Is Football Too Dangerous?
- Thread starter HeyFellas
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roronoa3000
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No the body can stand a high amount of pain and stress, but not for a long time without the right medical attention. These guys are watched by doctors 24/7 and physically toned to be able to do this.
It's much easier for me to take a hit with all my muscle and very little fat than it is for someone who is fatter than me. Even though many people think the fat will protect them. It really doesn't since muscle is harder and my abdominal muscles will protect better than someone with fat over their stomach since fat doesn't really stop anything.
It's much easier for me to take a hit with all my muscle and very little fat than it is for someone who is fatter than me. Even though many people think the fat will protect them. It really doesn't since muscle is harder and my abdominal muscles will protect better than someone with fat over their stomach since fat doesn't really stop anything.
people are getting paid millons of dollars to play football they need to just shut up and play ball or go find a real job for 7.50 an hour
I've heard that before, pretty strange, could you explain it again
The thinking goes is that with padding and helmets it gives people a false sense of security and leads people to make bigger or more dangerous hits than they would try without it. It's along the same reasoning that worse car accidents usually take place in the summer even though the roads are in better condition.
With that said people also have to remember that it's rare, even with an occasional dirty player, that somebody intentionally causes a blow to the head in American football. Not only are they moving fast, but often the person's head is in a different spot from where it was when somebody started their tackle. The defender is usually bobbing and weaving around somewhat. It's not unheard of for the ball carrier to lower their head to make their profile smaller and put it right in line with somebody coming in for a tackle. The sport is also fast once the play starts and players often face literal spit second decisions where they have to immediately react. They don't have 10 seconds to sit there and think about what they are going to do at that moment. That reason also causes unfortunately incidents where things go wrong.
It's also different from ruby in the fact there are set sides and set positions before each play. That lends itself to people bracing themselves and preparing to pounce once the time is right. People also have to have a lot of their concentration on other things besides the players around them on certain points in a play, especially receivers. In ruby it's more a controlled free for all, and it's rarer for somebody to line up that perfect hit that hits with as much force as possible.
It's just the nature of the sport. There is no way to change things to take those elements out without making of mockery of it and changing what football is supposed to be about. I think they have went too far already. Like a lot of sports it has dangerous aspects to it, and that just has to be excepted by the people who play it and it's fans.
Look at the pay difference and the faces of Rugby players when contrasted to American Football players...
I'd say American Footballer's have the sweetest deal without doubt. Padding, helmets, multi-million dollar contracts whereas Rugby player have no protection, suffer deep cuts, concussions, broken bones etc and get paid next to nothing.
I'd say American Footballer's have the sweetest deal without doubt. Padding, helmets, multi-million dollar contracts whereas Rugby player have no protection, suffer deep cuts, concussions, broken bones etc and get paid next to nothing.
Ah, my biggest grip about football. Baseball gets all the blame for being slow, but football and basketball, relative to their "periods" if you will, take longer.
That's pretty much completely false. According to the American Journal of Sports Science, in examining the features of successful football players, starting at the high school level and then moving up to college and into the pros, football players with higher level of body fat tend to get injured less from football contact (about 25% less) than those who had leaner body fat percentages. Fat isn't designed to serve as padding for the body, but by virtue of the fact that it puts greater space between the impact and the functional parts of the body, it is. Obviously having less body fat may be correlated to an athlete being more lissom than a heavier athlete, however it does not correlate to being able to take hits any better. Muscle being "hard" is irrelevant, especially since muscles are only "hard" if they are stimulated often. In addition, when muscles are put under stress, they tend to put additional stress on tendons, bones, and ligaments, while fat tends to be more superficial to the skin that muscle, thus preventing impacts from being as harsh.
It could be argued that fat people move slower and play different position with different jobs, and that's also why they get less injuries so maybe it's one of those situations where correlation doesn't mean causation. Part of it might also be that you can't really "injure" fat the same as you can muscles, and muscles can suffer from more minor injuries.
Football is a sport where risk of injury drops dramatically with skill.
Speaking strictly of fatalities, there have been only 3 at the professional level, and all have been indirect (heat stroke, heart condition, etc.).
OTOH, there have been tons (and I mean TONS) at the college/high school level. Only in May an Eastern Oregon player died after taking a hit to the head during scrimmage. There have been at least five high school deaths in my city n the past ten years, though I'm admittedly not certain how many are direct.
Speaking strictly of fatalities, there have been only 3 at the professional level, and all have been indirect (heat stroke, heart condition, etc.).
OTOH, there have been tons (and I mean TONS) at the college/high school level. Only in May an Eastern Oregon player died after taking a hit to the head during scrimmage. There have been at least five high school deaths in my city n the past ten years, though I'm admittedly not certain how many are direct.
Football will never be too dangerous, but it is dangerous in many aspects
Certainly that may be the case, however the study the American Journal of Sports Medicine conducted compared players by position, which would essentially control for any differences in activity/position. The real bottom line is that muscle is meant to do one thing: contract. Contraction is movement in the athletic world, and that's all muscle is meant to do. Muscle is not meant to take wear and tear that football players typically endure, especially the hits, and it provides no substantial barrier to injury. The alarmingly high rate of soft tissue injuries as a result of physical contact in football speaks to that, especially when compared to other major sports.
What about hockey?
I'll play American football, but hockey, now that's a tough sport I stayed away from.
Hockey actually has a relatively low rate of soft tissue injuries compared to baseball, basketball, and football (roughly 5% less), but it more than makes up for that in total injuries (about 10% higher than any other sport).
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