Maybe OSHA-mandated retirement at 25 will make NFL games a lot more like college games. I’d love to see comparative stats on long-term concussion-related ailments for professional football, rugby and Aussie rules football.
I’m curious why the amended title of “(Only one Year)’.
Career ending issues can occur on the first day of camp.....
Why are concussion related injuries viewed differently that a blown knee?
Simply not a game to play if you wish to live well after age forty.
Maybe he will get a gig on Dancing with the Stars.
The brain is a very delicate instrument. A three pound supercomputer with only some thin bone and a bit of gel for padding; it isn’t designed (however you want to define ‘designed’) to take a whole lot of knocks.
Boxers are another example.
Yeah, there are the statistical outliers just like you can find 114 year old smokers, but the overall statistics are just now coming into focus as to how bad the actual damage is over time. My bet is that twenty five years from now we will be shocked at the fact we let kids and teens slam their brains around; human cognition is the most precious Gift from our creator and the only thing that separates us from the other animals, it’s amazing that something as powerful and delicate as our brain (particularly the neocortex) can even take one or two moderate hits and still function at all.
The drawback, of course, is that we really need a way to instill the manly virtues in our young men, and part of that is dealing with pain and defeat without giving up; I don’t care a whole lot for sports as a spectator, but the lessons learned on playing fields are as important as those in the classroom, how to work through losing the battle to still win the war, how to keep going even when you want to just quit, etc, to say nothing of teamwork.....
Sometimes wonder whether the hard outer shell of football helmets, in spite of the very elaborate internal cushioning, contributes to the brain trauma? Rugby is also a rough collision sport but the helmets players (optionally) wear are light weight cushioned, not unlike the head gear you used to see in photos of old time Soviet tank crews. When I played football in high school I remember wearing the helmet made me feel almost invulnerable. But at the college or grown man professional level of size and speed the collisions are akin to being hit by a bus. There are probably legitimate tests that show the hard shell with internal cushioning (like a motorcycle helmet) is safer, but I’m just speculating.
I think this story may be one of the tipping points that will result in the NFL rapidly declining in popularity. With youth football participation rapidly falling due to mothers concerned about serious injuries from playing tackle football, the prospect of American football being replaced by a combination of baseball, basketball and soccer as the major American professional sports within 20-25 years is no longer a far-fetched idea.
Wow. He only banked around 600k.
He’ll be back. A year or two off and he’ll be thinking about the millions he could be making.