Dying at 55!!

The recent incident involving Kevin Everett of Buffalo Bills has brought out the issue of injuries in Football again to the fore.Kevin sustained a fracture and dislocation of his cervical spine last weekend and is still fighting for his life. I decided to research about this issue a little bit on the Internet and came across this shocking statistic that average life expectancy of a someone who has played for more than 3 years in NFL is 55 years. This against the life expectancy of 80 years for an average American. So 3 years in NFL shaves your life expectancy by 25 years!!! You can argue that when these people start playing NFL, they have been playing the game already for more than 15 years. None the less, this statistic is brutal.

Despite the fact that I love this game, I cannot stop thinking whether it is right to expose people to such risks for mass entertainment....for entertainment of you and me and millions of other people who watch this game. Are we any different from people who get fun out of seeing dogs fight? The most blatant form of such sports today are Ultimate Fighting, Boxing and Bull Riding. Administrators at the football league need to think about what could be done to save Football from such bad company. A couple of things could be done on an immediate basis...better lifetime medical support( you won't believe how much players earn after they stop playing...simply speaking, its minuscule for the majority of them...not to forget those who never make it to NFL but do sustain big injuries at College and High school level),better protection gear especially for head & spine and less crowded season. Some kind of tackles could be barred and in lieu, one more player could be added to the defence roster.

And then there are the 300 pounder offensive linemans...these people exist in the team because they are big and these people die because they are big. There sheer size is a danger to their well being in the long run. Can something be done about these positions?