The Real Price of a Game
Growing up as a child everyone has held a dream about their future. Kids have an amazing imagination and they put it to use conjuring up their dream job. Many of these kids start preparing for it as soon as they are old enough to know what they would like to do. One of the earliest forms of dream chasing is athletics. Kids from every country around the world dream of being a professional athlete for their country, their state or their city. They play in their back yard reenacting what they saw their idols do on television or they sign up for a local team. Here in the United States, the most popular sport is football. Kids can start playing football as early as elementary school with pop warner leagues in nearly every American town. The good pop warner players go on to play in high school. The ones that dominate in high school get scholarships to continue playing for a college, and then if they are in the top tier of players they get signed to NFL teams. This is a lifelong dream come true for many of these athletes. However, being in the National Football League, or NFL, is dramatically different from anything else the athletes have faced in previous competition. NFL football is an extremely intense and physically demanding sport and maintains one of the shortest career lives for its players compared to all other sports. This can be attributed to several side effects of playing. Two of these are the number and severity of injuries sustained while playing, and the extreme pressure and strain placed on players to perform.
Athletes get injured, that is just part of playing physically demanding sports. However, football players receive injuries far more often than most other sports. These can range from something simple like a sprained finger or a pulled muscle to a broken leg, paralysis and concussions. Some of these problems, such as concussions, can even lead to more severe side effects later on in life including Alzheimer’s disease and ALS. Playing in the NFL is a life long dream for the many players who have the opportunity to take part in it. These dreams stem from the minds of players and guide many of the decisions who they make throughout their lives. However, sometimes playing in the NFL returns to the minds of players even when they have stepped away from the game. The difference is, for some, they no longer have dreams in their head but nightmares.
Concussions are an all too common experience for athletes in the National Football League. Mayo Clinic defines a concussion as “A concussion is a traumatic brain injury that alters the way your brain functions”. At one point, a player recounts a time during his career where he received five concussions in six weeks of playing. While this amount of concussions in such a short period of time sounds rare, the truth is multiple concussions for players are all too common. However it does not take multiple concussions to cause problems, even just one concussion can be too many. At age 17, Nathan Stiles died during halftime of a high school football game from a brain hemorrhage that developed from a concussion suffered several weeks prior.(Care2)
While a concussion is considered a serious injury on its own, another severe problem can form from receiving repeated concussions. These problems that develop from repeated or very severe concussions are known as traumatic brain injuries, or TBI for short. The staff of Mayo Clinic states “Repeated head injuries, such as concussions, are directly linked to permanent brain injuries.” These permanent brain injuries are a TBI, and come in many forms. NBC News dug deeper into the story of traumatic brain injuries in athletes and brought attention to just how dangerous and severe they can be. For example, severe damage of brain cells, such as that caused by concussions, had been shown to lead to dementia and ALS, which is an incurable and fatal disease. The horrific dangers of concussions have gained enough public recognition and attention that the NFL is attempting to find a way to fix this problem.
Another issue from on the job injuries of professional football players is time away from work. Imagine you are at work going about your daily routine when BAM! You trip down the stairs and sprain your knee. Injuries like this may not be common in the typical day job, however, this is all too common in the world of professional athletes. Sports are physically demanding and taxing on the human body. Football by nature requires high speed collisions from start to finish during every second of actual game time. A sport of this caliber warrants the possibility of injuries. As previously stated, these injuries range from mild bruises to torn ligaments, broken bones and concussions. When players are injured three key problems arise. One of these problems is that a human beings body is being sacrificed for a game. Each injury that the players receive cause pain and in some cases can temporarily handicap the player either due to paralysis in itself or because the body part is in a brace. Another problem that injured players create is that the fans of that player or team do not get to see them in action. If the player is a key contributor or a star on their team then the lack of their presence can greatly reduce the chances of that team winning which leads to the third problem. NFL athletes make millions of dollars to play and do it at a high level. When they are injured that money is buying nothing because the player is not able to perform. With problems like this the NFL needs to find a way to protect their investments and are taking steps to prevent injuries through rule changes and revolutionizing equipment.
Every game has rules in effect. If these rules do not cover the needs of the players they need to be adjusted. The NFL is not an exception to this aspect of games for it also enacts rule changes. The NFL seeks to protect its players through implementing rule changes. The first sets of rule changes came in the 1980s. These were more focused on preventing knee injuries with rules such as not allowing blocking below the waist in situations where players are more likely to be in a full sprint. As technology advanced and understanding of injuries became more scientific and accurate rules, were created to emphasize head safety in an attempt to prevent head and neck trauma. Head trauma appears to have the most long term side effects and neck trauma can cause paralysis or death. Rules such as not being allowed to hit with head before any other parts of the body hit or hitting a defenseless player above the shoulder pads were implemented to take care of this.
