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FOOTBALL SEASON is starting, and my sons are entering high school. Since one of them is nicknamed Moose, there would seem to be a match here.
Of our twin boys, this one always has been the bruiser. He took up most of the space in utero, and by eighth grade was 6-foot-2 and 185 pounds. He enjoyed several years of flag football; he&rsquo;s fast and he&rsquo;s physical.
This summer he attended a local weight-training program run by the high school football coach, who took one look and launched a recruitment blitz. It&rsquo;s a good program, and the Moose was suitably intrigued. That made two of us. I was too skinny for high school football but played anyway. The only tool I had was a good arm, which was promptly broken in a preseason game in my junior year, ending a pathetic career that never should have begun. But the Moose is solidly built, and visions of my favorite ungulate galloping toward the end zone made my heart race. Through him, I thought, I could achieve a measure of gridiron redemption.
So there was every reason to sign him up for high school football. Yet we never seriously considered it. And I wonder if other parents &ndash; there are more than a million high school football players nationwide &ndash; have carefully weighed the risks and rewards in light of recent science.
High school football is dangerous, of course, with a significant injury rate. But I don&rsquo;t worry about my son hobbling around on a broken ankle for a few weeks. For a moose, on the other hand, he&rsquo;s got a pretty good head on his shoulders. And the state of the science on head injuries &ndash; inadequate though it might be &ndash; was enough to make this decision a no-brainer in our house.
Many players don&rsquo;t have a clear idea of what a concussion is, but anonymous surveys that simply ask about their symptoms suggest half of all high school players sustain at least one. A third had two. And recent research suggests that repeated head blows &ndash; even those that aren&rsquo;t concussive &ndash; quickly lead to impaired thinking and memory.
Long term, the picture is even scarier. Retirees from pro football suffer depression, suicide and dementia at vastly higher rates than other Americans &ndash; problems associated with years of head trauma. It doesn&rsquo;t take an NFL career, either. After a 21-year-old captain of the University of Pennsylvania football team hanged himself last year, an autopsy revealed the same trauma-induced brain disease found in many deceased former pros.
Some scientists even believe that Yankees great Lou Gehrig (a star fullback in college) might not actually have had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the disease later named for him, but a similar neurological disorder arising from brain trauma. NFL players have high ALS rates. So do combat veterans.
This is not to say that high school football has no value. It&rsquo;s often derided for a gladiatorial culture, but there&rsquo;s something to be said for the spirit of toughness in the sport. For most of their childhood, my sons have been swaddled in Band-Aids every time they had a bruising thought. They got ribbons lauding them as &ldquo;Participants&rdquo; just for showing up at various sporting and musical events. But football coaches never tell kids they&rsquo;re special because they like cookies or have brown eyes. The cult of self-esteem hasn&rsquo;t seeped into this world. And for many towns and school districts, the high school team is a source of pride and community identity.
Yet to my mind these benefits don&rsquo;t offset the risks, which at this point seem large enough to raise questions about why schools continue to sponsor teams. It might be natural for moose to butt heads in the forest. But the Moose in our house will focus on baseball.

Chance Of Trauma Makes High School Football A No-brainer Commentary Daniel Akst