Football players’ jobs are to play a sport. If they get hurt, it’s not like they got hurt trying to save lives, dealing with difficult and dangerous situations and people, or really do anything meaningful in the big picture. Football is entertainment. I found his analogy very offensive.
There was an article posted here a while back with lists of the most dangerous jobs in America and the most over-hyped jobs in terms of risk. If I remember correctly, both firefighters and police officers made the "over-hyped" list . . . mainly because the high-profile nature of the incidents involving them tends to exaggerate the real risk of those jobs.
Having said that . . . it IS true that athletes are entertainers and their comments should always be viewed with this in mind.