One would think that centering the health of athletes within the sports industry would be universally agreed upon, but like with almost every issue, not everyone is on the same page. Time and time again, news stories come out from heavy contact sports of players suffering serious and sometimes debilitating injuries to the body and to the brain. Regardless, it doesn’t seem that the industry is desperate for any substantial change. While there are a multitude of factors for why the sports industry is so stagnant towards athlete health, finance seems to be the largest one of them all. Organizations like the NFL are unfortunately known to be the biggest offenders of this.
American football is considered one of the many sports where its athletes are more prone to developing degenerative brain diseases like Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) and physical injury. For decades, the organization denied the existence of diseases like CTE, and even when they finally did, players have accused the organization of still not taking proper preventative measures to protect players.
The turf vs grass fields debate is the biggest proponent of this belief. For years, NFL players have campaigned for the organization to switch to grass fields from turf due to their better shock absorption, which leads to lower rates of lower-body injuries compared to turf. This escalated when it was announced that NFL stadiums that hosted games for the 2026 World Cup would temporarily switch to grass fields.
That change revealed to players that it was, in fact, possible for NFL stadiums to be able to switch to grass fields and that owners have largely stayed away from them because of financial reasons. Even if switching to grass fields doesn’t prevent all injuries, soccer players can tell the difference. World-renowned soccer leagues banned use of turf decades ago, with some of the earliest bans being in the mid-1990s. However, if an organization as massive as FIFA was able to mandate global soccer tournaments to have grass fields, why can’t the NFL?
