sports.

There have been changes prompted by the increased attention on the long-term effects of concussions. Every state has laws mandating concussion training programs for coaches at all levels of sports, and and tight "return to play" protocols for treating athletes with concussions exist throughout high school, college and professional sports.

In soccer, the attention on concussions prompted the United States Youth Soccer Association to implement a rule in 2016 barring soccer players age 10 and younger from intentionally heading the ball. The rule, which drew mixed reviews within the soccer community, was based on concerns about the ability of younger players to have the adequate head and neck control to safely and properly execute a header.

Montanaro, who's also an assistant coach at Donovan Catholic High School in Toms River, said AYF coaches have concussion training courses they must take before they step on the field, along with training in heat and hydration to keep players safe during hot-weather practices and games. When a player is injured, there is a "return to play" protocol that must be followed, he said.

"Many programs have baseline neurocognitive testing on all of their athletes so they can monitor them during their youth career," Montanaro said. That testing is in widespread use at the high school and college levels, to monitor the impacts of concussions an athlete suffers in any sport, not just football.

"Football is way safer now at the youth level than it has ever been," Montanaro said. "The game has evolved and become much, much safer; the equipment is safer, and coaches now have all the tools at their fingertips to become better, safer coaches."

Football in general continues to evolve. The NFL has implemented rules trying to minimize concussions, including its targeting rule that results in player ejections for helmet-to-helmet hits on players defined as defenseless, such as a wide receiver making a catch, when a defender approaches from behind or the side. The league has expanded that for the 2018 season, making it a penalty for a player to lower his head to initiate a hit with his helmet on an opponent during a game, according to The Washington Post.

"In the past, whether it’s the college targeting rule or whether it’s our defenseless-player rules, which have a lot of similarities, it’s a situational protection," Atlanta Falcons President Rich McKay, the chairman of the league’s rulemaking competition committee, told the Washington Post. "In this, we’re basically getting to a technique that is just too dangerous for both the player doing it and the player who’s getting hit."

Montanaro, who has four children who have played a variety of contact sports, said parents who sign their children up to play AYF are given information that explains the risk of concussions, how concussions should be handled and they are asked to sign off on receiving it. He said parents who sign their children up for any youth sport should be asking more questions and ensuring their sports organization has concussion policies in place.

"Football teaches many important life lessons, like discipline, competition, leadership, being a team player, winning and losing," he said. "If the government is going to ban youth football under 12, then soccer, baseball, basketball, rugby, lacrosse, hockey will be next. That would be way more detrimental to our youth, as more kids will be sitting home playing video games and becoming obese."

"As parents we should have the right to choose if youth football is right for our kids, period, not the government," Montanaro said.

Note: This article has been updated with comment from Joanne Gerstner, and additional information from the American Academy of Neurology on CTE.

Photo: Tackle football would be limited to players age 12 or older, such as these high school football players, under a bill proposed by a North Jersey assemblywoman. Photo by Karen Wall, Patch staff