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Football is by far America’s favorite sport to watch, and has been since the 60s. Football is also far less healthy than most sports. For example, while Italian soccer players live longer than most folks, US football players live far shorter:
While U.S. life expectancy is 77.6 years … the average for NFL players is 55, 52 for linemen.
(HT Nancy Lebovitz.) Apparently:
The average NFL player plays just 3.52 seasons and loses two to three years off his life expectancy for every season played.
If true, this is an amazingly huge health harm, especially considering how much we regulate health harms in most areas. It is far beyond the risk we’ll allow people to take on most jobs, even soldiers or astronauts. And it is far beyond the risk we’d let customers accept in a consumer product.
Surely we can see football hurts players – we often see them carried off in on stretchers. But I wonder: would we accept this harm nearly as much if we saw it all up close? Players would suffer the same average loss if each season one out of ten players just dropped dead on the playing field! (A dead 25 year old player loses 55-25 = 30 years, which is ten times the three years life lost per player per season.)
Would we really accept such carnage before our eyes? And why do we regulate other health harms so strictly, yet so eagerly watch this decimation?
Football Decimation
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Let's also recognize the difference between life span and expectancy. Life span is how long people actually lived based on numbers after death. Life expectancy is how long experts think people will live. It's an estimate based on gathering data and forming opinions. My research suggests the experts could be a tad off and perhaps are raising concern for the general good of focusing on better health (e.g. less obesity). I also think life span records of NFL players over recent decades should be taken into account when concluding life expectancy. Granted, my methods of research are far simpler and far cheaper than those of the NIOSH, for example. I'm not a doctor or even a nutrition expert, but check out some data and make your own decisions.
I am an offensive linemen at a D-1 program and let me just say football is a tough sport and we like it. Research shows relating to the head injuries, offensive and defensive linemen hitting is like getting in a 35mph car wreck. Linemen life expectancy is so much lower than that of an average male is due to the fact that we take an enormous beating day in and day out. It is not solely because we are 320 lbs. I eat healthy 6 out of 7 days a week, so not all of eat out andf eat buffets everyday. We live and play with injuries that will send many people to the hospital (I.e. Broken toes, fingers, torn ligaments, strained muscles etc). We choose to play this game because we love it and speaking for myself I like the pain I endure.