And you don't have to look to hard to see the debilitating effects of injuries on those previous generations. Early deaths, dementia, chronic pain and many other issues has led many to experience severly diminished quality of life for athletes of provious generations. To answer the question "how did people live 50 years ago"...the answer is not so great.

 

I know zero people that have serious life long head conditions from football. Are we talking about NFL veterans or the entire sport?

I know zero people that have serious life long head conditions from football. Are we talking about NFL veterans or the entire sport?

 

Obviously, former NFL players are the ones in the news. And the longer you play, the greater the chance of experiencing these troubles. But with the way CTE is, who knows how much damage is too much? I played, and suffered concussions, and hardly missed any practice, let alone games. Has it affected me? My first serious concussion coincidentally happened during my worst academic year as a student. And who knows it won't cause me problems later? The problem for insurers is that uncertainity. It's clear that long term playing can and sometimes does have consequences. The question that can't be answered right now, is how much (or little) playing can cause these issues.

 

That's just for head injuries. There are countless examples of those who have developed addictions to pain killers that started with high school sports injuries.

 

So just because you don't know someone (or more likely aren't aware of someone), doesn't mean that those people don't exist, and that there might not be quite a few of them. That's what's scaring insurers away. Don't forget, we are still learning about this too.

I have a friend who played HS football only and he is getting ready to have neck surgery. He said he suffered a concussion and hurt his neck while he got the concussion in HS.

I will tell you from working within the NKYFL our insurance doubled in the past few years for our league. After shopping we were able to bring it back down some. We also learned that there is basically only 8 major insurance companies in the world that will entertain insuring youth football and it’s getting increasingly tougher which is alarming. It’s definitely an issue that could effect football as a whole down the road.

 

Also our cheer insurance has been higher than football per Participant for many years, at least as long as I have been around (10 seasons). That’s even with special provisions on things they are allowed to do which is more restrictive that the more competitive types of cheer leagues.