It's a question that I am sure has been pondered many times before. An ex-soccer player for Notre Dame had 3 interceptions on Saturday.. and check out what Michigan's kicker had to say after kicking the winning field goal in front of 111,000+ as time expired... http://www.detnews.com/2002/sports/0209/02/sports-576574.htm Brabbs, a junior walk-on, kicked a 44-yard field goal -- the first of his career -- as time expired. "That's why you play football," Brabbs said. "I could be playing soccer." He certainly has a point.. he wouldn't be nearly as popular today had he scored the winning goal in a Michigan soccer game. I wonder how many athletes would play soccer if football and soccer received similar media attention here in the US.
Daniel Hernandez played both soccer and football at SMU. I'd suspect if this Michigan kicker was a good enough soccer player, he could do the same there.
How many guys forgoe football because they don't want to blow their knees out 20 times and have arthritis by age 33?
Plenty of soccer players blow their knees out (reference Josh Wolff, Clint Mathis, Chris Armas). Or were you using the British English word for soccer when you said football?
Yeah, but he won't be nearly as popular if he keeps missing kicks during the game. He may have won this one, but at some point, he is going to cost Michigan a crutial win. We'll see what he says then about playing "Football".
True enough... but ex-NFL players typically have extreme problems that either end their careers early or haunt them throughout the rest of their lives. I'll look for an article I saw on this subject just last week, if I can find it I'll post it.
I work at the college where the Steelers have their training camp, and when some of the retired players come by, it's pretty sad. You see guys in their forties, and sometimes even thirties, who walk like arthritic senior citizens. Guys who ten-fifteen years earlier could do a 4.3 forty now need a cane to get around. Lots of guys.
In addition to following soccer, I am a pretty avid college football fan and moderately interested in NFL as well. However, I think gridiron football will ultimately destroy itself unless some basic changes take place. One of the obvious charms of soccer is that "normal sized" people can play it - you don't need to be a 380 lb. behemoth or a 7 foot plus pituitary freak. Gridiron football players, very BIG gridiron football players, are no longer tubs of lard sitting in the line - they are very fast as well. Simple physics tells you that when you increase the speed of a collision, the force generated by the impact goes up. When the object traveling fast is 350 lbs., the force is obviously greater than if it were a 250 lb. object. BUT, human bones, ligaments etc. are no intrinsically stronger than they ever have been. Maybe you can protect joints a bit by improved musculature and protective gear, but as gridiron players get bigger and bigger, faster and faster, they will increase the risk of injury by geometric proportions. Eventually, absent some basic rule changes or weight limits, the game becomes too destructive for humans to play. As gridiron goes that direction, soccer becomes a more attractive option to gifted athletes.
As much as we don't like to admit it, football still offers superior poontang. And that's pretty much all high school boys are interested in.