22 Advantages and Disadvantages of Football

There are pros and cons to all of them when it comes to sports. This article will go through 11 advantages and disadvantages of football that will get you excited and second-guess the sport. Even though football does have some cons to its name, I must say that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. Now, what are the pros and cons of football?

The advantages of football include improved fitness and mental health, you get to be outdoors as it’s an outdoor sport, you will have lots of teammates, and it’s really fun. On the conside, you can’t play football alone, there’s an injury risk, it can be expensive, and it’s time-consuming.

That said, there are many things in favor and against the sport of football. To determine whether football is a sport for you, we need to dive deeper into each advantage and disadvantage separately, so you can see what the sport is all about.

For a quick look, take a look at the table below, where you can see all the pros and cons of football.

Football Pros	Football Cons
Improves Physical Fitness	High Risk of Injury
Mental Health Benefits	Football Can Get Expensive
Improves Reflexes and Reaction Time	Needs Time Commitment
It’s a Team Sport	Big Learning Curve
Will Increase Confidence	Lack of Motivation
Football Is Played Outdoors	Can Interfere With Personal Life
Numer One Scholarship Sport	Trouble With the Teammates
You Can Play Football for a Living	Football Is Very Physical
Massive Earning Potential	Hard to Reach Professional Level
Makes Dating Easier	You Need Others to Play Football
Football Is Fun	Finding a Field Can Be Difficult

Advantages of Football

Below you can see the 11 advantages why I like to play football. I’m sure there’s more, but these are the most significant ones!

1. Improves Physical Fitness

Football is undoubtedly one of the most physical sports in the world. Depending on the football position played, it’s also very demanding. However, all players will get a good sweat, which shows the amount of physical effort.

A training session or match of proper football will increase your cardiovascular endurance thanks to excessive running, jumping, fast direction changes, etc. Also, interval training is included in the essence of football because there are periods of slow and fast movement in the form of sports.

In addition to endurance benefits, the intensity of football will also activate and improve your muscular endurance and even build muscle. Although, nutrition plays a big role there too. Football allows easy fat loss, too, depending on the nutrition, if done with intensity and consistency.

2. Mental Health Benefits

Football has physical benefits, but it has many mental health benefits too! Have you ever been on an intense run, and after a shower, you feel like a million bucks with tons of energy, clarity, and endorphins? Football has the same effect!

During football, you will get adrenaline rushes that help with stress release, and you will be calmer, happier, and more at ease after a session. This is especially true if you suffer from slight depression, anxiety, or generally have a low mood. Football increases your endorphin to a healthy level, giving you a better mood.

You will also socialize with other players and coaches, which plays a similar role in mental health.

3. Improves Reflexes and Reaction Time

ESPN ranks football as the world’s 3rd difficult sport considering various skills. The most significant ones are speed, agility, analytic aptitude, and hand-eye coordination. These skills are highly used in football and promote better reflexes and reaction times.

Fast movement changes, reaction to various players within seconds, precisely throwing and catching a ball, and analyzing everything happening around you won’t go without benefits!

Reflexes and reaction time are used in everyday life too. For example, driving, virtually all sports and activities, many jobs, and even a regular conversation needs reaction time. Reflexes are highly important as it helps you protect yourself from danger by moving your body quickly.

4. It’s a Team Sport

Football is a team sport, meaning you will have dozens of like-minded people to play a sport you love with. The first benefit you get from this is new and often long-lasting friends because life has put you all in the same place, meaning the football team.

There are many other things a team sport like football will give and teach you;

• Leadership skills
• Accountability
• Teamwork
• Communication
• Self-esteem

Armyandnavyacademy.org states that people playing team sports like football will do better academically and even achieve more in life, as many researchers have proven. Those are some great skills and traits we all can benefit from.

5. Will Increase Confidence

Considering that you will be playing football with your teammates, it increases the production of endorphins, dopamine to be exact, and it’s played outdoors where you can get fresh air and sunlight; it’s safe to say it will boost your confidence.

Confidence comes from a feeling of well-being, acceptance of others and yourself, and belief in your capabilities and skills. You will gain well-being from exercising and outdoor air, and you will gain belief in your capabilities through the cheers of your teammates and successes on the field. This way, you will also start to see yourself in a better light, giving you lots of confidence!

6. Football Is Played Outdoors

Football requires a lot of space, so it’s played outdoors in massive stadiums or fields. There are many benefits of outdoor play;

• Sunshine
• Fresh air
• Lowers blood pressure and stress
• Improved mood
• Helps with insomnia

There are many benefits included with each of the listed things above. For example, you will gain vitamin D from sunshine, clean lungs, and happy emotions from fresh air, and reduced blood pressure limits the risk of developing major cardiovascular diseases.

In addition to the physical benefits, playing football outside is a lot of fun! Oh, and the stadiums are often beyond incredible, making you feel great.

