DEAR EDITOR:

The decision by the Board of Regents and Kennesaw State University to charge each of its students, both male and female, a $100 fee per year to fund football, whether they like the game or not, is both dangerous and unconscionable. It is one more indication of how extra-curricular sports are being allowed to gradually take over our educational systems — for the promise of money.

It is unconscionable because it adds another useless cost for our children to overcome in their efforts to achieve an advanced education, at a time when the large volume of student loans is one of the biggest problems facing the past several generations of our children. It is dangerous because of the rampant problem of concussions and brain damage that our young people who play football already face both while they are playing and after they quit the game.

The Board of Regents, along with every one of the parents whose children now play or intend to play football, should take the time to read the article in the December issue of Readers Digest titled, “I’m Breaking Up With Football.” It is written by a sports broadcaster who has been inundated with calls from ex-pro football players to tell him of the severe problems they now face as a result of brain damage caused by multiple concussions playing football.

He tells of 14 middle aged ex-professional football players who have committed suicide as a result of their suffering and of 1,500 former professional players who are suing the owners of their former football teams for failing to adequately inform them of the true dangers involved in playing the game. As a result, he wonders if the game of football will even exist in another 10 years.

There is little doubt that football, as it is played today, is a gladiator sport similar to those played centuries ago in the Roman coliseums. It is astounding what our educational institutions will do to their students, what parents will encourage their children to do and what our young people will allow to be done to themselves for the promise of money. But then, who ever said that adults are supposed to grow smarter as they grow older?

KSU and the Board of Regents are apt examples of the fault in that premise.

Jim Stoll

Kennesaw