The most high-profile athlete in the world doesn’t let his own children play football due to safety reasons.
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The four-time NBA MVP and two-time NBA champion, who in addition to basketball was also a former high school football star, is a big football fan. Nonetheless, as reported by ESPN, King James stated that he does not allow either of his two sons, LeBron Jr. or Bryce Maximus, play football.
The reason?
Safety:
“We don’t want them to play in our household right now until they understand how physical and how demanding the game is. Then they can have their choice in high school, we’ll talk over it,” he said. “But right now there’s no need for it. There’s enough sports they can play. They play basketball, they play soccer, they play everything else but football and hockey.
“It’s a safety thing. As a parent you protect your kids as much as possible. I don’t think I’m the only one that’s not allowing his kids to play football, it’s just that I’m LeBron James and it gets put in the headlines for no reason.”
After The Decision and The Summer of LeBron, it’s pretty clear that almost anything James does is news.
That he doesn’t let his kids play football is just further evidence, from as high profile an athlete as there is on the planet, that the safety issues – of concussions and traumatic brain injury – that have bubbled to the surface in football and the NFL are real and will have an impact on the game going forward.
As they should.
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Photo Credit: AP /Tony Gutierrez
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For more Good Men Project Sports coverage of the recent issues coming out of the NFL, check out:
- Is the NFL’s Culture of Violence Causing a Crisis of American Masculinity? (November 10, 2014)
- Athletes’ ‘Killer Instinct’ – In Words. In Pictures. And In Your Face (November 5, 2014)
- The End of Football for Men and Boys? Readers and Experts Discuss Where We Go From Here (Oct. 5, 2014)
- The NFL’s Concussion Problem Just Got A Lot Worse (Sept. 30, 2014)
- Roger S. Goodell, Will You Please Go Now? (Sept. 22, 2014)
- We May Be Right. We May Be Crazy: Musings on the NFL’s Violence Problem (Sept. 16, 2014)
- The National Football League: Too Big To Fail? (Sept. 13, 2014)