Fueled by the growing concerns over head injuries in football, a pair of California lawmakers want to take the pop out of Pop Warner football, introducing a bill that could make the state the first to ban tackle football for kids until they reach high school.

The proposal outraged some parents and coaches, who said their sport is being unfairly singled out and decried what they see as a Nanny State run amok.

But state Assembly members Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, and Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, D-San Diego, said their “Safe Youth Football Act” would “prevent young athletes from sustaining long-term brain damage caused by repetitive tackling, hitting and blocking.”

“The Super Bowl may be over, but the risk of brain injury to kids who play tackle football remains,” McCarty said. “We have an obligation to protect children from dangerous, long-term injuries resulting from tackle football, especially brain trauma.”

The bill will be considered this spring, and similar legislation has been proposed in Illinois, Maryland and New York. If enacted, California could be the first state in the nation to set a minimum-age requirement for youth tackle football, the lawmakers said.

The bill would affect thousands of families throughout the state. Peninsula Pop Warner has more than 7,500 participants ages 5 to 15 in teams spanning the Bay Area. Get top headlines like this in your inbox every afternoon. Get the free PM Report newsletter.

Natasha Bottari, whose 16-year-old son Luke has been playing tackle football for eight years and is now a quarterback at San Mateo’s Serra High School, said the law is “kind of ridiculous.”

“Like many things in our society, you try to manage it so carefully you take away what’s enjoyable. A parent letting a child play tackle football is no different than letting him go skiing down mountain. I know kids on baseball teams that get hurt more than in football.”

The proposed law comes amid growing concern about long-term health effects from head injuries and scrutiny of football safety. The National Football League recently agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to former players who said it hid concussion dangers from them. A class-action lawsuit was filed against Pop Warner, the nation’s largest youth football league, in 2016 claimed it jeopardized players by ignoring head-injury risks.

The lawmakers said numerous studies have shown that Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, is caused by repetitive impacts to the head sustained over a period of time. Children who play contact sports during their most critical years of brain development, they said, face greater risk for CTE and other damage later in life.

“The research is clear — when children participate in high-impact, high-contact sports, there is a 100 percent risk of exposure to brain damage,” said Dr. Bennet Omalu, author of a book on CTE and concussion.

Those who wait until high school to play tackle football, the lawmakers said, have a better chance of avoiding CTE, which can cause depression, memory loss and dementia. Their bill would allow high-contact only at the high school level.

But football coaches question those claims. Greg Eby, vice president of Almaden Pop Warner in San Jose and a coach for nine years whose sons both played the game, said high schoolers face bigger injury risks because the kids are bigger, faster and stronger. His 13-year-old son Mark has played tackle football for eight years, but “I’m frankly a little more concerned about him going into high school,” Eby said.

“These kids are bigger, faster, and he’s not a real big kid,” Eby said. Pop Warner, he added, assigns players by weight as well as age, and coaches limit contact during practices to reduce potential for injury.

“We don’t put 150-pound lineman against a 90-pound safety,” Eby said. “My son has taken numerous hits and never had a concussion. I promised my wife if he ever gets a concussion that’s the end of football. We won’t go to concussion number two.”

Although California has worked since 2014 to strengthen concussion protocols for youth sports, the lawmakers said those measures “don’t go far enough.” They are urging noncontact flag football as “a positive, competitive and safer opportunity to learn the skills necessary to be successful at football.”

NFL notables such Jerry Rice, Walter Payton, Lawrence Taylor, Jim Brown and Tom Brady, the lawmakers said, all played noncontact youth football.

“Developing skills through flag football before high school is sound public policy from a health and safety standpoint,” Gonzalez Fletcher said.

But Eby said kids who really love football don’t want to play that way and will play tackle on their own — with less safety measures — if it’s banned in youth leagues. Start your day with the news you need from the Bay Area and beyond.

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“Honestly, they like to hit,” Eby said. “They like controlled hitting. They’re all going to go down with their buddies and have a pickup game with no pads on. Kids are going to play football one way or another.”