Utah parents' comfort with kids playing tackle football dropped 12 points after they learned about a study linking the sport to brain disease.

A Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll published Thursday, Oct. 1, found 52% of Utah respondents were comfortable with a child in their family playing tackle football. That number fell to 40% after respondents learned that at least one in four former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease tied to repeated head impacts. Discomfort jumped 16 points to 54%.

The shift landed harder in Utah than nationally. American comfort fell seven points to 47% after learning about CTE. Utah's 12-point swing exceeded the national drop by five points.

The findings carry weight in Sandy, where youth tackle programs feed directly into Alta, Hillcrest and Jordan high school football. Alta Youth Football enrolls players as young as third grade at $50 a season, according to the program's registration page. The Deseret News reported a rough statewide estimate of 16,000 to 20,000 youth football players in Utah.

Morning Consult polled 744 registered Utah voters Sept. 10-15. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The study behind the shift

The CTE research that moved opinion was a study published Aug. 25 in The BMJ by researchers at Harvard Medical School, Boston University and Mass General Brigham. Of 878 former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021, 235 donated their brains. CTE appeared in 91.4% of those donations.

The most conservative estimate, assuming all non-donors were CTE-free, placed prevalence at 24.5%. CTE can only be diagnosed after death through examination of brain tissue.

Dr. Daniel Daneshvar, the study's lead author, told CNN in August that most head impacts for former NFL players "didn't occur at the NFL level. They occurred at the collegiate level … and at the high school level and in many cases the youth level."

What experts told the Deseret News

Dr. Christian Millward, a sports medicine specialist at Intermountain Health, told the Deseret News that researchers still do not know whether long-term brain damage stems from major concussions or from many smaller hits over time.

Jason Renfro, a youth football coach and administrator in American Fork for 15 years, told the Deseret News that starting tackle football at 14 could actually be riskier if newcomers face opponents with years of experience.

The most common answer among poll respondents for the right age to begin tackle football was 14 and older. About one in 10 said children should never play at any age.