No contest. Hockey takes the cake. Aside from turf burn, there aren’t many injuries a football player can sustain that a hockey player can’t also. Concussions, knee injuries, spinal injuries...all of them are common in hockey. However, there are a several gruesome possibilities that can occur on the ice that could never occur on the gridiron.

Let’s establish how crazy hockey truly is: ten maniacs skating at high speeds on quarter-inch-thick razor-sharp metal blades trying to take each other’s heads off with long composite sticks on a considerably hard surface. Not to mention the thick, solid rubber circle flying around in all directions throughout the game.

True, football players do receive head injuries, knee injuries, and injuries of that sort, but very rarely does a football player split their face wide open during a game. For hockey players, it’s not out of the ordinary to see someone take a puck traveling 90 miles per hour off the face, or getting whacked in the face by a composite stick. Players have also been sliced and diced by the knives attached to their skates. You don’t see that in football games. When someone gets hit in hockey, it’s almost always one on one contact with no one there to protect you. 7/10 times in football, there is a large human running in front of you doing their best to protect you.

Lastly, fist to fist combat is the norm in hockey. Not so in football. A game rarely occurs without two players slugging it out on the ice. Most hockey players have facial scars and missing teeth.

Don’t get me wrong, football is a very dangerous sport, and part of my love of watching it comes from its dangerous nature. But when you take into consideration the points I’ve just made, there is no sport as dangerous as hockey.

Football is America’s most beloved game. Football is also America’s most dangerous game. When you step onto the gridiron, you are putting your physical and mental health at risk.

Hamstring strains, muscle strains, knee ligament injuries, rotator cuff strains, ankle sprains, achilles tendonitis, jumper’s knee, shin splints, and metatarsal stress fractures are common injuries for football players. 75% of all football players stand a chance of suffering a concussion. Impulse control issues, increased aggression, paranoia, and depression can be long term consequences of numerous concussions.

Another dangerous injury that football players can encounter is CTE. A brain condition associated with repeated blows to the head, CTE can lead to severe mental health problems, including personality and behavioral changes. Former Patriots wide receiver Aaron Hernandez was afflicted with CTE, and it has been speculated that his condition may have played a factor in the crimes he committed.

During Super Bowl week, future Hall of Famer Rob Gronkowski said, You can take some serious hits. To tell you the truth, just try and imagine getting hit all the time and trying to be where you want to be every day in life. It’s tough. It’s difficult. To take hits to the thigh, take hits to your head. Abusing your body isn’t what your brain wants. When your body is abused, it can bring down your mood. You’ve got to be able to deal with that, too, throughout the season. You’ve got to be able to deal with that in the games.” Gronkowski, only twenty-nine years-old, seriously considered retirement at twenty-eight when the physical toll on his body became evident after tying a career low in touchdowns.

In addition to long term effects, injuries can also have immediate ramifications, such as not being able to play. The average NFL player plays, on average, only 14 of the 16 scheduled games due to injury, meaning the average NFL player will not make it through the NFL season without missing at least one game due to injury. Youth sports are extremely evident of how football is more dangerous than hockey. Almost 215,000 children, ages 5 to 14, were treated in a hospital due to a football injury. Only 20,000 children were treated for a hockey related injury.

Most football players are on the field more than hockey players are on the ice, therefore having more chances to sustain an injury. Furthermore, there are much more non-contact injuries in football because of the cuts that are made by players in the open field. These cuts are not as necessary in hockey, and an ACL tear is extremely rare in hockey. These severe non-contact injuries are almost a weekly event in the NFL.

I rest my case.