Football has always been under scrutiny for it’s performance. The culture, rules, safety, and game in general has been debated due to occasional life-changing injuries and questionable rules. However, the popularity of both the college and professional leagues have allowed football to stay on top as America’s most popular sport. How do Magnet students feel about football, and do they think it is worth the drawbacks caused by playing?

The first and biggest reasons many people refrain from playing football is because of injuries.

Ranging from minor bruises to concussions and broken bones, the injuries players can sustain while playing keeps many people from playing, due to both personal concern and parents’ fear of injury. Injuries can be both long-lasting and expensive as well. UNC student and former Raptor Ransome Hudson saw firsthand how bad an injury can be during his sophomore year, when he suffered a broken leg that required surgery. Not only was the surgery expensive, Ransome also missed the rest of his season and had to go through the rehabilitative process to build up his leg after it finally healed. Minor injuries such as a dislocated finger, as seen with Donovan Hamilton, can cause players to miss out on up to two weeks of playing time, leading to the possible loss of a starting spot that someone has worked to achieve all season. The other major reason many people refrain from football is the physicality. A largely guys’ sport, football is known for its intense hits and incredible roughness. This leads to many concerned parents as such a large amount of physicality can lead to serious injuries, as mentioned above. The culture can also be seen as toxic and too competitive for some people as there is always competition both between teams and between players competing for starting spots. The introduction of new regulations to make the game safer have been implemented but there is still apprehension among parents over whether they are fine with their child playing football or not. There are people that find the game hard to watch, as well. In a survey sent out earlier last week, some responses showed people who did not approve of the game due to a lack of knowledge on how the game works as well as the continuous pauses during the game. This is understandable as there are a lot of halts in play throughout a game. Another person believes that rugby is superior to football as it is much more fast paced and has much less pauses in play than football. While I do not know much about rugby I can understand why someone might see football as being a slow paced game.

Many people at Magnet love football, though. The survey sent out to the Raptor Nation showed that just one in every thirty students disliked football, with the anonymous person saying they found it “boring” and “slow”. This could be due to a possible lack of football knowledge as Connor Sawall’s hot takes article showed how some people do not know how football works. Many of the responses agreed that football is very exciting and fun to watch and arguably the most popular sport in America. One conflicted response stated that they found football entertaining to watch but the sport was definitely unsafe. Yet another response stated that they did not care for college football or the NFL because it feels fake to them. While I do not personally agree with this person I will admit that the amount of NFL “scripted” moments can cause people to doubt the honesty of the organization. Many responses to the survey said that they enjoy football for its fast pace and exciting atmosphere. This is a very agreeable claim as the football games on Friday nights are by far the biggest sports events for the Birdcage to represent the Raptor Nation. The culture of Friday Night Lights is what brought many of the responders to enjoy football in the first place. Junior Keveon Ford went on to state that his love of the game was excelled by some of the team building aspects of the sport. He has a fondness for the bus rides after games, fun moments in the locker room, and the role models made during the season. I agree heavily with Keveon as that is what a team sport is all about. The camaraderie of any high school sport is part of what makes high school football so enjoyable. The memories that are made with the team are never forgotten. Max Peters shares a similar ideology, although he also loves the sport because he likes, and I quote “to tackle people.” Max’s response is a great example of why many people enjoy the sport. There is nothing more satisfying than practicing all day for a week and finally being able to get a sack mid-game in front of a large crowd. It shows your hard work paid off, and the therapy of being able to let out any frustrations from the day during practice is a great bonus, what with the stress of daily Magnet academics. Another anonymous response said that football is “over hyped”. This is an ongoing sports debate. I do not personally see how football is over hyped as there seems to be less of an over hype of Friday football games but more popularity in the sport. Many sports teams claim that football is given extra attention when compared to other sports but I would say it’s more like football is simply slightly more popular than the other sports. The Friday night football games are a staple of high school tradition and likely always will be simply because of the sport’s popularity.

While there are many great aspects of football it does still have it’s negatives. I personally love playing the sport and only wish I could keep playing for the rest of my life, but I know that soon I will have to “hang up my pads” for the last time. I’ll miss the sport but I know I’ll tell anyone who’s interested in football to at least give it a chance. I did and I’ll never regret it.