If you are a fan of the NFL, or really just football in general, you cannot have avoided the ongoing debate on concussions-an issue that was recently brought once again to the forefront with the tragic death of former NFL star Junior Seau.
I am in no position to say how this should be handled but I am curious if it will have an impact on the sport by driving multi-tool athletes to head to other sports, particularly baseball but I expect others might see a growing interest as well.
The death of Seau, Dave Duerson and others and the growing understanding of the possibilities of damage that impacts on the brain in the form of long term health issues such as Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, dementia, depression and others might cause players to consider a different sport, at least players that are good at more than one.
I will point out that while a growing body of evidence appears to point to the impact as causing the damage most also say that they have nothing definitive to link the two. Also when the damage offered is a contentious issue as well.
However someone, or more than one, is taking it seriously and that is the more than 1,200 former NFL players that are involved in the over than 50 lawsuits against the NFL over this issue. You can get a breakdown here on all of the cases so far.
That amount of players and the comments they are making about the sport are enough to make anybody pause about their intended career. But there are other draws to play rival sports.Pay and career lengths are also issues that could come to the forefront. According to this story the average pay for a player in MLB is $3.44 million last year and the average career length is 5.6 years.
The NFL claims that the average career is almost the same, at 6 years, although others claim that it is roughly half that at 3.5 years. The average salary is about $1.1 million. Of course there are a ton of qualifiers including bonuses, etc… but the biggest seems to be that in baseball your contract is guaranteed while in football it is not aside from the first years usually.
Crossover players are nothing new, both into baseball from football and vice versus. Reggie Jackson and Dave Winfield are always the first to come to my mind. Winfield was drafted by four teams in three sports coming out of college-The San Diego Padres as a pitcher with the 4th pick, the Atlanta Hawks in the NBA and the Utah Jazz in the ABA as well as the Minnesota Vikings in the NFL, despite the fact that he never played football.
Jackson, having been recruited to play at Alabama, Georgia and Oklahoma in college ended up playing football at Arizona State. Having broken bones in his back in a high school game Jackson new the issues with injuries and quickly ended up with the baseball team. Both are now in MLB’s Hall of Fame.
The current generation of baseball players has lots of athletes that played other sports at a high level, players such as the Twins’ Joe Mauer was a top ranked quarterback in high school, Rockies 2010 first-round draft pick Kyle Parker was also Clemson’s starting quarterback and others include Jeff Francouer and Carl Crawford.
Off course this happens the other way as well- with Tom Brady getting drafted by the Expos, Jack Del Rio drafted by Toronto and Jake Locker drafted by the Angles before all of these players went on the college and pro football.
I am sure there is no real way to see if the concussion issue, along with pay and career length, will make a difference. I enjoy both sports greatly and do not want to see a drop off in talent in either sport, but if the concussion studies do turn out to be accurate I hate to see someone die before their time just for my entertainment. However hopefully technology will come to the rescue.
