Athletes Regrets

SOURCE: bleacherreport.com

Throughout time, athletes all over the world in a variety of sports have suffered injuries from concussions to broken arms and legs.  In the NFL in the past couple of years the amount of injuries in each season has been rapidly increasing.  Why the number of injuries is rapidly increasing from year to year is beyond me.  With the technology and safety precautions that are now available, the number of injuries should be rapidly decreasing.  The fact of the matter is that these athletes who suffer severe injuries are going to be permanently physically damaged.  What I would like to know is do these NFL players who get hurt regret coming back after the injury and playing more?

In an article on the Washington Post, written by three of the their writes, Scott Clement, Rick Maese and Sally Jenkins titled “Do no harm: Retired NFL players endure a lifetime of hurt”, he interviews many former NFL athletes and talks about the impact those injuries had on the players daily lives to this day.  He found that many if not all players were very hurt and they regret coming back and playing after an injury.  I agree with the article in this sense because I don’t think that athletes should come back and play an injury just to hurt their bodies more, these injuries are permanent damage and can never be fixed.

There are many stories of how NFL athletes are doing later in life:

1. “I hurt like hell every morning when I wake up,” says former linebacker Darryl Talley, 52.
2. “I can’t run anymore,” says former offensive lineman Pete Kendall, 39. “I can’t play basketball with my kids, can’t walk for any extended distance.”
3. “I’m 40 years old going on 65,” says Roman Oben, another ex-lineman. “God knows what I’ll feel like when I’m actually 65 years old.”
4. Don Majkowski says he can no longer stay at a job, because he cannot stand for an extended period of time.
5. “The cumulative effect of what you did for a living is really not shown until age 40 to 45,” said Bruce Laird, 62, who played safety in the NFL from 1972 to ’83 and today is in need of a new shoulder.

These many examples shows how injuries can affect players down the road.  They all show that an injury today will hurt you for the rest of your life.  This is the reason I think that NFL athletes need to take serious precautions before coming back into the league if the come back at all.

Future Question:  How do injuries in the NHL affect the players value?