The conversation Thursday began with a simple question: What if children were only allowed to play flag football, rather than tackle football, before high school?
As far as former NFL linebacker Chris Borland is concerned, it shouldn't be a conversation; it should be a reality across the United States.
"I’m somewhat incredulous that we even discuss the reasonability of hitting a 5-year-old in the head hundreds of times," Borland said. "It baffles me. I think you can wait to play (tackle football).”
Nearly three years ago, Borland famously retired after just one season with the San Francisco 49ers due to concerns about head trauma. On Thursday afternoon, he participated in a panel discussion at The Aspen Institute on the future of football and was one of several speakers who lobbied for the end of the tackle version of the sport for children — an issue that lawmakers in two states have taken up this week.
On Wednesday and Thursday, state legislators in New York and Illinois, respectively, proposed bills that would ban tackle football for children under 12, citing concerns over concussive and sub-concussive impacts at a critical junction for brain development.
In an interview after the panel discussion, Borland said he figures the shift to flag football before high school likely will have to come from lawmakers rather than the sport's own governing bodies, who have had decades to make the changes on their own and failed to do so.
"Let’s take it out of the hands of kids who are five and six and seven years old, and parents who get their information from industries that stand to make billions of dollars from their children playing," Borland told a small group of reporters. "Leave it up to good research and make laws that protect kids. We’ve done more with less information, from car seats to cigarettes and all that. So I think it’s past due."
Robert Cantu, the co-founder of the CTE Center at Boston University's medical school, said research has proven that the two-year period from 10 to 12 is critical to brain development, and concussive or sub-concussive hits during that time frame could have lasting effects. He also cited a recent study that found that repetitive hits to the head — and not just concussions — can lead to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
"I’m not talking about abolishing football. I want more people to play football," Cantu said. "I just want youngsters at (the) highest risk to not be hit in the head 200 times over the course of an average season."
Borland described it first and foremost as a public health issue, shrugging off a question about what would happen to the sport's "pipeline" if flag football replaced tackle at an early age. In fact, nearly three years after his abrupt retirement, the 27-year-old said he doesn't follow football "at all" and likened his relationship with the game to going through a divorce.
"I don’t harbor any animosity, but I’m apathetic toward the game," Borland said.
Though he initially felt "trapped" in the aftermath of his retirement — cast as blatantly anti-football because of his reasons for stepping away from the sport — Borland said his feelings are more nuanced than that. His apathy toward the sport as a whole does not mean he also is apathetic about "suiting up 5-year-olds in body armor."
"This (wouldn't) be a worthwhile conversation — youth tackle (football) — if there weren’t 1,000 viable alternatives. There are," Borland said. "So I hope we can stop that very soon."
