- Oct 26, 2006
- 18,593
- 11,535
LOL @ The Walking Thread here, but hey, after reading through it I guess I'll chuck in my two cents.
I played a few sports growing up. My favorite was soccer. I liked baseball but I wasn't a fan of flamethrowers who wanted to show how good they were by aiming at your helmet, so I stopped playing competitively after a while and just played for fun.
The pro sports career I'd have loved to have done would have been auto racing, though. Growing up in Indianapolis, the one thing I wanted to do more than anything was race in the Indy 500. And if I thought I could do it now at my advancing age, I would do it without hesitation - no matter how many guys I've known who got crippled or killed doing it.
As for NHL/NFL, I hate that the discussion about them inevitably turns into some testosterone test about who is too girly. For me, the question isn't about manliness, it's about what type of team environment you want to be in. I'd prefer hockey because you're twenty guys on the bench every game, all pulling in the same direction, rather than siloed within your own special teams or niches like you are on a pro football team. But given the fact that both of these sports encourage play that can and does result in life-changing head injuries, I'd probably steer clear of both of them even for the huge salaries the players get - largely because of my own head injury history and how it has affected me and will affect me until I die.
I played a few sports growing up. My favorite was soccer. I liked baseball but I wasn't a fan of flamethrowers who wanted to show how good they were by aiming at your helmet, so I stopped playing competitively after a while and just played for fun.
The pro sports career I'd have loved to have done would have been auto racing, though. Growing up in Indianapolis, the one thing I wanted to do more than anything was race in the Indy 500. And if I thought I could do it now at my advancing age, I would do it without hesitation - no matter how many guys I've known who got crippled or killed doing it.
As for NHL/NFL, I hate that the discussion about them inevitably turns into some testosterone test about who is too girly. For me, the question isn't about manliness, it's about what type of team environment you want to be in. I'd prefer hockey because you're twenty guys on the bench every game, all pulling in the same direction, rather than siloed within your own special teams or niches like you are on a pro football team. But given the fact that both of these sports encourage play that can and does result in life-changing head injuries, I'd probably steer clear of both of them even for the huge salaries the players get - largely because of my own head injury history and how it has affected me and will affect me until I die.
