Monday, Monticello, Indiana

There have been a few occasions when I’ve been told by people with contact with professional athletes that the men who played Football in college and in the NFL are frequently living with the debilitating results of having been physically battered for several years. They report that many of these men have had extensive damage done to their legs and back that they sometimes can barely walk.

Anyone who watched the playoffs this weekend understands the reason. The hitting and tackling in both games, played on fields that were essentially frozen concrete parking lots, was brutal. Players were flipped horizontally in the air and landed flat on their backs. Others were clocked by 300 pound opponents and leveled in head on collisions. Even the receivers, before they were blitzed, were trying to hold on to a ball that must have felt like a loaf of concrete bread! And on top of it all, the games were played in frigid temperatures. The Green Bay Packers game against the New York Giants was played at night in sub-zero weather!

This was simply cruel!

In most cases the players are richly compensated for their work. Many of them are millionaires living a life of fame and pleasures. Nonetheless, the price they pay in return often includes coping with a limited and damaged body for the rest of their lives. While it doesn’t make me sympathetic to those among them who act out with obnoxious and even criminal behavior in public, it does give me pause. How would any of us cope with being a wealthy sports celebrity, but at the cost of the full use of my legs for the next 50 years? Hmmm…

The hunger we feel to become significant has become so strong that we are willing to trade the vigor and longevity of our physical bodies for the exhilaration of enjoying about a decade of fame and cash. And whether it’s the physical price of professional athletics, or the mind numbing glare of media focus and invasion of privacy endured by entertainers, it seems a price most kids are drooling to pay.