Monday, June 12, 2006

'Serious but stable'

After Ben Roethlisberger crashed his motorcycle and ended up in the hospital with injuries it has led to the question of whether or not professional athletes should be allowed to engage in dangerous activities that aren't in their sport. The NFL's standard player contract prohibits any activity involving "significant risk of personal injury" apart from football. But many prominent athletes ride motorcycles anyway, despite the risk and the possibility of losing salary. Based on this current case what are your feelings as to professional athletes partaking in dangerous activities outside their sport.

1 comment:

Greg Delemeester said...

I don't care about your "feelings"...I'm more concerned about your "thoughts" on such issues.

The fact that professional sports leagues have a standard contract clause prohibiting players from engaging in risky activities seems reasonable to me. From a team's point of view, they are simply looking to protect their investment. Likewise, from a player's point of view, such restrictions would seem to be a rational attempt to minimize the costs of a career-ending injury.

In a sense, Roethlisberger has breached his contract by engaging in such risky behavior and the Steelers are due some form of compensation (the return of a portion of a signing bonus or other specified penalty). By requiring the player to fork over some money to the team, a message will be sent to other players thinking about engaging in such risky activities.