OT: What is the Most Dangerous Sport?

Submitted by the_big_house 500th on

 

In the world of professional sports there is always a danger that comes with it. In football it's head to head contact. In hockey it's sticks and pucks to face. In baseball its hits to the face or chest or even being run over. In boxing it's constant hits to the body and head. Each of these sports has dangerous elements within them but which sport out of all the professional sports in the world is the most deadly? How about hockey? A game where players skate with sharp blades, thin sticks and smack around a piece of rubber as hard as a rock. The average hockey player usually is hit between 2 to 10 times in a game by either a puck or stick. If serious enough bleeding occurs, stitches will need to be administered on the wound. Skates can be deadly when player flies into the air after being hit causing a severe threat to a situation such as slashed face, slit neck or even the loss of an eye. Even with all of the danger of hockey it is not the most dangerous sport. Boxing involved physical beatings and constant hand to head punches which overtime can lead to brain failure and brain damage. If the hit is serious enough it can even kill a fighter.

According to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which recently released its 26th annual report on the topic, the sport that causes more serious and deadly injuries among women than any other sport is cheerleading. Cheerleading accounted for a whopping 65 percent of high school and 71 percent of college, catastrophic sports injuries among females from 1982-2008. And to be honest I can sort of believe them because I've seen some really bad cheerleading accidents and some of them were pretty bad while others weren't that bad. If you stop and think about it and compare to the physical aspect of football, hockey and boxing to the actual "physics at work" in cheerleading, (flips, jumps, tosses, human formations) during a bad fall could be both fatal or even paralyze the person. Tough call in my opinion but I still say hockey is the most deadly.

jsquigg

May 10th, 2010 at 3:25 PM ^

Surprisingly basketball causes the most career ending injuries of the major sports, but I think it's pick your poison.  You can get messed up in hockey, but generally it's easier to avoid injury in a hockey game than an NFL game due to line changes and rules.  There are, however, 82 games in the NHL plus best of seven playoffs as opposed to 16 games and one and done.  If you want to have more recovery time with better face protection than the NFL is safer.  If you want more grinding pain and less career ending pain with no mercy for your teeth, than the NHL is your game.  Personally, I'd get destroyed in either.  I guess the question is would you rather have Demarcus Ware rip you in half or Chris Pronger mash your face in the boards.  FWIW, I played basketball in high school...

Tim Waymen

May 10th, 2010 at 4:05 PM ^

I heard that it is skiing, which I find amusing considering that I have a beef with a skier in the family who dismisses football as just a bunch of guys hitting each other.

foreverbluemaize

May 10th, 2010 at 4:34 PM ^

I don't know all of the stats but I guess just by appearances MMA would seem to be the most dangerous. I watched something on MTV the other day called Parkour. I had never heard of it before but it is basically jumping over great distances (sometimes at great heights), ie; rooftop to rooftop. Not sure if either of these are, by definition, considered sports but both seem very dangerous.

Search4Meaning

May 10th, 2010 at 7:07 PM ^

Cheerleading with it's throws and tumbling is statistically the most dangerous.  If I had a daughter that was going to be a "flier" (the female cheerleader thrown in the air), I would pull her from the team.