Another technique that the league uses to attempt to keep its players safe is revolutionizing equipment. Several adjustments to player equipment has been made yet the most significant equipment advances are found in the redesign of the football helmet. The original helmet was not much more than a mere leather hat. It did not of protection instead offer much more than a light padding to the force of impact. Today’s helmets have hard plastic outer shell with an ever evolving cushioned interior designed to offer maximum protection. The inside padding is able to absorb shock delivered to the outer shell reducing the impact that the head receives. Although this equipment does greatly help in the fight at preventing concussions it does not solve the problem of those players who already suffer from TBI. The NFL recognizes a need to help fix the problem its players face with traumatic brain injuries and have taken steps to do so. With nearly unlimited resources available to it thanks to its extreme popularity in America, the NFL’s first move involved a monetary payout. NBC News reported that the NFL was dishing out a reported “$765 million settlement with retired NFL players” over concussions and the tbi’s associated with them. This $765 million was dispersed not only as compensation to the players but also for developing ways to prevent TBI. NBC News reported that $675 was dispersed to the players themselves, $75 million was given for medical diagnoses and procedures, and $10 million was given for research and education to help combat concussions and the effects associated with. Injuries are always going to be part of sports. It is just the nature of participating in a physically demanding environment. However, methods are always available being employed in attempt to reduce the number and severity of the injuries these athletes sustain. Football is a form of entertainment, a game, but without proper rules and equipment in place the life changing injuries become all too real.
The second major reason for NFL players having short careers stems from the pressure placed on these athletes. Football is America’s most popular sport, and according to Dan Rovell of ESPN, it has been for the last 30 years straight. This is easily observable by all of the NFL team paraphernalia seen around. Fans show their support hoisting team flags in their yards and team bumper stickers on the cars, not to mention the mass amount of jerseys purchased. It is this popularity that leads athletes, especially at the professional level, to feel the excessive pressure to be successful. This pressure reaches another level when players reach the pinnacle of their sport, the National Football League. Here, players have more than just pressure from their peers and coaches to perform. At this stage of the game, they have a salary and entire city on their back as well and can go to dangerous lengths to live up to these expectations.
The lowest salary in the NFL, being the minimum wage allowable for a rookie in the league, comes in at $450 thousand a year. The highest paid athletes earn upwards of $22 million a year(Forbes.com). Athletes also make a great deal of money outside of their salary in the form of endorsements by company who use them to advertise their product as long as they are performing at a high level. For example, Peyton Manning made $12million in 2015 alone. Imagine being paid this amount of money but with heavy expectations that you must live up too. Few think twice when the moment comes to take that kind of money but after the reality of the expectations placed on them sets in the pressure is like a lead weight on their shoulders. This pressure leads players to work harder than ever before to become bigger, stronger, faster, and more focused in order to be the best possible athlete they can be and live up to their salary.
To be successful, hard work needs to be a daily routine among athletes. Like clockwork athletes wake up work to become the best. Newsday.com posted a full detailed list of a typical week of an NFL player. This schedule shows their day beginning at 6 A.M and not concluding until later that day around 6 at night. This turns out to be a twelve hour work day but it is not the typical desk job. The players start off in the weight room lifting weights for a couple hours. Concluding the workout they move from the weight room and they head to meetings and study film on the game from the previous weekend. This meeting time leads directly into a practice lasting for two hours. At this point in the day an average person would be ready for a nap but NFL athletes are scheduled to report back to more meetings. Players are expected to perform well in all of these aspects just for being part of the team, this is what is expected of them as an employee. However, in order to be great, and live under the pressure that the world around them has created and placed within their lives, countless hours are spent alone working on the aspects of their game that they feel need the most improvement. The great ones spend every loan second trying to find the slightest edge over their opponents. This kind of schedule can put a lot of strain on athletes just to try and measure up to the expectations placed on them.
The pressure to be great and the strain of their work week can lead to a players use and abuse of performance enhancing drugs, or PED’s. These drugs are typically viewed as just being in the form of steroids and as a means to gain muscle and power, however, there are also many other forms of performance enhancing drugs that players can pick from. According to Akbar Gbajabiamila, a drug such as Adderall has widespread use among athletes in the NFL to help a player “zone in” on the game. These drugs work on the mental side, but on the other end of the spectrum is steroids. Steroids enhance the physical aspect of athletic performance. Taking steroids, such as testosterone, have been shown to increase athletic performance by five times that of a non-enhanced athlete in just six weeks. These numbers come from a study published by scientist Robert Weatherby of Southern Cross University in Lismore, New South Wales, Australia. These statistics sound enticing but steroids are not a miracle drug they are a double edged sword. For one thing, these performance enhancing drugs are banned in sports. A first time infraction of the ban on PED’s in the NFL warrants a four game suspension.(ESPN) The Sports Science Medicine Journal describes several adverse side effects such as gynecomastia, which is the growth of woman like breaths, acne, and liver cancer. Are these side effects really worth gaining a competitive edge? For many professional athletes the answer is yes, “Steroids are rampant in the NFL. Players understand the risks associated with abuse of PED’s, but that is a risk they are willing to take in order to perform at the level they want.” (Greene)
Playing in the National Football League is a lifelong dream of thousands of kids around America. They start young and continue playing as long as possible. Very few will have the opportunity to take part in the privilege of playing professionally but those who do will be part of one of the shortest careers in our society. These same kids dreaming to make it remain naïve to the ill effects surrounding this dream job. The buildup of injuries and weight of the pressure on their shoulders make this one of the toughest careers to take part in. Everything comes to an end eventually but players can spend a few years playing out their lifelong dream.
If they play it right, they can even walk away with millions of dollars to show for it, but is this game really worth the injuries and pressure that they may endure the rest of their lives?
http://www.avclub.com/review/tim-green-ithe-dark-side-of-the-gamei-6264
http://operations.nfl.com/football-ops/league-governance/health-safety/
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/concussion/basics/definition/CON-20019272
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6265-steroids-boost-performance-in-just-weeks/
http://www.newsday.com/sports/football/a-week-in-the-life-of-the-nfl-1.9218497