“Football is a brutal contact sport played by grown men...”
And that’s the more important part of the problem. Every Friday and Saturday night across the country thousands of high school and college players walk into this problem. And concussions don’t always heal correctly let alone knees or necks.
...injuries are part of the game and yet people line up to play it and playing it in the NFL is their dream...
People do things for a number a reasons, some really stupid. Did you know that the prison system in the US is capable of holding around 1.9 million yet they are overcrowded.
And, it seems, the major reason for these guys to play the sport is money because that’s what lures them. A way to look at this is by looking at the wages. Special teams are at the bottom of the salary list, averaging $2.775 million each player. The second-lowest paid players are the running backs, to many’s surprise. But both are expendable thus throw away. But where can a person go who has no future except possibly crime to make that amount of money? And as long as the money is there, they will line up to get there. But the only way to get there is being “badder” than the guy next to you. There are only 1696 slots on a pro football fielding team and thousands going after them. Good odds? They’re gambling their bodies to try. And that unfortunatley starts in youth football.
“What’s next, putting protective headgear on UFC fighters or professional boxers.”
You’ll notice they use them in training. If it wasn’t danerous, then they wouldn’t need them. But the money is too great to walk away from. And there are thousands of club fighters all over the US that will never get to be Ali. And when he passed, he was nothing more than a vegetable and that’s been confirmed as three neurologists who provided direct care to the boxing legend describe evidence in a JAMA Neurology viewpoint supporting a primary diagnosis of young-onset Parkinson’s disease over a form of dementia from repetitive head trauma. Wanna be held responsible for this in kids? For many, this is what the money will buy.
wy69
The NFL salary cap in 2023 was 224.8 million, they’re 53 players on the active roster in the NFL, making the average salary over 4 million per player, but that’s skewed because established QBs make 40-50 million per player.
Nearly ever sport played at the highest level involves some degree of injury risk, it’s impossible to protect everyone from everything, players know the risks going into the game.
The idea they might go into crime if they don’t make it in the NFL or get injured and lose the NFL spot is simply not correct, often they get degrees and go into coaching at some level like HS or some other career field.
Grown men willing to risk injury to compete at the highest level is born into some people, why do we have men who are willing to go into special forces in the military for far less money than professional sports.