Would you play in the NHL or NFL?

[Sinurgy]

It would seem the debate on physicality in sports is raging at an all time high right now. I was curious what people would choose to do if they actually had the option to play one of these sports professionally.

Click to read more...

 

[CC96]

For that kind of money, I would dodge knives being thrown at me for a living.

 

[RABBIT]

Absolutely. If you are conscious, mentally and physically capable of signing a contract pertaining to the risks you will take to partake in the profession you desire, then there should be no question.

This isn't the Vietnam Military Draft, if you have the abilities to do something you 100% want to do, then you should be able to do it.

 

[Viskeywrobr]

I am too old now to play. I was always better hockey player than football player, but never good enough to play beyond recreational. So if I had been good enough, yes I would have loved to have a career playing hockey, even minors. Football, no, not as interested.

 

[Rutkowski]

**** yeah. I play amateur floorball and I get injured constantly, if I could play hockey at a pro level I'd do it even for an AHL salary because that'd be livin' the life.

 

[PhoPhan]

Nice! Thanks for clearing this up, Sinurgy. I'm glad we settled the controversial question of "Are people willing to play professional sports?"

Can your next poll be "Given the choice, would you rather have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or not?"

 

[Etch]

Nice! Thanks for clearing this up, Sinurgy. I'm glad we settled the controversial question of "Are people willing to play professional sports?"

Can your next poll be "Given the choice, would you rather have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or not?"

Dude, just because you're allowed to check in hockey doesn't mean you are willingly guaranteed to become a vegetable. A very, very small percentage of accidents happen, that's life and it's NOT unique to a professional sports career.

C'mon man...

 

[ClassLessCoyote]

Getting banged up for millions sure as hell beats getting shot to death over cash in the register for minimum wage.

 

[PhoPhan]

I'm not talking about "accidents." Accidents happen everywhere. That's life.

I'm talking about an emergent but already substantial body of evidence that shows what sports like hockey and football, as they're currently played at all levels and including the recklessly macho approach to first aid, can do to the human body over time.

Let's say there's an oil rig. I'd love it if we had more sustainable energy sources, but for the time being, we need oil. And for what it pays, there are people willing to work on that oil rig, even though it's very unsafe. Does that mean we shouldn't try to make it safer?

 

[XX]

Let's say there's an oil rig. I'd love it if we had more sustainable energy sources, but for the time being, we need oil. And for what it pays, there are people willing to work on that oil rig, even though it's very unsafe. Does that mean we shouldn't try to make it safer?

You can, but there's a tradeoff for everything. It has to be reasonable. Even then, you won't eliminate the risk. I answered "yes" on the poll because I drive a vehicle every day. Statistically speaking, that is far more dangerous than playing football or hockey. You seem to believe that doling out punishments after the fact will slow down and make safer what is an inherently fast and dangerous sport. It might make you feel better about guys getting injured in a very small and petty way, but it won't cut down on the injuries. We're still talking about trained athletes wearing pads moving at high speeds. Even if you had a flat ban on hitting, career ending injuries would still occur.

I suppose you are against fighting too, right? Do sports like boxing have no reason for existence in Pho's world?

When you pull out the "think of the children" card it just cheapens your entire argument and tips your hand. We're not talking about children here. They are consenting adults, playing a relatively safe sport, for millions of dollars. I think the kids will be just fine.

 

[kihekah19*]

Always played hockey and it conflicted with football, so I never had time for the latter. Just as well.... I couldn't have taken all the standing around in football

As far as risk goes? The risk is part of what made it great!

 

[PHX FireBirds18]

Yes. The ability to play the sport I love for millions. Set my family up financially for generations on end far out weighs any potential injuries that might happen to me. People risk their lives everyday in other jobs and they don't get paid squat. Yet they love what they do.

 

[Vip]

I would probably play in the NFL even though my love for football is nowhere near my love for hockey.

It's 1 game a week, I most likely wouldn't even play during the game in most situations. I'd be making millions.

