Footnote

I’ve seen a lot of discussion of American football injuries lately.

Just wanted to point out that any sport played at an elite level is damaging to someone’s body who does it for many years.

Why?

Think about it like this. Elite athletes are nearly always operating at 100% capacity. Imagine if you did this to your car. Always flooring the accelerator and the brake, never failing to take corners as quickly as possible. Even jumping curbs at speed if that were more expedient and you could get away with it.

How long do you think your car would last?

It’s just the same for a human body. While some sports are worse than others, and the most utterly boring sports like baseball are probably the least damaging, in any sport where the only way to compete is to perform at an elite level broken bodies will be common and unavoidable.