Could Football Be More Dangerous Than Boxing? A Sports Writer’s Perspective
By Robert Brizel, Head Real Combat Media Correspondent
New York Giants and New York Jets punter Dave Jennings died of Parkinson’s disease this week at age 61. Playing in the National Football League triples the risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease later on. Jennings unfortunately became a statistic after his playing days are over, finally succumbing to the disease on June 19, 2013.
We all see the effects of Parkinson’s disease on Muhammad Ali, which leads us to the lingering question: could pro football be more dangerous than pro boxing? More and more football players are becoming ill and dying from cumulative hits to the head years after their careers have ended. It isn’t all Muhammad Ali and Jerry Quarry anymore.
One argument is to improve the helmet headgear in football, and to implement headgear in professional boxing, both for specific reasons of safety.
At stake is television and Pay-Per-View television ratings and income. Sports fans love the action, more specifically the brutality and violence some professional sports offer. Rarely does a pro hockey or basketball game transpire without some good fighting between the different team members off the play clock. It isn’t all MMA roughing it up which counts. Boxing and football, like some other sports, provides the action difference to different degrees.
Professional baseball pitchers have been hit in the head and remain at risk today of getting hit by baseball pitches, yet professional baseball has been resistant to replace the traditional pitcher’s cap with protective headgear to protect the pitcher, perhaps concerned the appearance of the pitcher wearing protective headgear would change people’s views of the sport.
In football, there’s a lot of possibilities to consider. It’s dangerous when: tackling people jump on you; when heads hit each other and the cell membranes of the brain can get damages; when players hit the ground hard for whatever reason; when the spinal cord gets hit during play regardless of a player’s position or movement.
The bottom line: the public likes it when athletes get hurt. It’s entertainment. It a boxing helmet or a better football helmet in the works or ever likely to be approved? Not reall. The shock of getting hit scrambles the brain in football more so than boxing or other sports. The hit excites the fans and keeps them coming.
In boxing we have ringside doctors, a referee and officials ringside at close quarters, emergency medical personnel and ambulances at close quarters, and state and national regulation to a great extent. These safety protocols are part of sport precautions which are standard procedure in boxing. These protocols are evidently better than football. While people can and do get hurt in full contact sports, awareness of the importance of safety is an important element. If injury can be prevented, it should be.
The referee and ringside doctors in boxing are part of the prevention. Perhaps a head helmet will be required in boxing in the future at the amateur and professional levels. It could be. For football to continue to ignore what is happening to its athletes, when a better more shockproof helmet is necessary ignores the best interests of the athlete. State athletic commissions regulate boxing and that is a key difference. Safety procedures and enforced and reexamined by commissions.
Football should not continue as it is given the number of athlete incurred head trauma and brain injuries in the long run. The sport of football should look at other sports and observe the safety protocols in place. Safety in sports is not a perfect science, nothing is. The number of professional football athletes emerging with brain and other long term injuries after leaving the sport has taken a serious rise, and in my view, the National Football League is ignoring its wakeup call. Also, steroids and human growth hormone may also be contributing to some of these permanent health issues. The NFL’s continued ignorance of the long term injuries and health injuries of ex-NFL players is sure to hurt the sport when the public fully understands what is happened. That day is coming, in my view.
In the least, boxing has safety procedures set up in most worldwide venues where the sport occurs to prevent serious injury in the modern era, which I view as a major plus.
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