A career-ending football injury? That’s a good thing

My brother and his wife got some good news a couple weeks ago -- their son Jared was injured playing football. No, they weren’t overjoyed when the ambulance pulled up and he was hauled off on a stretcher, but the story had a happy ending.

His high school football career is over. High-fives all around!

I was equally buoyed at the news, and it’s not because I have a sadistic streak. To my way of thinking, it’s just the opposite. I have only my nephew’s best interests at heart, and playing football is way down the list of those interests.

This smacks of heresy, because I love football, especially of the college variety, and have taken in probably a couple of dozen high school games in Orange County in the last decade or so.

Not only that, I played high school football for a couple years back in the day.

Yet I’m thrilled Jared is shelved. No one likes the knee brace he’s wearing or the rehab he’ll do for the next four weeks, but in my book, spraining the medial collateral ligament is an acceptable price to pay for retiring from the game.

I don’t mean this to sound like some screed against high school sports. My dad coached prepsters, and I played football, basketball and baseball. It’s as true now as ever: What kids get from athletic competition -- either from friendships or “growing up” lessons -- can benefit them for a lifetime.

But if I’d had a son in high school, I’d have tried to think of anything to keep him out of football. Maybe I would have bribed him.

Such heretical thoughts never would have occurred to me until watching Jared play junior high football a few years ago. He was but a sprite then (he’s now blossomed into a 145-pound monster), but what struck me was the disparity in size of players, even at that age.

And now, it’s much worse. Jared, a high school senior, plays eight-man football for a private school in Omaha, but my brother says one opponent had a lineman who weighed more than 250 pounds. Another team’s quarterback was in the 200-pound range.

What are they feeding those boys?

Problem is, Jared apparently doesn’t have his uncle’s knack of avoiding contact. My brother says he’s fearless and says it like that’s a good thing to have on a football field. Jared was born 17 years ago with a club foot and wore a cast for the first few months of his life. One leg is less developed than the other, and he grew up so affected by it that he’s limited his sports career to football, basketball, soccer and hockey. He also runs on his school’s track team.

What can I say; the kid’s a gamer.

He hurt his knee in the most mundane of ways -- he was straining to gain another yard or so after making a reception and some behemoth jumped on his back.

Which brings me to my point:

If I have these concerns about a nephew 1,500 miles away, how do you parents take it when you see your son out there on the football field in front of your eyes? How can you enjoy the games, even as you know that your son is?

This isn’t very nice of me, but ponder some figures from a study released last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

They funded a survey of 100 high schools randomly selected from around the country reflecting a cross-section of school enrollment.

The study looked at nine boys’ and girls’ high school sports during the 2005-06 season and estimated that athletes nationwide sustained 1.4 million injuries out of an estimated 4.2 million who participated in those sports. The injuries were sustained either in practice or competition and ranged from problems requiring medical attention that kept the player out at least a day to more serious incidents.

Not surprisingly, football was the riskiest. I won’t bog you down with statistics, other than to say football’s rate was 4.36 injuries for every 1,000 practices or competitions. Girl softball players, in contrast, can expect 1.13 injuries in the same span.

Not even the football rate sounds like an epidemic. And the even better news, the survey indicated, is that injury rate has dropped significantly in the last decade.

Is that how you parents handle it -- you play the odds and relish in your child’s maturation through teamwork and shared sacrifice?

Whatever gets you through the game.

My brother and his wife are sports lovers but are glad they no longer have to worry about Jared on the gridiron.

You can’t go through life fearful of potential dangers. That sounds like a nice philosophy, even when your nephew is churning upfield with a large youth on his back, only to crumple in a heap and be driven to a hospital.

Jared probably will wonder why I’m making such a fuss of all this. Then again, he’s got bigger things on his mind: Basketball practice starts in late November.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.