The 'Uneasy Truth' of NFL Injuries

I always feel a little queasy on the Monday after the first Sunday of the NFL season, when the injury news starts rolling in. A torn ACL here, a broken arm there, a ruptured Achilles tendon in another place. The first NFL Sunday is so much fun, and that injury news is such a downer.

All of us -- fans, media, players, coaches, owners -- accept that such injuries are part of the cost of doing business in the NFL, and we just hope we'll get through the weekend without any serious spinal cord or brain injuries. But we know those injuries are part of the NFL, too.

Of course, if I felt that queasy about it I could always stop watching football, just as the players, who know the risk, could stop playing. That's not going to happen.

Why not? Michael Oriard, a former NFL offensive lineman, has a great piece up at Slate that explores the issue in a way that only a former player who's also a gifted writer could. Oriard concludes:

Thirty and 40 years ago, players left for an uncertain future. A greater part (though not all) of today's generation at least leaves with enough money for medical insurance and self-funded disability payments. But the experience of playing pro football remains pretty much the same: an incredible short-term high at an immense long-term cost for many. Everyone-players, fans, and owners and their accountants-loves the high and is reluctant to acknowledge the cost or to admit the uneasy truth that it's the cost that helps make the high possible.

It is, indeed, an uneasy truth. I don't like the fact that as I watch Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman play on Sunday, I'm watching a guy running around on a badly injured knee, worsening a condition that will almost certainly cause him serious pain for the rest of his life. And yet the willingness of players to put their bodies on the line is part of why I love football.