Playing Through Pain Can Be Selfless, As Senseless By William C. Rhoden
543 Words3 Pages
In William C. Rhoden’s article, “Playing Through Pain Can Be Selfless, as Well as Senseless,” Rhoden discusses the controversy surrounding player injuries and questions whether professional athletes owe it to their fans to play through the pain. Throughout the article, Rhoden draws attention to high profile cases in which professional athletes have been scrutinized or even pressured into playing with an injury. He claims that by playing hurt, sportspeople are putting their careers and long-term health at risk. As a result, Rhoden argues that athletes should not be subjected to superhuman standards of pain tolerance for our entertainment. William Rhoden appears to be a very credible source for his intended audience of sports fans and players. His biography states that he acted as an assistant sports information director for Morgan State University, before ultimately joining The Baltimore Sun as a sports columnist in the early 1980s. Since then, Rhoden has joined the internationally recognized New York Times, where he has been writing about sports since 1983.…show more content… One concern that Rhoden addresses is that playing hurt dramatically increases the likelihood that an athlete will experience a career ending injury (4). Another concern raised by Rhoden is that that playing hurt often leads to long term chronic joint and muscle pain (5). Rhoden believes that these issues ultimately arise as a consequence of public pressure to play. He claims that scrutiny from the media and fans compromises the immediate and long term wellbeing of athletes by influencing them to take part in contact sports while essentially being handicapped by