SAN FRANCISCO — I’ve had an eye-opening few days in the Bay Area. I came here last week, as I explained in my Monday column, as The MMQB begins an eight-week series taking the temperature of football at all levels across the United States. In an era when there are so many cautionary tales about the future of football—and rightfully so—we wanted to see for ourselves how the country feels about football, and the importance of the game in our society.
At a high school football game Friday night featuring inner-city San Francisco kids from Mission High School, and then at youth games in Oakland on Saturday morning, I got the other side of the football-is-too-dangerous story.