Omigod, The Concussions

There is an alarming article which points out that players in the NFL suffered 111 concussions this past season. While I would certainly prefer that no players suffered any concussions, the awesomeness of that horrendous number of concussions needs to be put into proportion.

There are 32 teams in the NFL, and each team plays sixteen games. For each game, 22 players are on the field for the game; not the same 22, but there will be 11 defensive players and 11 offensive players who will "man the battle" during the game. A football game is sixty minutes long, so a little simple math says that there are 11,264 man-hours of football played during the season. That means that a concussion happens every 101.5 man-hours or, since 22 man-hours are played per game, once every 4.6 games.

That means that there is a 21.7% chance that a concussion will occur during the upcoming Super Bowl, and for each player the risk is slightly under 1%.

Not wonderful, but hardly "Omigod, 111 concussions."