No Game for Boys to Play: The History of Youth Football and the Origins of a Public Health Crisis by Kathleen Bachynski (review)

The recent media buzz surrounding Aaron Hernandez was a result of the Netflix original documentary Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez (dir. Geno McDermott, 2020) and brought about several conversations concerning the effects of football on the lives of young men. Less than fifteen minutes into the first episode of the series, the conversation starts about football-related injuries because, during a high-school game, Aaron was knocked unconscious and had to be rushed to the hospital by ambulance. He committed suicide in 2017; his autopsy report is cited as the most severe case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) found. The question remains: is football safe?

Kathleen Bachynski provides a historical sketch of the etiology of football and how that question has prevailed, while the answer is a continuous point of contention. No Game for Boys to Play: The History of Youth Football and the Origins of a Public Health Crisis is a thoroughly written account of the facets of football concerns, benefits, politics, and the game's rise to the forefront of the sports industry. The most interesting aspect of this text is how it bridges two seemingly unrelated disciplines—sport history and public health.

The purpose of this text is to examine historical debates concerning the safety of youth football, with a focus on athletes younger than high-school age. Bachynski focuses on several factors affecting the debates like sporting-goods manufacturers, advertising, booster clubs, medical professionals, researchers, school officials, and coaches. The author focuses on these factors with the belief that a "wide range of cultural priorities other than child health shaped youth football safety debates" (6). These sentiments are echoed in the Netflix documentary when Tim SanSoucie states, "Even kids learn at an early age in a midget football field don't come off the field, play hurt."

Bachynski's timeline includes academic articles, news reports, speeches, personal journals, photos, and any sport-related media that explores football. The text is divided into four parts. The first section includes three chapters dedicated to the rise of football, covering the origins of American football during the early 1900s and finishing with a discussion of football marketing strategy as its popularity increased in the 1960s and 1970s. Part Two includes two chapters that provide in-depth analysis to help understand and prevent injuries in football. Risk and responsibility of injuries are discussed in the two chapters of Part Three. The final section covers conversations about the football community and concussions. Each section includes arguments on both sides and how these arguments affect policy change. Although the text includes a certain amount of redundancy in the timeline, which clouds the importance of the topic, it is important for a historical text. The epilogue focuses on the twentieth century and includes a much-needed discussion of CTE and how football participation and injuries lead to CTE. Bachynski emphasizes how the conversation of concussions and CTE has taken over discussions of football-related injuries, leaving behind a list of other injuries. The importance of this century's debates feels like an afterthought.

This timeline highlights numerous football-related injuries, how they have been publicized, and how various parties have reacted to these injuries. Included in the historical timeline are the effects of race on sport. As a researcher of sport and race, I appreciate the inclusion of race early in Chapter One that does not circumvent racism, sexism, and white supremacy. The addition of a quote by historian S. W. Pope expresses her intentions for including the critical discussion of race and sport: "The popular notion of American myth and destiny expressed through football commentary was entirely consistent with the myth of Thanksgiving" (14).

Chapter 8 provides a thorough discussion of several personal...