Football and Long-Term Mortality: Does Playtime Make a Difference?

There is likely no difference in long-term mortality among former professional athletes of the National Football League (NFL) who participated fully in the league for the majority of their careers vs players with limited NFL exposure.

The researchers noted that these results specifically apply to athletes who began their NFL careers between 1982 and 1992, when there was a higher prevalence of temporary “replacement” players obtained during a 3-game league-wide strike in 1987.

For their study, the researchers assessed 3812 retired regular (n = 2933) and replacement players (n = 879). Mean age at career initiation was 23.4 years. Median NFL tenure was 5 seasons for career players and 1 season for replacement players. Follow-up lasted until December 31, 2016.

A total of 144 career players and 37 replacement players died over the course of follow-up, with an adjusted mortality hazard ratio of 1.38 for career players relative to replacement players. Ultimately, findings revealed that there had been no significant differences in long-term all-cause mortality between groups.

The most common causes of death among career players included cardiometabolic disease (n = 51), transportation injuries (n = 20), unintentional injuries (n = 15), and neoplasms (n = 15). Common causes of death among replacement players also included cardiometabolic diseases (n = 19) and neoplasms (n = 4), as well as self-harm and interpersonal violence (n = 5).

“Among NFL football players who began their careers between 1982 and 1992, career participation in the NFL, compared with limited NFL exposure obtained primarily as an NFL replacement player during a league-wide strike, was not associated with a statistically significant difference in long-term all-cause mortality,” the researchers concluded. “Given the small number of events, analysis of longer periods of follow-up may be informative.”

—Christina Vogt

Reference:

Venkataramani AS, Gandhavadi M, Jena AB. Association between playing American football in the National Football League and long-term mortality [February 1, 2018]. JAMA. doi:10.1001/jama.2018.0140.