U.S. President Barack Obama said he loves football but thinks the sport should “probably change gradually” so that there are fewer concussions, particularly at the college level.
“I’m a big football fan, but I have to tell you if I had a son, I’d have to think long and hard before I let him play football,” Obama said in a wide-ranging interview with The New Republic magazine published early on Sunday on its website.
Football is America’s most popular televised sport, an industry worth $9 billion a year. But in recent years, suicides by brain-injured players and lawsuits from their families have raised concerns about the impact of repeated concussions.
In the interview, Obama was asked how he squares his love of the game with rising awareness of the impact of repeated head injuries on football players.
“I think that those of us who love the sport are going to have to wrestle with the fact that it will probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence,” Obama said.
“In some cases, that may make it a little bit less exciting, but it will be a whole lot better for the players, and those of us who are fans maybe won’t have to examine our consciences quite as much,” Obama said.
Obama said he is “more worried about college players” than those in the National Football League who he noted are represented by a union and are “well-compensated” for the hits they take.
“You read some of these stories about college players who undergo some of these same problems with concussions and so forth and then have nothing to fall back on. That’s something that I’d like to see the NCAA think about,” he said, referring to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which runs college sports.
(Reuters)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
4 Responses
Wow I actually think he might be right!
Presdient Theodore Roosevelt has much more credibility in the matter since Teddy was known for his “vigorous” physical activities (being a cowboy, charging up hills, going on expeditions, etc.). Obama is into basketball, and it is tacky for someone known for one sport to criticize a different one. It also should be noted, that the constitution gives the president absolutely no authority in the matter.
But it should be noted that the American armed forces in World War II did ban football since it was too dangerous, which was the origin of “flag football’ which is popular among manyu in our community.
Once the constitutional requirement of a natural born person goes out the window, why is the level of his arrogance considered newsworthy?
Ban drilling natural resources lest we can export instead of import oil and gas.
This “president” is anything but presidential.
No. 2: Sometimes you make sense. This time: not so much.
First of all, if a president’s participation in “‘vigorous’ physical activities” is what qualifies or disqualifies a president from commenting on football, President Obama’s playing basketball surely qualifies him to talk about other sports, at least in the general way in which he actually did. I do not recall your objecting when Richard Nixon opined about football. Admittedly, neither President Obama nor President Nixon has any jurisdiction over games, and I do not believe Nixon or Obama was asserting any such jurisdiction.
No. 3: Your comment sounds as if you played football the way Lyndon Johnson said Gerald Ford played football – without a helmet.