I support California’s Assembly Bill 734 to ban tackle football before age 12

I come from a football family and I have two sons who did not play tackle football before the age of 14. My dad and my uncle began playing tackle football much younger, and although both reached their dream of playing in the National Football League, they spent their last days in memory care facilities before receiving stage four (of four) Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) diagnoses post-mortem.

I support California’s Assembly Bill 734 to ban tackle football before age 12.

Subtracting a few years’ worth of violent hits to the head may not have saved them from the devastating, neurodegenerative disease. However, for the vast majority of young men whose careers end after high school or college, waiting to play tackle football just may save their lives.

Little was known about CTE when my dad and uncle started playing football. Thanks to research at Boston University, CTE is now proven to be caused by repetitive brain injuries, and the risk of developing CTE is not linked to number of concussions, but to the number of years playing tackle football.

Specifically, the risk of CTE increases by 30% for each year played. CTE irreparably destroys the brains of those suffering from it. This disease changes them into someone unrecognizable, leaving families with just a shell of who their loved one once was.

Sitting in a memory care facility with my dad, showing him pictures of his playing career while he pointed to himself and asked questions about “that guy in the picture” was only the end. First came years of gradual change, only visible to his wife and children. There were the initial years of explosive behavior, poor impulse control and rage. Next, there were years in which my dad — always busy with work or headed to a social function — didn’t want to leave the house.

In fact, he didn’t really want to come out of the basement. Battling depression and struggling just to make good professional and financial decisions, my dad began to alienate his lifelong friends and his family. Even more alarming, he would get lost driving across the town where he’d lived almost his entire life. He was only in his 60s.

Perhaps most devastating for me, my two sons never got the opportunity to throw a ball around with Grandpa. My dad was around, but he simply wasn’t “there” anymore. We were left with only pieces of my larger-than-life hero. I can’t even say my husband or kids ever met the dad that I had known.

Some may say kids should start tackle football young to be competitive in high school. I would counter that some of the best to ever play the game: Tom Brady, Jim Brown, Walter Payton, Jerry Rice, Lawrence Taylor and others, didn’t play tackle football until high school.

I want parents to know the slim chance their child might play at the college level is not worth the extreme risk that they could trigger a degenerative process that cannot be stopped, even once they stop playing. I want them to know AB 734 will mitigate those risks and very well may save their child’s life.

I would do anything to just have had my dad “with us” during the final years he was alive, much less to still have him here today.

Samantha Pyle Buono has lived in the Coachella Valley for 25 years. Her email is gsbuono@aol.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: I support California’s new bill to ban tackle football before age 12