N.H. School Board Member Proposes Killing Football Program

A proposal to ban high school football in Dover, N.H., a small city in the state's southeastern corner, has taken the community - including Dover High School athletic director Peter Wotton - by surprise. "I sure would like to believe [football will survive]," he told Foster's Daily Democrat. "Just the idea of what football is - it's an event. It entails the band, the cheerleaders, the community. That's what makes football so different from the other sports. Good and bad."

The bad is what first-year board member and retired physician Paul Butler focused on when he suggested at Monday night's school board meeting that the city's schools drop football because of the long-term effects of concussions. According to the paper, Butler told his fellow board members that it is the duty of the "governors of the school district" to end the game of football altogether before lawsuits and lawyers require the district to do so. He cited lawsuits filed by former NFL players affected by concussions and brain injuries accusing the NFL of hiding information linking football-related head trauma to permanent brain damage. "I think it's the moral thing to do, the ethical thing to do to try to stop football at Dover High School and throughout Dover," Butler told Daily Democrat reporter John Doyle.

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