[mechanical_fish]

Are you talking about American football? The sport where you need a suit of armor just to lower your risk of neck, knee, and brain injury to the point where you can survive a two- or three-year career in the pros before being forced to retire?

I'll watch, thanks.

[swlkr]

Eh, who wants to live forever? Your body is already aging anyway, might as well go out (going out in this context means injuring yourself badly) in a flame of glory.

[mechanical_fish]

See, this is why people my age are too old to become soldiers :) I've actually got friends with chronic injuries, so I've seen what it's like. You don't "go out" when you get chronically injured, especially these days when we have decent medical care. What happens is that you spend the rest of your life in pain. Or perhaps you end up with a pain that only bugs you when you try to do something ambitious, like walk half a mile or raise your hands above your head.

The whole "flame of glory" model sounds really awesome when you're a healthy person, but you'll find that it tends to break down pretty catastrophically about two seconds after the flame goes out.

[joelhaus]

As a former college football player, I could not agree more with this comment. Years later, when the pain is shooting through your back, the only "flame" is the one you feel burning through your nervous system. It's a brutal sport and I'm more than happy to only be watching these days. For the benefit of my children, I will do everything I can to discourage them from playing too.

It's one thing to be a spectator by choice, but when you're forced into the role, it's a completely different story.

P.S. That said, thank you for reminding us of the question, "who wants to live forever" - it is perhaps the single most epic line from the 1980 film Flash Gordon.

[clistctrl]

There's always tag football.

[mechanical_fish]

Football without blocking or tackling is a completely different game. Might just as well just play soccer or ultimate. Which, in fact, people do.

Those who want to poke maximum fun at couch potatoes always seem to pick American football for their examples. That's because civilians don't actually play American football, so there's relatively little danger of an embarrassing counterexample popping up. (Actually, plenty of teenagers play American football, but perhaps teenagers know better than to try to argue with curmudgeonly trolls on the Internet.) It's rarer to hear people try to make fun of Americans for not playing basketball or, god help us, golf... because in any city in America a golf course or a pickup basketball game is probably no more than ten minutes away. I know a bunch of middle-aged adults who play basketball. I know this because they occasionally turn up with basketball injuries. ;)

Incidentally, I only just noticed an incredible folly at the heart of this article: If you sample teenagers, you'll find a much larger percentage of them playing sports. But a smaller and smaller percentage of the American population is under 25. Is it really such a terrible thing that so few 55-year-olds play contact sports? Aren't our emergency rooms busy enough as it is?

[arethuza]

Or Rugby - which would seem closer to American Football but without the fancy outfits and all the standing about. ;-)

[robryan]

Rugby is also a terrible sport to play casually with high impact tackling.

When you think about it even more casually, going down to the park with a few friends, rugby and american football are both hard to replicate. Sure you could pretend to both be quarterbacks and pass the ball back and forward but it's really nothing like the actual sport. Same with rugby which is mostly backwards passes.

Taking the American sports angle you can see why it's much more common to seeing friends playing basketball casually as getting a few friends together you can mostly replicate the game.

[pyoung]

Most major american cities have one or more rugby clubs. It is great way to unwind after a long day at the office. You should definitely have good health insurance, and be prepared to accept some longer term consequences, but unlike football, there is a fairly active (albeit small) adult population that engages in the sport.

[svdad]

I beg to differ -- touch rugby is actually quite fun, very energetic, and a reasonable simulacrum of the real game.