Football

Introduction
The beginnings of organized football
Organized college football
Pop Warner and other youth football leagues
Flag football
Friday night lights
Pros
- Pro 1: Tackle football instills teamwork, sportsmanship, resilience, and discipline.
- Pro 2: Tackle football gets kids outside, away from digital screens, and promotes fitness and a healthy life.
- Pro 3: Tackle football provides socialization for kids and teens, plus a lifetime of social opportunities.
- Pro 4: Tackle football offers an outlet for assertive, rambunctious energy, instilling toughness in young men.
Cons
- Con 1: Tackle football is too violent for youth, whose bodies are vulnerable and still in development.
- Con 2: Tackle football puts players at risk for concussion and CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy).
- Con 3: Tackle football routinely distracts students from school and studies that will better prepare them for life than football.
- Con 4: Flag football is more inclusive, with all of the social benefits of tackle football but without the risk to our youth of serious injury.
Did you know? U.S. presidents & football
- Donald Trump
- Joe Biden
- Barack Obama
- Bill Clinton
- George H.W. Bush
- Ronald Reagan
- Jimmy Carter
- Gerald Ford
- Richard Nixon
- Lyndon B. Johnson
- John F. Kennedy
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Herbert Hoover
- Theodore Roosevelt
Rules of the Harvard Game (1873)
Assessment quiz
1-minute survey
Discussion questions
Sources

References & Edit History Related Topics

Images & Videos

High school football player in a green helmet and camouflage jersey is tackled headfirst at the goal line by an opponent in white and orange, with the ball extended for a touchdown.

The science behind CTE in athletes and veterans

Group portrait of the Rutgers College 1891 football team

Walter Camp in the 1910s

Wood engraving of a late 19th-century football game between Yale and Princeton shows players in striped uniforms running and tackling on a grassy field with a grandstand in the background.

Football game in Washington, D.C., c. 1920–30

Movie star Ronald Reagan

Sepia-toned group photo of a high school football team with boys in vintage uniforms and leather helmets, including John F. Kennedy, posing in front of a brick building.

Football: Media

Should kids and teens be allowed to play tackle football?

Videos

The science behind CTE in athletes and veterans

The science behind CTE in athletes and veterans

Learn about efforts to understand the long-term effects of repeated head injury.

Video: © American Chemical Society (A Britannica Publishing Partner)

Images

High school football player in a green helmet and camouflage jersey is tackled headfirst at the goal line by an opponent in white and orange, with the ball extended for a touchdown.

Should kids and teens be allowed to play tackle football?

© Margaret Kite/Shutterstock.com

Group portrait of the Rutgers College 1891 football team

Group portrait of the Rutgers College 1891 football team

Early American college football team.

New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection—Prints and Photographs Division/Library of Congress, Washington D.C. (LC-DIG-ds-03688)

Walter Camp in the 1910s

Walter Camp in the 1910s

The “father of American football” Walter Camp.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (reproduction no. LC-USZ62-116343)

Wood engraving of a late 19th-century football game between Yale and Princeton shows players in striped uniforms running and tackling on a grassy field with a grandstand in the background.

Early American college football

Wood engraving from Once a Week magazine depicts on-field action during...

© Stock Montage—Archive Photos/Getty Images

Football game in Washington, D.C., c. 1920–30

Football game in Washington, D.C., c. 1920–30

An early American football game.

National Photo Company Collection—Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-ds-03743)

Flag football

Mexico's Diana Flores (right) setting to launch a pass while Crystal Winter (left)...

© The World Games

Movie star Ronald Reagan

Movie star Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan as George Gipp in Knute Rockne: All American (1940).

Courtesy Ronald Reagan Library

Gerald Ford

Gerald Ford

A young Gerald Ford on the football field at the University of Michigan, 1933.

Courtesy Gerald R. Ford Library

Sepia-toned group photo of a high school football team with boys in vintage uniforms and leather helmets, including John F. Kennedy, posing in front of a brick building.

John F. Kennedy (seated, front row, far right) photographed with the Dexter School football team.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Black-and-white photo of a group of young men in football positions on a grassy yard, with Dwight D. Eisenhower in the front row, second from the right, houses and bare trees in the background.

Eisenhower playing football

Dwight D. Eisenhower during backyard football practice. He is in first row, second...

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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