Don’t expect Jim Irsay to contend for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2016.
The Indianapolis Colts owner told Sports Business Journal’s Daniel Kaplan on Monday he believes playing football is far less risky than than some scientists and public figures claim. For Irsay, football poses risks to players’ health, but so do other sports and both social and anti-social activities.
“Look at it: When you get into Olympic bobsledding — I could sit down and name a dozen different sports — it has always been a known factor that you know you are going in there and you are taking a risk,” Irsay said.
Later in the interview, Irsay said players’ individual medical profiles could be linked with brain injuries some have suffered over the course of their careers. Isray used a clumsy metaphor in making what he considers an important point.
“I believe this: that the game has always been a risk, you know, and the way certain people are,” Irsay continued. “Look at it. You take an aspirin, I take an aspirin, it might give you extreme side effects of illness and your body … may reject it, where I would be fine. So there is so much we don’t know.”
Isray joins Jerry Jones among NFL owners whose views on the links between football and long-term health issues differ from what scientific research, and the league’s top health and safety officer, are gradually accepting as factual.
Thumbnail photo via Brian Spurlock/USA TODAY Sports Images
