The Long-Term Game: An Analysis of the Life Expectancy of National Football League Players

Ruud Koning, Victor Matheson, Anil Nathan () and James Pantano ()
Additional contact information
Anil Nathan: Department of Economics and Accounting, College of the Holy Cross
James Pantano: Department of Economics and Accounting, College of the Holy Cross

No 1401, Working Papers from International Association of Sports Economists, North American Association of Sports Economists

Abstract: The National Football League (NFL) has recently received significant negative media attention surrounding the safety of its players, revolving largely around the long term health risks of playing the sport. Recent premature deaths and instances of suicide associated with chronic traumatic encephalopathy and other football related injuries have brought the sport under increased scrutiny. By comparing mortality rates of the general population to mortality rates of players from the 1970 and 1994 NFL seasons, we test whether or not participation in football is significantly harmful to the longevity of the players. We conclude that, in total, players in the NFL have lower mortality rates than the general population. However, there is evidence that line players have higher mortality rates than other players and that those who played more games have higher mortality rates than those who played fewer games.

Keywords: National Football League; premature deaths; survivability; injuries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I19 L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2014-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-spo
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in International Journal of Financial Studies, Vol. 12, March 2014, 168-178.

Downloads: (external link)
http://web.holycross.edu/RePEc/spe/1401-Matheson-Nathan-Koning_NFLMortality.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://web.holycross.edu/RePEc/spe/1401-Matheson-Nathan-Koning_NFLMortality.pdf [302 Found]--> https://web.holycross.edu/RePEc/spe/1401-Matheson-Nathan-Koning_NFLMortality.pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Long-Term Game: An Analysis of the Life Expectancy of National Football League Players (2014)
Working Paper: The Long-Term Game: An Analysis of the Life Expectancy of National Football League Players (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spe:wpaper:1401

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from International Association of Sports Economists Contact information at EDIRC., North American Association of Sports Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Victor Matheson ().