It's weird to talk about people who make hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars as "hyperexploited", but compared to every other pro sport, 2020 NFL players are like dehumanized robots. They literally fatten up 16 year old kids to weigh 300+ pounds so that they can repeatedly smash into other 300 pound kids for a 1% chance at doing the same thing for free for 3-4 years in order to get a 0.1% chance of maybe making some decent money for 2-3 years before they get dropped like a bad habit. The number of 40 year olds playing in the NBA, MLB, NHL, any soccer league vs the NFL really tells the tale.
I noticed that years ago when I used to dig into NFL history. I grew up in the south and football is basically a religion down here. If you ever live in Alabama, the annual Alabama/Auburn Iron Bowl game is pretty much the most important event in the state to most people. Even when those teams are having down years, people follow them religiously.
My dad got me into football as a kid through card collecting. It's one of the good memories I have from my childhood with my parents, cause my mom was into it as well. My dad had an impressive collection dating back decades with so many classic players. He had all the greats of the 70s, 80s and 90s. Plenty of John Elway; Dan Marino, Ronnie Lott, Ken Stabler, Earl Campbell, Warren Moon, all the stars for the 90s Cowboys dynasty teams and the Buffalo Bills teams that lost 4 consecutive Super Bowls, Brett Favre, Steve Young, etc etc.
Some time in my teen years, I got curious looking at these old cards and started doing research on the old players. Earl Campbell is crippled now and can barely walk. It's a wonder he's still alive after a short NFL career and how it completely destroyed his body. The 1994 Chargers Super Bowl team is often considered a cursed team due to how many deaths they've had. Junior Seau committed suicide back in 2012 due to concussions he had suffered, and several of their deceased players had health problems as a result of weight and injuries sustained from football.
You'll see this time and time again with former players. One player I had tons of cards of was Thurman Thomas, running back for the SB loser Buffalo teams. Thurman Thomas is in really bad shape today with Parkinsons and from suffering CTE. It's really sad to see him in the state he's in and there are hundreds, if not thousands of former players like this. Football chews them up, destroys their bodies and spits them back out.
And the scary thing is that conditions were better in someways for players 40-50 years ago then they are now. Bigger hits and more people playing through concussions, but also less repeated trauma and smaller players (325lbs smashing into you does a lot more damage than 250lbs). The college system also wasn't as exploitative back then.
There's probably ways to make the game safer, if players actually had some sort of consciousness and power like they do in the other major leagues (to an extent anyway), but the entire culture needs to be completley overhauled imo. Getting rid of the NCAA would be a big step.
It's weird to talk about people who make hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars as "hyperexploited", but compared to every other pro sport, 2020 NFL players are like dehumanized robots. They literally fatten up 16 year old kids to weigh 300+ pounds so that they can repeatedly smash into other 300 pound kids for a 1% chance at doing the same thing for free for 3-4 years in order to get a 0.1% chance of maybe making some decent money for 2-3 years before they get dropped like a bad habit. The number of 40 year olds playing in the NBA, MLB, NHL, any soccer league vs the NFL really tells the tale.
I noticed that years ago when I used to dig into NFL history. I grew up in the south and football is basically a religion down here. If you ever live in Alabama, the annual Alabama/Auburn Iron Bowl game is pretty much the most important event in the state to most people. Even when those teams are having down years, people follow them religiously.
My dad got me into football as a kid through card collecting. It's one of the good memories I have from my childhood with my parents, cause my mom was into it as well. My dad had an impressive collection dating back decades with so many classic players. He had all the greats of the 70s, 80s and 90s. Plenty of John Elway; Dan Marino, Ronnie Lott, Ken Stabler, Earl Campbell, Warren Moon, all the stars for the 90s Cowboys dynasty teams and the Buffalo Bills teams that lost 4 consecutive Super Bowls, Brett Favre, Steve Young, etc etc.
Some time in my teen years, I got curious looking at these old cards and started doing research on the old players. Earl Campbell is crippled now and can barely walk. It's a wonder he's still alive after a short NFL career and how it completely destroyed his body. The 1994 Chargers Super Bowl team is often considered a cursed team due to how many deaths they've had. Junior Seau committed suicide back in 2012 due to concussions he had suffered, and several of their deceased players had health problems as a result of weight and injuries sustained from football.
You'll see this time and time again with former players. One player I had tons of cards of was Thurman Thomas, running back for the SB loser Buffalo teams. Thurman Thomas is in really bad shape today with Parkinsons and from suffering CTE. It's really sad to see him in the state he's in and there are hundreds, if not thousands of former players like this. Football chews them up, destroys their bodies and spits them back out.
And the scary thing is that conditions were better in someways for players 40-50 years ago then they are now. Bigger hits and more people playing through concussions, but also less repeated trauma and smaller players (325lbs smashing into you does a lot more damage than 250lbs). The college system also wasn't as exploitative back then.
There's probably ways to make the game safer, if players actually had some sort of consciousness and power like they do in the other major leagues (to an extent anyway), but the entire culture needs to be completley overhauled imo. Getting rid of the NCAA would be a big step.