Time Magazine Cover Story: Is Football Worth It?

FYI also on baseball, the bats are not nearly the problem now that they were 10 years ago. There are new standards to limit the "trampoline effect." In high school, the BBCOR standard has had a huge impact -- I would say most schools will not see their home run records broken for a long time if ever.

 

Playing intramural soccer in college I went up in the air to head a ball. A guy came in behind me trying to get it. He tried to out jump me, and smashed his head into the back of mine. He knocked himself out cold.

 

Just based on numbers there are going to be more incidents at the high school level than in college and the NFL.

 

Yep. That too.
Hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of kids as opposed to a few hundred.

 

I think people remember that Lyle Alzado SI cover from years back and think that's the future of those who abused PEDs. I don't think that will be the case. I'm sure it will for a couple who were really stupid about what they did, but for the majority, who did it with the help of a doctor or trainer, I don't think they will. That's not even mentioning those who did HGH.

 

Which raises the question (I know it's outside the scope of this thread): Should they actually be banned or illegal?

 

The stories on HGH fascinate me. You hear about 50-year-olds taking it who say they feel better than they did in their 20s.

I think you have to ban them in professional sports because you need a level playing field. They had something on one of the news magazine shows a couple years ago that showed people going to clinics and getting HGH and they're paying the kind of money for it that would prevent normal people from being able to afford it, but the results over 3-5 years were crazy and they were not seeing side effects. Obviously, that could change.

 

But if PEDs were actually found to be safe, then anyone could use them. It wouldn't affect a level playing field any more than, say, coffee.

 

Yeah, but drugs like Adderall are legal and they're still banned.

 

Not if you have a prescription.

 

It's starting to seem like those throwing out the notion the PED's will have a
negative effect on your long term health may have been talking out of their ass.

 

Unless Charlie Hough was indulging, I'm not too terribly worried about 50-year-olds mainlining HGH when it comes to sports.