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Or make higher education free for all.

Limiting what can be done on sports infrastructure paid for with public funds would also go a long ways. Most of the football fields in the nation are paid for with public funds (schools, parks, stadiums etc.). Most of these locations have rules if you want to use them that you have to agree too.

If the sport is too dangerous for children and teens, change how it is played to make it safe. If you can't, ban it on public grounds.

We need to untangle sports and education. The latter being percieved as more important than the former causes a lot of problems

"Walk it off" has literally killed kids

Ok, it's fun. It can also give you a concussion.

Not that I think you do, but do you think it's ok for kids now to play tackle football the way you did growing up?

A lot of kids get put in sports aginst their will to satesfy their parents desires or for resume building

I mean obviously the real answer is a little of column A and a little of column B. My parents tried to keep me out of contact sports as long as they could, but I was drawn to them like it was destiny. I eventually traded every single non-contact sport with the contact variety during that season (football, wrestling, and rugby).

That being said, there were also kids who stopped playing contact sports as they got older, for one reason or another. Would some of them have played when they were younger if their parents hadn't signed them up? Probably not.

The main point the article is trying to make is more nuanced than "why do kids play contact sports?" They're really asking "why do minority kids play football at a higher rate than white kids?" They're suggesting the answer is that since minorities in the US are disproportionately poor, they're more likely to hope, whether consciously or not, that their kid will make it big in sports.

When I was a kid, there were these giant piles of dirt and gravel leftover from a construction project at the middle school. We would ride our bikes up and down the dirt piles and make mud bombs to throw at each other. It was really fun.

There were also rusty nails and broken glass mixed in, and several kids broke bones falling off their bikes on those piles.

And when it rained, the storm drain would back up and make a muddy pond where we could jump in and splash around.

The point is, being fun is not a good enough reason to do something unsafe.

I coach junior rugby in NZ.

The first thing we teach is the correct way to tackle so you protect your head, followed closely by how you protect their neck. Also now have a standing rule that if a kid goes down holding their head, they are off, and I have called games early if we feel it isn't safe to continue with the number and technique being displayed.

We also don't have pads - and a different definition of a tackle.

Kids get hurt playing everything, and we can't just stop them having fun because we are worried. Put kids in a trampoline and they will be tackling eachother in minutes. Teach them safety, minimize the risks, let them throw themselves around.

"I got a concussion as a child, why shouldn't my children get the same concussions?"