Estimated Costs of Contact in Men's Collegiate Sports

Ray C. Fair () and Christopher Champa ()
Additional contact information
Ray C. Fair: Cowles Foundation, Yale University, https://economics.yale.edu/people/faculty/ray-fair
Christopher Champa: Yale University

No 2101, Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University

Abstract: Injury rates in twelve U.S. men's collegiate sports are examined in this paper. The twelve sports ranked by overall injury rate are wrestling, football, ice hockey, soccer, basketball, lacrosse, tennis, baseball, indoor track, cross country, outdoor track, and swimming. The first six sports will be called "contact" sports, and the next five will be called "non-contact." Swimming is treated separately because it has many fewer injuries. Injury rates in the contact sports are considerably higher than they are in the non-contact sports and they are on average more severe. Estimates are presented of the injury savings that would result if the contact sports were changed to have injury rates similar to the rates in the non-contact sports. The estimated savings are 49,600 fewer injuries per year and 5,990 fewer injury years per year. The estimated dollar value of these savings is between about 0.5 and 1.5 billion per year. About half of this is from football. Section 7 speculates on how the contact sports might be changed to have their injury rates be similar to those in the non-contact sports.

Keywords: Sports injuries; Collegiate sports (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 I20 Z20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2017-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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