As public awareness increases about the potential for head injuries in football, professionals have to consider a question – should kids be playing?

For Kevin Wallace, Bowling Green High School’s head football coach, the answer is yes. 

Wallace’s son plays at Eastern Kentucky University and his other son used to play for Western Kentucky University before going into coaching.

The benefits they get from playing football – such as relationships and values – outweigh the risks for his sons, Wallace said.

For Wallace, there’s inherent risk in all sports and life in general.

“I think that the one positive that has happened with football is that from the top levels of the game down there are now far better outlined protocols for how you handle a potential head injury,” he said. 

Wallace said the Kentucky High School Athletic Association has developed guidelines for safety situations beyond just concussions, such as how to handle high heat indexes and even how much contact players should have during practice. 

The movement to improve safety in football, Wallace said, began before the film “Concussion” debuted in theaters in December. 

The film stars Will Smith, who portrays a Nigerian forensic pathologist fighting against the National Football League’s efforts to suppress his research on chronic traumatic encephalopathy. CTE is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain found in athletes and others with a history of repetitive brain trauma.

The disease came to light even more this month as it was announced last week that former MVP Ken Stabler, who died last year from cancer, had the disease, which can only formally be diagnosed after death. The news came right before the largest football event of the year.

CNN reported that in October, researchers from Boston University and the Department of Veterans Affairs found that 87 out of 91 former NFL players who donated their brains to science after death tested positive for CTE.

Persistent hits have been thought to cause CTE in hockey players as well. But on Thursday it was announced that one player, who was thought to have killed himself after suffering the effects of CTE, was determined to have not had the disease, according to the New York Times.

Both sports are popular locally, with top notch high school football teams in the region and both professional football and hockey in Nashville. There also are children in the area who play hockey.

“As a parent and as a coach I certainly want to be involved in a safe event whether I’m coaching or whether I’m spectating as a parent,” Wallace said of football. 

Eric Wilson, district athletic director for Warren County Public Schools, agreed that nothing is completely safe. However, there have been improvements in helmet technology and proper tackling techniques. The district makes sure players have both, he said. 

Morgan Watson, the district’s spokeswoman, said WCPS uses a pre- and post-concussion testing system and “an athlete is not allowed to return to the sport until they have passed that post test.”

Michael Haboubi is an instructor in the department of neurology at the University of Louisville’s School of Medicine. Despite CTE being a “hot button topic right now,” he said there’s still a lot to learn about it. 

Although head trauma seems to play an important role, there’s uncertainty if it’s caused by multiple concussions, several subconcussive blows or something else, he said.

As for whether football is safe for kids to play, Haboubi said that’s an area where “you have to weigh the pluses and minuses.” It’s up to parents to make educated decisions for kids, he said. 

Scott Lyons, director of WKU’s School of Kinesiology, Recreation and Sport, is a football fan and played in high school. 

While there have been safety improvements to technique and equipment, he said, players are also bigger, faster and stronger and “are hitting each other with greater force.” There is an effort to get head-to-head contact out of the game, but head trauma doesn’t always have to be head-on.

He remembers a close call he had in the seventh grade involving an assistant coach who wanted to push aggression. Lyons said he and his teammate were told to charge into each other after standing 10 yards apart. 

“So he and I we both just drop our head, crown to crown, this is 12 years old,” he said. “I can still hear the hit today, and I can still hear the coach just jumping around and hollering ‘best hit of the day’ – thought it was the greatest thing ever. What he didn’t realize was the reason I didn’t get up immediately was for about six or seven seconds I couldn’t feel anything from my neck down.” 

Lyons doesn’t have kids of his own, but he’s not sure he would want them to play. 

“I can’t say it definitively,” he said. “It would be a really tough call knowing what I know now.”

— Follow education and general assignment reporter Aaron Mudd on Twitter at twitter.com/aaron_muddbgdn or visit bgdailynews.com.