Should college football be banned?

Many people in the United States love to watch college football in their free time. The thrill of the marching bands, cheerleaders, and best of all the brute force of the dedicated athletes are factors in why the fans love the sport. College football has been around for more than 100 years and since the late 1900's the players have grown stronger and faster. The intensity of the game has increased and the safety of the players is a concern we can't ignore.

A big reason to ban college football is because of the constant blows to the head. Examples of players that go through the repetitive brutal hits are linemen and running backs. The short term affects of these rapid hits are concussion, memory loss and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, but the long term affects are still unknown. The long term damages can be severe and there is no way to find out until after the player's death. CTE is so severe that Malcolm Gladwell said in an Intelligence Squared debate at New York University, “I’ve seen pictures of the brain scans of people with CTE and it looks like someone drove a truck across their brain.”

While the student-athletes are at risk of getting injured every day during practice, their education is being ignored. Football requires dedication so the students are spending the majority of their time at practice or at the gym for improvement. The student-athletes' education was primarily their main focus going into college, but once they engage in the sport they sacrifice the time they could have used learning for a football scholarship.

College football is an exciting sport, but changes are a necessity. The games are more intense than ever and players are violently tackling each other. Safety of the players is a problem and banning it is a solution. There are other alternatives such as giving the student-athletes a reasonable salary or better schedules to reduce play time, but the sport will still be unsafe for the young athletes.