UNITED STATES—I’ve been saying this for years, that football is a dangerous sport. New research has been surfacing year after year regarding the side effects of injuries that players in the collegiate and professional arena have sustained as a result of playing the sport.
This week the spotlight has been put on the profession once again involving a player from the University of Ann Arbor, who was obviously not fit to return to the game after taking a brutal hit, yet he was given the clear by his coach Brady Hoke to stay in the game.
So who is at fault here? Of course the organization is. People who saw the game and watched it on television could clearly see the student was a bit dazed and struggling to move efficiently. This is not just a judgment call it’s a call to ensure the safety of the student and others in the game.
I get football is a testosterone driven sport. Men are expected to interact with brute force and ferocity, but at what cost? Have we become so engrossed in the idea of ‘entertainment’ that we are not considering the safety of those involved?
I know this might sound silly, but why can’t football utilize the notion of two hand touch. Would that diminish the quality of the sport? I’m guessing yes, as no one wants to see a bunch of adrenaline be minimized to people touching one another to qualify as the end of a play, but what alternative is there?
Many have considered football to be a sport that results in more brain trauma than other sports because the physical contact which is inevitable to escape while playing the game. Even the quarterback is in jeopardy of taking a hit that can be career ending.
Let me reiterate that, career ending blows. Is this to say a player intentionally wants to hurt another player? Not really, but based on the celebrations that are seen when a tackle is made, you’d think otherwise. Sports is a form of entertainment, but at the end of the day when it comes to football injuries sustained can have long lasting effects or in some cases can cripple a player permanently.
There are rules and regulations in place to ensure such things don’t happen, but when you’re on that field there is no way to predict just what might happen; it’s a game of chance.
