Many people dream of playing professional football, but at what cost? Throughout a football player’s athletic career. They struggle with injuries, from concussions to tearing a ligament, they can come in all sorts of ways. Almost every superstar football player has had some sort of injury in their career. Are people willing to take years off their lives for millions of dollars?
How can playing football be rewarding? There are lots of rewards from football. One is that football can get you really strong and in shape. Another huge benefit is the money. The average salary of an NFL athlete is around $2.8 million, but this is impacted by star quarterbacks and other players making 10’s of millions. The median is around $860,000 per year, a lot lower. On the other hand, one in every four players will suffer an in-game injury during an NFL season, and that doesn’t include injuries in practice or other ways. Some of these are brain injuries, which can occur at the rate of one in every 5.5 games, on top of that, there are 300,000 concussions annually in the United States from the sport of football alone.
These types of injuries are not often talked about, even though they could be life-threatening or career-ending. Only 1.6% of college football players make it to the NFL. And only a 0.o23% chance of making it to the NFL from high school. Would all that work be worth it if you just ended up getting a career-ending injury and having lots of concussions? The average NFL career is only 3.3 years, so if you make the average NFL salary of around $2.8 million per year for 3.3 years, your total career earnings would be around 9.24 million dollars.
It’s not worth risking your health for money when the health risk is high. Researchers from Harvard did a study on NFL players who played from the 1960s to the 1980s. These players’ average death was 59.6 years of age. Although this was during the late 1900s and the life expectancy was lower than it is now, these football players still took around 10 years off their lives.
This shows how dangerous football is and how it isn’t worth the risk of being seriously injured and even taking years off your life. One thing that you must consider is that these risks may vary at different levels of football. Although it’s a risk, it’s the athlete’s choice to play, and you always have the right to follow your dreams.
