| 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. |