Semipro football player dies because of hit on field

But there is already a word for current usage, and that word is "amateur." When nobody is paid, that is amateur, not professional. Always has been.

And "pay to play" is absolutely not "semipro." Those two phrases are exact opposites.

I've always understood "semipro" to mean one of two situations:

1) A team where all players were paid a pittance, not enough to live on, as in the Webster's definition above. Meal money and road expenses, generally. This is from the time when just about every community had its own baseball team.

2) A team where most players were unpaid amateurs, while certain talented "ringers" (sometimes former professionals in their sport) were paid for their services. This could be a one-off deal, or for a certain length of time, or for the entire season.

Are there any real semipro teams/leagues left? Probably not. They're either professional or not, these days. But that doesn't mean we should use "semipro" as a synonym for "amateur."

 

I don't disagree with you folks.

The word is used way too liberally.

 

I probably said something like this earlier in the thread, but I think it's one of those cases where the teams and leagues themselves use a term, and the press just kind of picks it up and runs with it. Kind of like what happens in politics all the time. (i.e. "pro-life," "pro-choice," etc., etc.)

 

KVV,

Great read. I'm glad a story like this got out there. Thanks for telling it.

 

That story was fantastic. Riveted from start to finish.

I began my career near that area (used to drive through Portland, Ind. all the time on my way to assignments from Muncie) and I have a sister-in-law who lives in that region. Those folks don't have much. I can understand how football provides a respite, consequences of semi-pro shoddy standards be damned.

 

Great read.

 

I was kinda struck by this line in that story:

You've gotta wonder about a sport when neurologists can identify who played merely from a quick glance at a brain scan.

Also the video clip of the actual hit that killed him was something to behold--the guy might as well have been hit by a truck--yet a completely clean and legal hit. As Devil noted earlier, a basic problem with these semi-pro (or amateur) football leagues is they allow too much discrepancy in size/talent on the same field. The players come from a broad mix that might include some studly young former D1 players still with aspirations of hooking up with an arena league, as well as flabby or pencil thin 33 year old weekend warrior dads. A league that allows the former to lay full contact hits on the latter is gonna see bad things happen. Almost surprised there aren't more deaths.

 

There is girls soccer coach in my area who has had seven concussions. Five of them during his own high school athletic career and two as an adult. He has terrible migraines and some memory loss. It got so bad that he missed an entire school year not long ago. His doctor told him his brain looks like a football player's.