I know this may throw a huge bucket of water on some kids’ aspirations and get people angry at me, but I’m going to post this any way.
I was just at a college reunion, and met my former teammates and athletes from my school 35 years after graduation. I was shocked at the number who had had joint replacement surgery.
Most of these were football players (possibly, in part, because I didn’t meet any hockey or basketball players), but the baseball pitchers had also had hips and knees replaced because of the repeated pounding these joints had taken when they followed through after a fastball. And most pitchers either had had shoulder surgery or shoulder pain.
I didn’t know much about the limits these artificial joints placed upon a person, and asked what they were able to do. In general, this meant no more running, basketball or tennis. Numerous activities were off the charts, but they were now pain free, and ecstatic, because most had endured years of pain before they had their hip or knee replaced. These were remarkable athletes in their day (although we were a non-scholarship, Division IAA school), in the days when a 250-pound lineman was huge.
None showed signs of traumatic brain injury. but our team manager, now a physician, said that there is no way that even a padded helmet can prevent brain damage, because of the speed at which the brain bounces off the front of the skull and then off the back of it after impact.
The size, speed and strength of the athletes in college makes the pounding you will take much more powerful. Despite what the coaches say, I’ve seen way too many times when the coaches, trainers and team doctors would let someone play who really shouldn’t, and found that coaches are far more concerned with keeping their jobs and winning championships than the health or the academic success of their players. Even at the elite schools (and I attended one). Sorry, and I know I’ll hear a lot of arguments about this, but this is what I’ve experienced firsthand, and also heard from former college and professional players and coaches about college experiences.
Although age 57 may sound ancient and irrelevant when you’re 18, I still play a lot of basketball, non-checking hockey, run, hike, ski, and do (safe) semi-extreme sports on an almost daily basis. In case you’re wondering, these are not dangerous at the speeds we play at and the gentleness we enforce, as well as the much smaller size of the players. I was protected by the roughing the kicker penalty, so I didn’t take the pounding that my teammates did in college.
Please consider your long-term health when you pursue college sports.