I prayed for
Caleb Moore. In fact I just bowed my head and asked God to take care of him and
his family. He was a tough young man and I prayed that he would recover -- I
now pray for his soul and the hearts of his loved ones left behind. This accident prompts a
question, "how dangerous is too dangerous?" One must assume that Caleb knew of the
dangers. He competed once with a broken
pelvis and tailbone only one day after the crash that caused the injuries; he
is a tough young man. He had to be in
amazing pain and yet competed and place in the top three. Part of what these daredevils thrive on is
cheating death. They live to overcome
odds and flirt with physics.
The NFL is
in the midst of the "safety" talk.
I find it very hard to believe that today's NFL player does not know acutely
know of the inherent dangers of his sport. In times past the ignorance had some innocence;
there may have even been decpetion. But today I tire of the frequent laments
about how dangerous playing professional football is. Ya think? Most have been playing since pee
wee. It is hard on your health to repeatedly slam into other massive men. If that is not obvious to them when they sign
up then they are truly ignoramuses. Professional
football players are richly rewarded for being willing to expose themselves to
the risk. That is in part what they are
paid for. They know that an NFL career
will not last the 30 years they might have as a computer programmer -- so they
make more money in a shorter time span. If
they are smart they can live forever on a five year career. They can easily
earn more in a single year or maybe two of play than I can earn in a
lifetime. I was born a woman; I didn't
even have the opportunity. I am educated
and have outstanding, valuable experience. Society does not value me in the
same way. We don't pay for me to risk
danger.
Risk is
rewarded. Our troops get rewarded with "hazardous duty pay" when they
are willing to expose themselves and risk their lives for the freedom of people
they have never met. Their rewards pale
in comparison to that of an NFL linebacker but their pay is still connected to
exposure to risk. It is why a crab
fisherman in the Bering Sea can make enough to buy a house in two seasons of
fishing -- if they bring in a healthy payload.
Risk - reward. We get rewarded for two primary things. First for being successful -- sometimes this
is luck and sometimes it is brilliance sometimes a combination. The second is being willing to expose oneself
to danger. It is an ancient equation.
Three people
are killed by bulls each year in rodeo and an average of 20 people are killed
in performance equestrian or rodeo events.
Tell me the last name you remember the name of a person who was killed
in rodeo? Lane Frost maybe? That was
July 30th in 1989. If we are to apply
the averages for "death by bull" that was 23 years ago and that means
that 70 men have been killed by bulls since then. Do you know a single name on that list? I
didn't think so. That is more deaths during "work" than the entire
history of the NFL. Also the suicide
rate in the NFL is lower than the general US population and their average
lifespan is longer -- I did the research. The media would lead you to believe
otherwise. But bull riders are different.
They KNOW what they do is dangerous. They accept it. They embrace
it. I once heard a joke that goes like
this. If you want to know when you are a
bull rider then fill your mouth full of marbles. Each time you ride a bull spit one out. When you have lost all your marbles, THEN you
are a bull rider!
Based on
this this is a pattern of "we need saftey measures" vs. "do it
anyway", the more eyeballs on the sport of course the more attention it
gets -- both good and bad. But aren't
the eyeballs there in part because of the danger? If we bubble wrapped our NFL players and the
X-Games made the landing area a big air cushion like stunt men use -- would we
watch? Would they even want to play?
A single mediocre
NFL player makes more than 100's of professional rodeo cowboys combined. These men hitch rides, owning nothing but a
saddle or a bucking rig, sleep six or eight to a motel room and scrap enough
money for food and a cold beer before hitting the road again for the next 8
seconds in another dusty town. What a life, eh?
They are chasing a high and that high is directly connected to the
danger. Few of them achieve riches and
most end up with a permanent injury of some sort and a life of chronic
pain. Many would do it all over again if
they could turn back the clock.
If you
watched the Olympics last year and then compared ANY of the gymnast's routines
to those of even 20 years ago, the stunts and the limits they pushed made the
old routines look mundane, boring, dare I say easy?
So in
conclusion, precautions and balancing risk versus reward is certainly
important. When anyone examines a challenge they must calculate what safety precautions
they must take in order to live to tell about it. They also want to push the
edge of the "possible" and do the impossible and often don't want to
be limited by safety measures. Human
beings have always desired to push limits, explore uncharted waters and go
where no man has gone before. If we did not we would never have landed on the
moon, Lewis and Clark would have never reached the Pacific and our land would
never have been settled by wandering souls from across an ocean following the
stars.
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