On my way to taking my daughter to her preschool this morning, I heard a news headline on the radio about how the NFL players are becoming very concerned with their travel schedule. Um what? You cannot be serious!
Apparently the NFL players are serious. According to the report, several NFL players feel that traveling up to 3 times per week to travel to their games in different states of the US. Their claim is that because football is a physical (don’t mind the heavy padding and rules that don’t allow certain tackles) sport and they have to play a couple of games per week, they fear that it’s becoming unhealthy for the players safety and the NFL should probably reconsider the schedule:
“I don’t think Thursday night games are good ever, let alone in a situation like this,” safety Jim Leonhard told The Post before the Jets’ 17-13 loss. “A big thing going into the [NFL labor] talks this last time was player safety. You don’t get much more unsafe than playing two games in five days or whatever. It’s tough. It’s extremely hard. Physically, it takes a huge toll on you.Idon’t like it and I haven’t talked to one guy who likes it.“
*Source – NY Post
Um….yeah, OK. The regular football season is 17 weeks, and each team plays 16 games per the regular season. I guess that’s a lot of work and can be highly dangerous.
Now let me educate the whiners in the NFL and show them how long a tennis season can be, shall I?
- The first regular season tennis tournament begins in the first week of the new year in Brisbane, Australia.
- The last regular season tennis tournament ends in Paris at the BNP Parbias Open in the first week of November (for those of you counting, that’s 11 months of tennis).
- There are 66 regular season tennis tournament, players are not required to play all tournaments, but are required to play certain amounts of 250 and 500 level events.
- Tennis tournaments can last up to 2 weeks, playing either back to back days or every other day.
- Tournaments that last 1 week, players usually play back to back matches everyday until the finals weekend (if they reach the final).
- Tournaments are held in different countries and continents (unlike the NFL who only plays nationally), talk about jet lag.
- Tennis players are not given salaries, they earn by winning matches and tournaments (average NFL annual salary is $5.4 million).
- When not travelling or playing matches, tennis players are practicing or doing some sort of physical training, never a dull moment.
- Football games consist of 4, 15 minute quarters, but can be stretched out to a 3 hour game due to time outs, play reviews, stop and go plays, etc.
- Tennis matches start and finish when they are finished (or until the lights go out), remember 2010 first round tennis match between Nicolas Mahut and John Isner? Yeah, me too, 3 days, 183 games played, 11 hours 5 minutes, and 1 8 hour set.
- There is no half time in tennis, just the 90 seconds during the change over and 2 minutes between sets.
- Tennis is a consistently moving sport, forward, backward, side to side, forehand, backhand, slice, volley, the only time of little to no movement is the time just before the serve.
So, let’s see, which sport has more to complain about? I’m by no stretch of the imagination calling tennis a sport for sissies, in fact tennis takes more mental toughness and physical ability than most other sports (aside from rugby).
I would really like to continue to bash on the NFL and their sissy players, but I’ll just go ahead and keep it to myself and just laugh when they make ridiculous claims such as this. Harden up fellas.
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