A whole lot of hurting going on

Ah, yes, another football weekend.

It reminds me of when a bunch of us went to see “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” a second time just to see whether we could count how many people were killed.

Today's equivalent is counting how many football players are carted off the field with game-, season-, career- or life-threatening injuries.

Isn't there a song lyric that goes, “Mama, don't let your cowboys grow up to be football players”?

If you do they might become reflections of Steelers linebacker James Harrison saying, “You don't want to injure people. I don't want to injure anybody. But I'm not opposed to hurting anybody.”

Worst of all your youngsters might become like too many other players who have suffered concussions, paralysis or merely merely? mangled body parts.

Last week NFL executives addressed the league's increasing wreckage. However, they might be able to make football safer but won't ever be able to make it safe.

The curiosity is why in the world parents ever would sign permission slips that allow their sons to play football.

My only guess is that kids and parents alike are seduced by peer pressure, NFL envy and legend that portrays football as a passageway from boyhood to manhood.

Yet this from the L.A. Times is difficult to ignore: “Football accounts for nearly three times more injuries than any other high school sport, according to an annual study by the Center for Injury Research and Policy in Columbus, Ohio.”

No wonder former Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman wondered last month on the Score's “Mully and Hanley Show” whether, if he had a 10-year-old son, he would let him start playing football.

Now there's an NFL Hall of Famer who is thinking clearly despite having suffered multiple concussions.

Then there's the Cleveland Plain Dealer quoting Lee Sanzenbacher, father of gritty Ohio State receiver Dane Sanzenbacher:

“I used to pray for him to get a touchdown. Now I mainly pray he doesn't get hurt and his other teammates don't get hurt. It's getting terrible.”

Allowing a kid to play football now is a bit like saying, “Sure, go ahead, smoke cigarettes if you want” even though the label warns of health hazards.

Football's emphasis has evolved from broken bones in the 1950-60s to spinal injuries in the 1970s-80s to concussions in the 1990s-2000s.

Concerns have risen from knees to the back to the head and from limps to paralysis to brain damage.

For decades NFL highlight reels glorified football's debilitating nature. Now both the league and school districts are attempting to safeguard players from “life-altering hits.”

The thin line football wobbles along is that the less safe it is the more appealing it is, sort of like what auto racing has been accused of.

Parents used to encourage youngsters to pursue football careers as a way to avoid a life in coal mines, steel mills or penitentiaries.

Now a case could be made that parents should push boys into something else to avoid a life ravaged by football.

Hypocritically, I'll be at today's Bears game oohing and ahhing at the “life-altering hits.”

However, next week during the high school state playoffs I'll be praying that no high school kid's life is altered by a similar collision.

mimrem@dailyherald.com