NHL would be a hell of alot more fun, but a hell of alot more work. And I'd constantly be worried about getting cut or sent down.

Plus, my playing style is getting phased out of the NHL. During youth hockey I was the dude that hit everything that skated. Then I'd contribute the occasional goal every other game or so.

I thought the question was asking us which league we'd want to play in, not just if we would play in general

 

[Sinurgy]

Nice! Thanks for clearing this up, Sinurgy. I'm glad we settled the controversial question of "Are people willing to play professional sports?"

Can your next poll be "Given the choice, would you rather have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or not?"

There you go again, deliberately misrepresenting the argument. The question does not read "Are people willing to play professional sports", it reads "Knowing the dangers, if you had the ability to play in the NHL or NFL, would you?". Of course the overwhelming majority say yes and the reasons are obvious to everyone but you it would seem. I think people are finally getting sick of the ****ing safety card that gets played with regularity these days. THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!

 

[PerpetualTankYear]

There's a huge list of careers that are more dangerous than a hockey player, and 99.999% of those jobs pay less.

A very small percentage of NFL and NHL players have any major effects after playing, while many jobs are in areas that cause serious mutilation, cancers, and death.

 

[PhoPhan]

There you go again, deliberately misrepresenting the argument. The question does not read "Are people willing to play professional sports", it reads "Knowing the dangers, if you had the ability to play in the NHL or NFL, would you?". Of course the overwhelming majority say yes and the reasons are obvious to everyone but you it would seem. I think people are finally getting sick of the ****ing safety card that gets played with regularity these days. THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!

I think it's pretty clear that you guys don't really know what the dangers are. Either that, or you all have some perverse need for things to be more dangerous than they have to be.

 

[MP]

I think it's pretty clear that you guys don't really know what the dangers are. Either that, or you all have some perverse need for things to be more dangerous than they have to be.

Pho, I love you to death. You're one of the smartest, funniest web-folk I've ever encountered. And you're making me feel bad.

Just explain this stuff to me. The gist of your argument seems to be that safety should always take priority over profits and entertainment value. Makes total sense, and I agree. Nobody wants to see someone's life ruined for stupid reasons, as a result of completely preventable accidents. But it's not clear to me what your solution is. No hitting? No fighting? Banning players outright for certain infractions? Altering the gear to make players slower or softer?

 

[CC96]

Pho, I love you to death. You're one of the smartest, funniest web-folk I've ever encountered. And you're making me feel bad.

Just explain this stuff to me. The gist of your argument seems to be that safety should always take priority over profits and entertainment value. Makes total sense, and I agree. Nobody wants to see someone's life ruined for stupid reasons, as a result of completely preventable accidents. But it's not clear to me what your solution is. No hitting? No fighting? Banning players outright for certain infractions? Altering the gear to make players slower or softer?

Yeah, I agree with this. Your a real sharp guy Pho, but you've been a little vague as to what you feel is a possible solution to prevent hockey related injuries.

 

[Longwayfromhome]

Would definitely do it for the money. Just avoid fights and the risk of concussions and other severe aftermath is limited.

If players want they can retire much earlier then most do, they have the money for it. But the love of the game and love of winning and competing. The guys that don't love winning and competing never makes it to such a high level.

 

[PhoPhan]

Pho, I love you to death. You're one of the smartest, funniest web-folk I've ever encountered. And you're making me feel bad.

Just explain this stuff to me. The gist of your argument seems to be that safety should always take priority over profits and entertainment value. Makes total sense, and I agree. Nobody wants to see someone's life ruined for stupid reasons, as a result of completely preventable accidents. But it's not clear to me what your solution is. No hitting? No fighting? Banning players outright for certain infractions? Altering the gear to make players slower or softer?

I appreciate the candor (and the extraneous but totally accurate flattery). Acknowledging that injuries are a problem seems further than most are willing to go, and just to be clear: I'm talking about head injuries more than anything else. They're real, and they're spectacular.

