Texas Lawmaker Aims To Limit Full-Contact Football Practices

The Associated Press

http://www.highschoolot.com/texas-lawmaker-eyes-football-in-concussion-fight/12070819/

A state lawmaker who wants to make concussion screenings as routine as physicals in Texas public school athletics has taken direct aim at football.

State Rep. Eddie Lucio III filed a bill last week that would limit high school teams to one full-contact practice per week.

The Brownsville Democrat admits the plan is a little shy on details, including what qualifies as such a workout. He plans to discuss the bill with the Texas High School Coaches Association.

“The sports movies of the past have guys standing in one of those circles and going head-to-head,” Lucio said. “The harder they hit each other helmet-to-helmet, the tougher they seem. But what we know now from a science standpoint and from a medical standpoint is that’s horrible.”

While those scenes still play out on practice fields in Texas, they’re probably the exception rather than the norm, said Euless Trinity coach Steve Lineweaver, who has won three championships in Class 5A, the state’s highest classification.

“From the old days in the ’50s and ’60s where you tried to make men out of them every day … I’m not aware of that as much, of the coaching of the teams that I know about,” Lineweaver said. “How you can legislate that, I don’t know.”