Hooray! Hooray! As the fall sports seasons have been over for quite some time, The Current’s staff has been able to put considerable effort into analyzing all the data; with the NCAA and NFL playoffs coming to a head, it’s time to publish our findings. The average injuries per player went down from 2.3 to 2.1 this season! It looks like adding that 104th layer of foam inside the helmets really did work. Not only is this great for the players, who no longer have to question the fact that they are subjected to continual pummelling, but it’s also great for all the viewers, who can forget about how all the players are hurting each other.

Obviously, the development in safety technology means that schools can invest even more in football, now without the ethical concerns about getting kids to slam each other into the ground to entertain a crowd of people. I’ve got loads of ideas for how to use the money flowing into the program: obstacles like spike pits and trip wires to make the field more interesting and unique; a cash prize for the biggest, most exciting hit of the game; and goal posts on the sides of the field, just for fun. 

I’ll admit, I used to think that football was dangerous, but I now see that that idea was just part of my old, fixed mindset. With a growth mindset, one can see that anything can be safe if you just improve its safety. Having a growth mindset is key to having a healthy school community. For example, the vast majority of running injuries come from training, so I suggest our running teams stop training. Someone with a fixed mindset might just accept that sometimes runners get injured and not try to change anything at all.

Perhaps schools could make some other seemingly dangerous sports safe. Cheese rolling, boxing, and skydiving are all good ideas, but the one sport that really sticks out to me as a great idea is fire coconut soccer. It may not be very well known yet, but everyone will start playing it once they see how many Division 1 offers Potomac students get from using flaming coconuts as soccer balls. All of the sports that I’ve mentioned can easily be made safe: for cheese rolling, just do it on a flat surface instead of a hill; for boxing, all you have to do is talk it out instead of fighting; for skydiving, staying in the plane solves all issues; and for fire coconut soccer, simply put out the fire and use a regular soccer ball instead of a coconut. 

I would say that we should all hope that both the Eagles and Chiefs remain injury-free on Sunday, but they surely will. We’ve all seen how there have been no injuries in the NFL this season because of all the safety improvements, and hopefully one day, all levels of football, and not just the pros, can be safe, as well.