The single biggest step they could take is actually after the hits, and they're making progress there. They have a long way to go (see: Randy Carlyle's comments about concussions just being a symptom of "hotter brains" stemming from helmet usage), but getting over the macho "just walk it off" culture is a big first step. It's rarer these days to hear "he just had his bell rung"; teams are taking these things more seriously. But there's still a culture of trying to play through injuries, and for concussions more than anything else, it's the absolute worst thing you can do. So I'm mostly just looking for a little more caution on that front. That falls on both the medical staffs that are pushing players to play before they're ready and the players themselves who hide or downplay injuries.

Second is getting rid of goonery. So long as the John Scotts and Patrick Kaletas of the world are running around taking advantage of people, catastrophic injuries are going to keep happening, and so long as the only penalties are suspensions and player fines, it's going to keep happening. So it's time to start penalizing coaches, GMs and entire organizations when an individual player takes liberties. At the very least, it might cut down on the wave of depression running through the enforcer community (see: suicides of Rypien, Boogaard and Belak).

Third—and this is the one that's not going to be super popular—is curbing contact to the head. Take Hanzal's hit for example. I think this was a relatively innocent hit, but the fact is Hanzal hit Petry in the head, and he should be held responsible for it. I don't think he necessarily meant to do that (and stiffer penalties should be doled out for the explicitly malicious headshots), but by handing out smaller suspensions like this one, you're encouraging players (especially the man giants like Hanzal) to be more responsible with their bodies. You can get a penalty for inadvertent high sticking, and it's doubled if you draw blood. That makes players extra cautious with their sticks, and I don't think anyone is complaining that the league doesn't have enough reckless stick-swinging. So do the same for headshots: intent makes it worse, but even unintentional headshots should be penalized. Obviously, it's on the player getting hit to protect himself to some extent, but the hitting player also needs to exercise a little bit of caution.

The obstacles here are threefold. First, you have to get past the fan response, which we've seen a lot of right here over the last 24 hours. People hate change. Second, you have to deal with the players themselves. The NHLPA has fought these suspensions fairly hard, which is where the last part gets tricky: the league. They're being awfully shrewd here. It's really pretty clever, in an evil genius sort of way. By handing out occasional big suspensions and letting the players make a stink about it each time, they have an easy rebuttal if the PA ever comes at them with a player endangerment lawsuit. "We tried to make it safer, but they fought us on it every step of the way." But by doing it only sporadically, in a seemingly arbitrary way and rarely ever for a star player, it prevents an epidemic of having the most marketable players sitting in the press box for weeks at a time.

Another big hurdle, though, is that this is a mental health issue as much as a physical one, and our culture is much more sympathetic to claims of "I have a broken leg" than it is to "I have clinical depression." Again, we've made progress, but there's a long way to go. Caveman attitudes about the "p***yfication" of America move us in the wrong direction. Having to pick between dangerous hockey and no hockey at all is a false choice. Our options are either stick with the status quo or try to make things safer, and I see no compelling reason not to at least try to make things safer.

 

[Demosthenes]

Yes, and I wouldn't wear no sissy visor neither. You wouldn't even have to pay me much, just give me a chance at lifting that cup.

 

[XX]

Our options are either stick with the status quo or try to make things safer, and I see no compelling reason not to at least try to make things safer.

If you're going to advocate a reasonable position that most of us agree with, it helps not to call everyone who disagrees barbaric, members of the 18th century, or to ask us to think of the children. Extremist language is associated with extremist views. For someone so measured, your posts in the other thread were very out of character, which is why I thought it was well written satire at first.

I don't think many have a problem with attempting to take the Cooke-Savard style head hits out of the game, or to reduce staged goonery. That's really not a radical opinion. No need for radical language.

 

[Sinurgy]

I appreciate the candor (and the extraneous but totally accurate flattery). Acknowledging that injuries are a problem seems further than most are willing to go, and just to be clear: I'm talking about head injuries more than anything else. They're real, and they're spectacular.

