An Olympic spinoff that funds youth sports says unless a football league takes safety precautions -- including no tackle football allowed before age 8 -- it's going to have a much harder time getting any grants.
The LA84 Foundation, which has given out $214 million in grants to Southern California youth sports programs since it was created with proceeds from the 1984 U.S. Olympic Summer Games in Los Angeles, announced its guidelines Dec. 2, about four months after it hosted a session on concussions called "Should Children Play Tackle Football?" Among the experts who participated: Dr. Robert Cantu, whose Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University, founded in 2008, was the first dedicated to studying the degenerative brain condition so many football players have suffered, and as such has become shorthand for Dr. Concussion.
Cantu has said that no one under the age of 14 should play tackle football -- it's too dangerous for developing brains and developing bodies. In that case, the LA84 Foundation would stop funding youth football altogether. All the $600,000 in grants to 58 Southern California youth football programs since 2010 have gone to leagues with players younger than 14.
However, the LA84 board decided that it would rather not be "draconian" by completely cutting off youth football funding, instead trying to use its clout to help leagues make the game safer, said Anita L. DeFrantz, the LA84 Foundation president. She's also an International Olympic Committee board member, a former medal-winning Olympic rower, and by year's end will finish a 20-year term as vice president of International Rowing Federation.
"We know kids will take part in youth football, and we want to help them," DeFrantz said in a Dec. 3 phone interview. "If we just walked away, we wouldn't be a part of the solution."
LA84's new guidelines state the organization will "give preference" to youth football organizations that fit the following criteria:
1. Provides flag football for 6- and 7-year-olds, with no tackle football before age 8.
2. Require tackle coaches to be trained in either the Bobby Hosea Train 'Em Up Academy helmet-free tackling method, or USA Football's Heads-Up program.
3. Distribute information to parents, coaches and players regarding the dangers of concussions.
4. Prohibit preseason player-to-player physical contact.
5. Prohibit full-speed, head-on blocking or tackling drills in which the players line up more than 3 yards apart (goodbye, Oklahoma Drill), or drills involving chop blocking, face tackling or spearing techniques.
6. Full-contact drills should represent only the last 30 minutes of a two-hour practice, and should not be conducted more than 90 minutes per week.
7. Have trained personnel as safety monitors at practices to identify concussions and other injuries, and have trained medics at all games.
To help out leagues, LA84 says it will enable leagues to pay for coaches' training, equipment such as pads and tackling dummies that can be used as alternatives to player-to-player contact, and medics for games. DeFrantz said coaches training will be paid for from money the organization uses for existing training programs, while grant money would be available for equipment and medics. Also, DeFrantz said, LA84 would work at ensuring referees are trained how to call games in an "age-appropriate" manner to help protect player safety.
DeFrantz said LA84 wants to be a "laboratory" by bringing people together to talk about sports issues, such as it did with concussions, and a "showroom" to see how those ideas work in practice. "Some will criticize us, and that's fine," she said. "But we needed to take a position."
A piece of Cantu's advice that was followed: that at "a very young age," kids should play flag football, and tackling techniques should be taught through the use of "mannequins and dummies" instead of live contact.
So what could be the impact could LA84's new grant guidelines? Perhaps it won't be on the level of its knee-injury prevention program for female athletes, which resulted in substantial drops in ACL tears. Instead, what it might do is give cover for youth football programs -- even those outside of Southern California -- to rethink full-tackle leagues for young children.
DeFrantz mentioned one email she received from a league director that was a virtual "round of applause" for LA84's new guidelines. Then he noted in that in its current structure, his league didn't meet those guidelines. But what he could do now, DeFrantz said, it bring the guidelines to his board as a way to prod them to make changes.
