Fights
... injuries serious enough to keep them from playing for more than a week. • About thirty-two college and high school students become paralysed from the waist down each year as a result of football injuries. • Any boy who plays the game through high school and college has a 95 percent chance of serious injury. • Of 108 freshmen football recruits at the University of Iowa over a four-year period, more than one-third suffered serious injuries of the neck and spine while playing high school football. The average career of a professional football player lasts just over four years (the shortest of all the professional sports). Not only does every player, whether in high school, college, or on a professional team, have a greater risk of serious injury, but also each one can expect to be scarred for life. The common injuries that a football player suffer when playing are: Concussions (ten or more during a career), shoulder separations, broken limbs, torn knee ligaments, dislocated hips and broken fingers are not uncommon. Many of the hits and kicks thrown by a player are hidden when shown on TV. Television distances the viewer from the action and softens the full impact of the violence. The athletes appear as virtuous as knights in armour, innocent and invincible. The full effect of the brutality, the groans and cries of pain, are seldom seen or heard. Except for football, more than any other sport, hockey has developed a reputation for being much more violent than is absolutely necessary to play and win the game. Few attempts have ever been made to limit the most damaging forms of hockey violence. Violence in hockey is shown when charging into other players, slamming a person into the boards, digging with the elbow, spearing or slashing with the stick, and tripping or cutting, with the skate. Players still get their teeth knocked out, their jaws broken, and suffer brain concussions with such regularity that such violence is now almost considered a habit. Strange but true some people still excuse this form of violence, saying that it is a harmless way for players to release their frustrations and tensions. But many people doubt that the fights come from the “frustrations” of the game. Some people claim that hockey today is less violent than football. They support their argument by mentioning statistics that show hockey players suffer far fewer severe injuries than football players. But this may not tell the reality. In hockey, both the thrower and receiver of the blow are sliding around on their skates. Therefore, the blow does not land with nearly the force of blows thrown when both parties are standing on firm ground. But, when the numbers of penalties in each sport are counted, hockey looks to be the most aggressive sport. Coaches play a very important role when it comes to violence in sports. Some of them actually promote the violence. They train players to crash their way through lines of opponents and teach them ways to improve their fighting skills. They advise their players to use violence to achieve specific purposes (to think of assault on the ice as a “skill” rather than a “sin,”). The pressure to win at all costs is e...