The single biggest step they could take is actually after the hits, and they're making progress there. They have a long way to go (see: Randy Carlyle's comments about concussions just being a symptom of "hotter brains" stemming from helmet usage), but getting over the macho "just walk it off" culture is a big first step. It's rarer these days to hear "he just had his bell rung"; teams are taking these things more seriously. But there's still a culture of trying to play through injuries, and for concussions more than anything else, it's the absolute worst thing you can do. So I'm mostly just looking for a little more caution on that front. That falls on both the medical staffs that are pushing players to play before they're ready and the players themselves who hide or downplay injuries.

Second is getting rid of goonery. So long as the John Scotts and Patrick Kaletas of the world are running around taking advantage of people, catastrophic injuries are going to keep happening, and so long as the only penalties are suspensions and player fines, it's going to keep happening. So it's time to start penalizing coaches, GMs and entire organizations when an individual player takes liberties. At the very least, it might cut down on the wave of depression running through the enforcer community (see: suicides of Rypien, Boogaard and Belak).

Third—and this is the one that's not going to be super popular—is curbing contact to the head. Take Hanzal's hit for example. I think this was a relatively innocent hit, but the fact is Hanzal hit Petry in the head, and he should be held responsible for it. I don't think he necessarily meant to do that (and stiffer penalties should be doled out for the explicitly malicious headshots), but by handing out smaller suspensions like this one, you're encouraging players (especially the man giants like Hanzal) to be more responsible with their bodies. You can get a penalty for inadvertent high sticking, and it's doubled if you draw blood. That makes players extra cautious with their sticks, and I don't think anyone is complaining that the league doesn't have enough reckless stick-swinging. So do the same for headshots: intent makes it worse, but even unintentional headshots should be penalized. Obviously, it's on the player getting hit to protect himself to some extent, but the hitting player also needs to exercise a little bit of caution.

The obstacles here are threefold. First, you have to get past the fan response, which we've seen a lot of right here over the last 24 hours. People hate change. Second, you have to deal with the players themselves. The NHLPA has fought these suspensions fairly hard, which is where the last part gets tricky: the league. They're being awfully shrewd here. It's really pretty clever, in an evil genius sort of way. By handing out occasional big suspensions and letting the players make a stink about it each time, they have an easy rebuttal if the PA ever comes at them with a player endangerment lawsuit. "We tried to make it safer, but they fought us on it every step of the way." But by doing it only sporadically, in a seemingly arbitrary way and rarely ever for a star player, it prevents an epidemic of having the most marketable players sitting in the press box for weeks at a time.

Another big hurdle, though, is that this is a mental health issue as much as a physical one, and our culture is much more sympathetic to claims of "I have a broken leg" than it is to "I have clinical depression." Having to pick between dangerous hockey and no hockey at all is a false choice. Our options are either stick with the status quo or try to make things safer, and I see no compelling reason not to at least try to make things safer.

See now that's reasonable and I think you'll find few here who disagree with that. However, you initially were not being reasonable, you were being ridiculous. I'm happy to read the writings of level-headed and rational Pho again. You were starting to smell like you spent too much time in a political forum. :p

btw...I very much agree with you on the mental illness front. It's an area where I really hope we can make some serious progress. It's not as tangible as something obvious like a broken leg and that's part of the challenge. While I've never experienced either, I feel pretty confident when I say I'd rather have a broken leg than a mental illness!!

Caveman attitudes about the "p***yfication" of America move us in the wrong direction.

I disagree with you on this part though, I personally do not think being weak of mind and body is progressive nor does it move us in the right direction. It's very possible to be strong yet honorable, tough yet empathetic, etc. Basically all I'm saying is that you don't have to be a ***** in order to be sensitive to the people around you.

 

[RABBIT]

It's good to have you back with us Pho, makes me miss the days when you would give me infractions.

 

[Desert Ice 11]

Millions for something I would love to do? Yes...who said no? Are they joking?