School Boards And Football

This is Lew Margolis.

The drumbeat of chilling evidence of brain damage associated with football continues to quicken. The National Football League recently reported that nearly a third of former players develop long-term cognitive problems. These NFL players are a small subset of the over 1 million high school football players, boys who are subjected to the same brain-scrambling forces that the NFL and the NCAA are only now taking seriously. What are the moral and legal responsibilities of our local school boards which oversee the health and well-being of these boys?

Until high school football is banned, school boards do have an obligation to inform parents of the risks. This duty of securing informed consent is absent from high school football. The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools use the Athletic Participation Consent Form developed by the NC High School Athletic Association. Near the top of this four page form, requiring a signature by a parent and the student, is a brief statement on the Risk of Injury. Here is what it says: “We acknowledge and understand that there is a risk of injury involved in athletic participation. We understand that the student-athlete will be under the supervision and direction of a CHCCS athletic coach. We agree to follow the rules and instructions of the coach in order to reduce the risk of injury to the student and other athletes. However, we acknowledge and understand that neither the coach nor CHCCS can eliminate the risk of injury in sports. Injuries may and do occur.”

This is not an adequate consent form.  Does anybody know what the “risk of injury” means to the parents of high school football players? Are parents aware of the mounting evidence of serious long-term brain damage from football? Are parents guided in how to understand weighing these harms against some perceived benefits of football, a calculation that is at the heart of any true consent form?

If our local schools, unfortunately, continue to support football, then at a minimum, school leaders must require that the consent process is rigorous and informative. The unthinking cultural zeal for football should not undermine the ethical obligations that we have to our boys and their parents to make educated decisions.