Boxing. What other sport do you win by bloodying and knocking your opponent senseless?
Helmets takes a little more explaining, but I think you’ll have to agree they’re barbaric too. I was recently watching a commentator on tv (so I don’t have a cite, sorry). And he said although helmets protect the skull in football, paradoxically, they injure the brain more. Your brain literally bounces around in your skull because of the hard hits it inspires. Plus (this commentator said), without helmets, football players would have to be more gentle. Think about it. (I will try to find a cite for this if I can. But I think the words speak for themselves really.)
An outright ban, and no less, for both. What do the rest of you think?
Well, they do cause harm to the individual participants. But you are right (if I understand you correctly), most of the people who enjoy it are just spectators. And in that case, the harm is less clear. (It does desensitize people to violence though, which most would have to agree is “bad”.)
It’s just that calling something “barbaric” is by its very definition a cultural judgement, and thus irrelevant. You have to prove some sort of objective harm in order to justify banning something.
Other sports where the goal is to beat your opponent in (hand to hand/feet to feet) combat:
Mixed Martial Arts, kick boxing, K-1, etc etc etc.
There are even fake sports where the goal is to inflict physical punishment, pro-wrestling.
I am not saying you are wrong when you claim these sports should be banned, I’m just pointing out there are many. I bet they were the first sports contests held between humans.
Some of them are part of culture, history and what not and unlike bull-fighting or such, participants are volunteers, get paid for it and afaik aren’t slaughtered afterwards.
The helmets…I doubt it will prevent injuries if you’d stop wearing them.
Would players be more careful? Maybe. But an accidental blow or bad landing would be much more devastating. Plus there’s always the heat of the battle, people get excited so I doubt they’d be more careful in the first place. If they could get away with hitting an opponent in the head without getting clocked themselves I’m sure they will.
If you were genuinely worried about harm, rather than banning something it offends your sensibilities (ie is “barbaric”) then woudln’t you start with the most dangerous sports and then work your way down?
Football would certainly fit on that list. But in terms of both total injuries and the probability of any given participant being injured, boxing isn’t even in the top 10. It rates way, way below basketball, cycling, skateboarding and even softball.
So why not ban softball before boxing?
And the real reason: it’s got nothing to do with injuries. It is because you find boxing to be “barbaric”. It offends your sensibilities, so you want to curtail the freedom of others so you will feel better and they have to conform to your culture.
I would support legislation to put an end to individuals being forced to participate in boxing or football. Bowling as well. Hell, forced archery participation should be stopped also.
Instead of banning football helmets just switch to rugby. It’s still a rough sport, but injuries aren’t as bad as you’d think given the lack of padding.
I agree with your conclusion, but: I think you’ve made it in a poor way. Does the number of serious injuries still play out that way when adjusted for proportionality of participants?
While not particularly taking sides on this debate (a quagmire I’d want to avoid) this argument doesn’t really hold water.
You could just as easily say that a plant doesn’t need to maintain safety measures or abide by OSHA rules because no one is FORCED to work there. As a society we’ve decided they DO have to do so and that’s the way it is.
As for the rubgy thing that **kferr]/b] mentioned? I have never been able to persuade anyone not from the US just how hard football hits are. If players played rugby as brutally as they do American football players would die in every game. Part of that is a result of the armor football players wear but a lot of it is just the sheer size and speed of the players and the hits.
Between the money involved and the increased size of players, I think pro football probably needs to be looked at. The players, when they first start playing as kids, have no way of knowing what they are giving up health wise. We are only know seeing some of the problems. I don’t know what the solution is but just banning anything where people get injured is NOT the answer. I like the rugby idea, but then I already think everyone should be watching rugby rather than football.
The idea that I shouldn’t be allowed to duke it out with another consenting adult is so wrong I don’t know where to start. Some of us like a little barbarism in our sport. We like testing ourselves. Without that whiff of danger and, yes, barbarism we might as well be playing hopscotch.
Sorry, this is a particularly bad argument. No part of those sports rewards a team for intentionally inflicting harm on their opponents. And I don’t think that there’s any good comparison between “incidental injury, often of the extremities” and “achieve victory by inflicting mild to moderate brain injury on your opponent.”
I’m reluctant to say professional boxing should be banned, but one should take the case against boxing more seriously than “lots more people sprain their ankles playing tennis.”
Read about the history of football and you’ll find that it used to be played without helmets. People died, and that was before the game was being played professionally by very fast, highly-trained giants. Other changes have been made since then, of course, but the point should count for something. I think people who make the “no helmets” argument are working from the mistaken assumption that the biggest danger in football is players who lead with their helmets and launch themselves at opponents. That’s what was being discussed on Monday Night Football during the conversation I assume you are referring to here. Unfortunately that’s wrong. Those hits can be very dangerous, but the biggest danger comes from the thousands of lower-impact hits that a player takes in games and practices over the course of many years of practices in high school and college and the pros. I can’t see how that damage would be reduced by eliminating helmets.
The rugby-football comparison was the first thing that came to my mind. Does anyone have any hard data regarding the relative seriousness of the injuries in the two sports?
Would you happen to know that number of injuries incurred in Rugby as opposed to American Football? I don’t know much about either sport (although I understand A Football, Rugby not so much), but would that be a a valid comparison between helmets and no-helmets (or the apparently semi-soft ones they use in Rugby).
In fact, does Rugby even allow head-first tackles?
I understand what you’re saying that “helmet-hits” are not the reason for most injuries, but wouldn’t it be a good idea to reduce the danger of said tackles if indeed there’s a difference between the two sports?
