Author Daniel J. Flynn wrote the book, “The War on Football,” two years ago.
He thinks Chris Borland’s retirement is leading to inaccurate narratives about football.
“The reality that NFL players are far less likely to commit suicide than men in society takes fans aback,” Flynn wrote today for Breitbart.com. “We know that NFL players boast dramatically lower suicide rates than the guys who watch them because Chris Borland’s union, suspecting otherwise, petitioned scientists employed by the federal government to conduct a mortality study, which found a suicide rate among NFL players less than half the rate for those outside of the game.
“Borland cites wanting to live a long and healthy life as a reason for retiring at 24. But again, NFL players tend to live longer, healthier lives than their peers outside of the game. When the National Institutes for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) looked at 3,439 NFL retirees who played five or more seasons from 1959 to 1988, they discovered a mortality rate of 10 percent for the players versus 18 percent for men in society. This means 291 people lived who the actuarial tables tell us would have been dead if they had merely come from America instead of come out of America’s Game. The athletes enjoyed dramatically lower death rates for cancer, heart disease, respiratory illness, and diabetes. In fact, in 14 of 17 common killers examined the the pros beat the Joes.”
