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In an interview with the New Republic, President Barack Obama is asked, "I'm wondering if you, as a fan, take less pleasure in watching football, knowing the impact that the game takes on its players."

"I'm a big football fan, but I have to tell you if I had a son, I'd have to think long and hard before I let him play football," says the president of the United States, the father of two young girls. "And I think that those of us who love the sport are going to have to wrestle with the fact that it will probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence. In some cases, that may make it a little bit less exciting, but it will be a whole lot better for the players, and those of us who are fans maybe won't have to examine our consciences quite as much."

Obama, who is known more of a basketball player than a football enthusiast, continues, "I tend to be more worried about college players than NFL players in the sense that the NFL players have a union, they're grown men, they can make some of these decisions on their own, and most of them are well-compensated for the violence they do to their bodies. You read some of these stories about college players who undergo some of these same problems with concussions and so forth and then have nothing to fall back on. That's something that I'd like to see the NCAA think about."