If President Barack Obama ever has a son, it doesn’t look like he’d ever be playing with a pigskin.
During a lengthy interview in the Jan. 27 issue of New Republic, Obama was asked about the concussion issue in football.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112190/obama-interview-2013-sit-down-president#
The question posed to the president was as a big football fan, does it ever bother him to watch the game knowing what he does today about how players are negatively impacted.
“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 told the magazine.
In the interview the president added, “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 told the New Republic, “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.”
The president said that he was more concerned about college players than NFL players, because the pros have a union and are grown-up men.
“They can make some of these decisions on their own, and most of them are well-compensated for the violence they do to their bodies,” Obama said during the interview.
“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,” he said. “That’s something that I’d like to see the NCAA think about.”
It all sounds like some pretty smart words to me.
Print Friendly Version
Save Page as PDF
