High costs of college and high school contact sports

Reducing the injury rates in football and other male contact sports to those of non-contact sports like tennis or baseball would result in 49,600 fewer injuries per year in colleges and 601,900 injuries per year in high school, according to a new study by Yale economist Ray C. Fair. Fair, who co-authored the study with Yale undergraduate Christopher Champa, found that barring contact in football and other contact sports would generate savings of between $446 million and $1.5 billion per year in colleges, and up to $19.2 billion in high schools. Football accounted for slightly more than half of the college savings and more than 70% of savings in high school sports. " Banning contact in high school and college sports would vastly reduce injuries and create substantial savings in lowered medical costs and lost productivity," said Fair, the John M. Musser Professor of Economics at Yale. "Admittedly, making football a non-contact sport would be a dramatic and highly controversial change in American sports culture. Our analysis is intended to provide policy makers cost estimates that they can weigh against the benefits of contact sports when considering what to do about contact."  The researchers examined injury data covering the 2009-2010 academic year through the 2013-2014 academic year from the NCAA Injury Surveillance Program, which is compiled by the Datalys Center for Sports Injury Research and Prevention, and the High School Reporting Information Online project.