Football Safety

In Pop Warner Football, there is “an absence of catastrophic head and neck injuries and disruptive joint injuries found at higher levels.”

The injury rate in Pop Warner Football is:

less than one-third the injury rate in high school football
less than one-fifth the injury rate in college football
less than one-ninth the injury rate in professional football
Pop Warner’s age-weight schematic protects younger, lighter players, who do not have higher injury rates.
Organized football among 5 – 15 year-olds has 12 percent fewer injuries per capita than organized soccer in the same age range
Organized football among 5 – 15 year-olds has 50 percent fewer injuries per capita than bicycle riding in the same age range.
Organized football among 5 – 15 year-olds has 74 percent fewer injuries per capita than skateboarding in the same age group.
Injuries in youth football are normally mild, and older players have a higher injury rate than younger players.
The Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma in New York completed a Pop Warner injury survey in 71 towns covering over 5,000 players in 1998. The injury experience of 5,128 boys (8 to 15 years of age, weight 22.5 to 67.5 kg [50 to 150 lb]) participating in youth football revealed an overall rate of significant injury of 5%, with 61% classified as moderate and 38.9% as major injuries. That’s about 1.33 per team per year. No catastrophic injuries occurred, and it was rare for a permanent disability to result from any injury.