Bully Bully

We have a whole new look at bullying today with the bullying of Jonathan Martin by Richie Incognito of the Miami Dolphins. Some folk cannot wrap their heads around the idea that one 300 pound lineman can bully another 300 pound lineman. They say things, “Why didn’t he just punch him out?” Just how would that help?

 Football is a violent sport that encourages violence among its players. It has gone on a long time. “Gotta toughen them up.” And the great insult, “You play like a girl.” That is about as political incorrect as you can get. “Honey can you get me another beer while I sit here on my expanding ass watching other people exercise? Oh yeah, bring me some artery clogging food as long as you’re up.”

Now I fully realize that the vast majority of males and perhaps females gather in front of TVs on a regular basis and yell, scream and shout for their favorite football teams. It is most common for these couch potato quarterbacks to indicate that they are smarter than the coaches that coach these teams. And they can cite sport statistics forever. So, I know I’m not going to be in the majority here with my views. Okay. But here are some more statistics.

The average NFL player salary is $1.9 million. The median NFL player salary is $770,000. The average NFL player plays 3.2 years. Running backs average 2.57 years. These figures come from NFL communications. Now the NFL also makes some claims that players last much longer than that by inserting some criteria to make it look like they last longer, but few buy into that.

It seems to me that these guys are underpaid for what they are doing, even though we here all about stars being paid millions.

Men in our country expect to live about 75 years (egad I don’t have much time left.) Now an NFL player’s life expectancy is 55 years. And often their post playing years are filled with injuries that make the life less than full. According to the St. Petersburg Times, every season a player plays in the NFL decreases his life expectancy by 3 years.

This year 273 players have suffered season-ending injuries. That works out to about 9 players per team. And there are more called with “out of the season” because of injury: 14 with head injuries, 13 with neck injuries, and one spine injury.

We have also read recently about the effects of concussions on players such as Tony Dorset and Bret Favre who are experiencing significant memory loss and anger issues. The NFL has reached a tentative $765 million settlement over concussion-related brain injuries among it 18,000 retired players.

And now there is talk of lengthening the season by 2 more games. Ya think that might add up to more injuries? They would all make more money but think of the cost in more than dollars.

If you are looking for the biggest bully it seems to me it is the NFL itself. If you required people to play football it would likely be made illegal as cruel and unusual punishment.