Violence In Sports

We all know that violence comes into sports. What would a Saturday afternoon on the football field be like without the odd punch up on the field? How would we get our hockey fix if the players did not get a little rough every so often? And what would we do if instead of running into each other, our NFL heroes politely squeezed passed the defensive line uttering, "pardon me" before making their way to the touchdown. Violence is a part of sports, no matter how much the professional associations deny the fact. Violence in sports is a form of entertainment and with out it watching sports on the TV wouldn’t be the same.
Lets look at the facts, plenty of football matches involve the post-tackle, and the referee will try and break it up, but hopefully and usually to no benefit. As football has grown wider, it has also increased the violence in the game. To measure its violence different scientific studies have been done. According to the reports, injuries in the game reduce the life expectancy of a football professional player by about twenty years. It has been calculated that the force of the collision between a fast-running lineman and an equally fast-running back, in a football game, is enough to move 33 tons one inch. A hard hit on the helmet can approach a force of 1000Gs, which is a thousand times the force of gravity.
The injury statistics for high school, college, and pro football are pretty surprising. Each season at least fifty and as many as eighty-six out of every hundred high school football players receive injuries serious enough to keep them from playing for more than a week.
About thirty-two college and high school students become paralyzed from the waist down each year as a result of football injuries. Any boy who plays the game through high school and college has a 95 percent chance of serious injury. Of 108 freshmen football recruits at the University of Iowa over a four-year period, more than one-third suffered serious injuries of the neck and spine while playing high school football.

The average career of a professional football player lasts just over four years (the shortest of all the professional sports). Not only does every player, whether in high school, college, or on a professional team, have a greater risk of serious injury, but also each one can expect to be scarred for life.
The common injuries that a football player suffer when playing are: Concussions (ten or more during a career), shoulder separations, broken limbs, torn knee ligaments, dislocated hips and broken fingers are not uncommon. Many of the hits and kicks thrown by a player are hidden when shown on TV. Television distances the viewer from the action and softens the full impact of the violence. The athletes appear as virtuous as knights in armour, innocent and invincible. The full effect of the brutality, the groans and cries of pain, are seldom seen or heard.
Except for football, more than any other sport, hockey has developed a reputation for being much more violent than is absolutely necessary to play and win the game. Few attempts have ever been made to limit the most damaging forms of hockey violence. Violence in hockey is shown when charging into other players, slamming a person into the boards, digging with the elbow, spearing or slashing with the stick, and tripping or cutting, with the skate. Players still get their teeth knocked out, their jaws broken, and suffer brain concussions with such regularity that such violence is now almost considered a habit.
Strange but true some people still excuse this form of violence, saying that it is a harmless way for players to release their frustrations and tensions. But many people doubt that the fights come from the frustrations of the game.
Some people claim that hockey today is less violent than football. They support their argument by mentioning statistics that show hockey players suffer far fewer severe injuries than football players. But this may not tell the reality. In hockey, both the thrower and receiver of the blow are sliding around on their skates. Therefore, the blow does not land with nearly the force of blows thrown when both parties are standing on firm ground. But, when the numbers of penalties in each sport are counted, hockey looks to be the most aggressive sport.
Coaches play a very important role when it comes to violence in sports. Some of them actually promote the violence. They train players to crash their way through lines of opponents and teach them ways to improve their fighting skills. They advise their players to use violence to achieve specific purposes (to think of assault on the ice as a skill rather than a sin).
The pressure to win at all costs is especially intense on the college and professional levels. If a team has a losing season, the coach is often fired. Athletes are encouraged to play while injured, sometimes by coaches whose jobs are at risk, sometimes for the good of the team, and sometimes because it is considered to be the manly thing to do. Athletes have gotten many permanent injuries as a result of playing while hurt.
People have different opinions about violence in sports. Some people think we should not be alarmed by aggression and violence in sports. They believe that sports serve as a positive way in decreasing the aggressive side we all have. Competition eases the tensions and stresses with players. Without competitive sports we would have an even more violent society. Those who disagree say that aggression in sports increases the competitiveness and violence in our society. They believe that sports teach players that aggression is an acceptable behavior for triumphing back at someone and seeing that justice is done. Violent acts lead to further aggression and a lowering of shyness. So in short words they say that competitive sports contribute to the violent society we have today.
Sports do and perhaps should play a very important role in the lives of each one of us. They are very important to the spirit of any nation. But their importance should not be greater than our concern about what really matters --- preserving the human spirit that connects us to the world and to ourselves. It is time for a message to go out that violence in sports is not acceptable in our society.