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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

Boxing is somewhat popular to watch, but we don’t have high school boxing with large numbers of participants at most schools. I am fine with adults taking such risks with their own bodies knowing the risks, but it’s another thing when public school teams enter the equation.

Replacing full contact high school football with say flag football or soccer would be unpopular, but continuing is an ethically dubious proposition.

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Saying it would be "unpopular" is an understatement. If someone has never spent time around football fans or lived in an area of the country where football is king, it's hard to explain exactly how ingrained it is in American culture. Trying to offramp a large amount of the population into a less violent sport would likely immediately be highly politicized and, I would assume, an almost impossible task without a significant, voluntary change in peoples' willingness to sacrifice their thrilling weekend of violence for the good of all these kids that grow up trying to be the next NFL pro.

Solution: require a surgical mask to be worn under football helmet.

You would have football boycotts in no time.

College football required all players to mask in 2020 except when on the field of play. The only boycotts that happened were due to the national anthem situation.

Seems like that's a better "solution": mandate that all players and spectators kneel for the anthem

Hopefully, more ex-NFLers will follow in Favre's steps and come out against youth tackle football...

https://www.npr.org/2021/08/17/1028547803/brett-favre-kids-f...

That's great that Favre came out to say that; he's considered one of the toughest players to ever play the game.

Boxing training starts at a very young age, especially because parents/kids know the kind of money and fame a professional boxer can achieve. That being said, I take your point on it being part of the high school programs. Begs the question on whether parents should be allowed to put their children into sports with long-term effects at all. As other threads mention, this would be hugely unpopular.

> especially because parents/kids know the kind of money and fame a professional boxer can achieve.

Oh come on. Even among professional sports boxing seems incredibly unlikely to pay off as a career move.

But since probably 100x times as many kids play basketball or football than box, your odds are probably similar.

Also, I'd counter-intuitively bet that careers in boxing (when found) are longer lasting than in pro football. Pro football players get very moderate money for what tends to be extremely short careers that leave a lot of damage. My grandfather couldn't walk for the last 10 years of his life from football damage to his knees he picked up 60 years before.

My only issue with this is that Boxing isn't as dominate of a combat sport as it once was. MMA/UFC has split the market share and by most accounts is more popular than Boxing. This reduces the total number of professional boxers that actually "make it" since most paid boxers rarely get a fight card that is worth significant cash.

But if you combine MMA/UFC with Boxing I would bet you're math is reasonable.

True. Olympic medallist Tony Jeffries made a video about this a couple of days ago[1]. Even if you become pro, chances are you won't be making any significant money.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiqJh0oG9dM

There are a lot of dreamers out there

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