Academics can be so quaint:

While U.S. life expectancy is 77.6 years … the average for NFL players is 55, 52 for linemen.

Surely we can see football hurts players – we often see them carried off in on stretchers. But I wonder: would we accept this harm nearly as much if we saw it all on up close? Players would suffer the same average loss if each season one out of ten players just dropped dead on the playing field! . . .

Would we really accept such carnage before our TV eyes?

Accept? It would be a blockbuster! NASCAR races, where fiery death is a possibility at any time and spectacular crashes are seen in every race, is bigger than the next three spectator sports combined.^* Mixed martial arts? Ultimate fighting? Why is it that effete intellectual dough boys have such a difficult time even seeing much less grasping the nature of humanity?

^* I received a backchannel expression of disbelief from an outraged reader. It was a tossed off half remembered version of this claim.

A NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series event attracts larger crowds than the Super Bowl, a World Series game and the NBA Finals game combined.

Note that it is event attendance that is claimed, but NASCAR as a whole is 2nd to the NFL in televised viewing. My bad.