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Destiny

May 1, 2012

A University of Wisconsin football player from my hometown years ago was hit from behind in the closing minutes of spring football practice.  It caused an injury that required surgery.  That caused him to miss the next fall’s football season; and to protect him from further injury, he was allowed to skip the following spring’s football practice and to work out with the Badgers baseball team.

He ended up leading the Big Ten Conference in hitting, and he eventually received the largest signing contract in the history of professional baseball, becoming the first “Bonus Baby” for Gene Autry’s Los Angeles Angels.

“If not for that injury in football,” he once told an audience, “caused by an unskilled walk-on in the last five minutes of the last spring football practice, I would never have played college baseball.  I would never have played Major League Baseball for 11 seasons.

“You never know,” he said, “when you are five minutes from your destiny.”

Ready for Some Football

August 12, 2014

How seriously should we take public criticism of tackle football when that public promotes boxing or cage fighting? Or how seriously should we take public criticism of football played with helmets when that public allows motorcyclists to ride without any helmets at all?
This fickle if not hypocritical focus on football deserves to be exposed. 
However, and more importantly, this does not reduce our obligation to rise above the obvious questions of fair and balanced criticism and keep pressing for a safer environment for schools’ most popular participation sport.
In Michigan this has led to new limitations on head-to-head contact in football practices that began for more than 600 high schools this week. Specifically, no team or individual may participate in more than one collision practice per day before the first game, and no more than two collision practices per week after the first game.
The new policies promote instruction in proper blocking and tackling technique. It is full speed head-to-head contact that is further reduced, not full speed shoulder contact with sleds, shields and dummies nor slow speed contact between players.
Last month, and perhaps two years too late to be helpful, the National Federation of State High School Associations hosted a high-profile, high-powered summit to discuss practice policies of the kind that we developed, debated and adopted during the past school year to be ready for this 2014 season.