7. Numer One Scholarship Sport

In the United States, college degrees can get quite expensive, but luckily some scholarships can be partial or even full, meaning monetary aid for the tuition fee.

Football is the number one sport giving out scholarships every year, giving you the chance of getting one that is considered a dream for many.

According to NCASports, 85 full-ride FBS scholarships are awarded every year. In addition, 63 FCS scholarships are awarded too. FCS scholarships are equivalency scholarships, meaning a coach can divide them, giving even more athletes partial scholarships!

8. You Can Play Football for a Living

If you work hard and implement all the required football skills, you can get excellent at it. This can open many doors for you, one being a football career.

Salary.com states that the average football player’s salary in the United States is $124,943 annually. That’s a lot of money, and even the worst 10% earn around $71,683. If you can reach the NFL level, the earnings would be counted in millions.

Now, you don’t even have to be a player to have a career in football. There are many other jobs needed, including;

• Talent scout
• Football coach
• Dietitian
• Referee
• Statistician
• Stadium usher

As you can see, you can still have a career in football if you don’t play on the team. That’s pretty neat!

9. Massive Earning Potential

Assuming that you can reach the NFL level, the highest level of football there is, you will become a very, very wealthy person.

Let’s look at the top 5 NFL earners and the worst five the same.

NFL Player	2022 Total Cash
Matthew Stafford	$61,500,000
Josh Allen	$46,961,405
Deshaun Watson	$46,000,000
Aaron Rodgers	$42,000,000
Kirk Cousins	$40,000,000

Those are the top 5 earners of 2022 in the NFL. Reaching that level is nearly impossible, but there are always people reaching it so that it can be you. Now, even if you didn’t reach the top spots, let’s look at the NFL players that earned the least in 2022.

NFL Player	2022 Total Cash
Jordan Akins	$1,085,000
Nathan Shepherd	$1,085,000
Kyle Peko	$1,085,000
Zach Wood	$1,085,000
Maurice Hurst	$1,085,000

Even if you are the person earning the least in the NFL, you will still be a millionaire. Oh, and you should remember that those earnings are just from one year.

10. Makes Dating Easier

We all have seen football movies or series where all the players get all the girls. Even when those are slightly exaggerated, there’s a seed of truth to it.

Naturally, most girls love the athletic and active type over the couch potato type. This isn’t all due to more athletic, muscular, and defined bodies. The tendency for athletics often comes with confidence, which is one of the biggest things women find attractive.

Many researchers also prove this, and there’s a variety of attractiveness among athletes. Generally, the more successful the athlete is, the more attractive he is seen by the general popularity.

Of course, love, personal preference, and individuals have a massive say on this. However, when looking at the general mass and massive polls, athletes are seen as more attractive, which isn’t a surprise.

11. Football Is Fun

The last advantage isn’t certainly the least, and it’s the fact that football is a lot of fun. After all, isn’t the reason you first started and continue to do football?

Working with the team, catching and throwing the ball, running with an objective in mind, tackling and getting hit, the lockerroom talk, and everything between is all part of football and what makes it so enjoyable.

Having fun with the sport you love is well enough to stick with it!

Disadvantages of Football

When there are advantages to be found, there are disadvantages too. Below you will find 11 disadvantages of football that are part of the sport.

1. High Risk of Injury

One of the biggest disadvantages of football is the high chance of injury, at least when compared to other sports. When looking at the big four sports of North America, including football, baseball, basketball, and ice hockey, football has by far the highest chance of injury.

The injury rate of NFL players is 75.4 per 1,000 AEs, meaning that for every 1000 players playing a single match, 75.4 players will suffer some injury. That’s a whopping 7.54% injury chance per game.

The most common football injuries include;

• Ankle sprains
• Knee injuries
• Shoulder dislocations
• Wrist and hand injuries
• Concussions

That being said, the injury risk of football is something to note.

2. Football Can Get Expensive

Another significant downside to football is its potentially high cost. The actual cost depends on whether you buy new or old equipment, the quality of the equipment, where you play football, whether you take team trips, whether you have sponsors or scholarships, and more.

When talking about football and its cost in general, the price is high, mostly due to the requirement of a long list of protective equipment. The football equipment list includes;

• Helmet $300
• Shoulder pads
• Hip pads
• Thigh pads
• Knee pads
• Mouthguard
• Athletic cup
• Gloves
• Football

That’s a long list of mostly very expensive equipment. Summing everything up, the average price of football equipment is between $1000 and $1200. You can certainly go over it, but don’t worry, you can go under it.

Local football clubs often can help with the equipment, you can buy used ones cheap, and there can be monetary aid from the government given to families with low amounts of money.

3. Needs Time Commitment

Football isn’t like table tennis, where you can start literally in one minute and continue and end it for as long and as soon as you. Putting on the protective equipment for football alone takes time, without forgetting the game itself, going into formation, taking off the equipment, showering, and you name it.

You will need to travel to the field and wait for others to get started, as football can’t be played anywhere, and its’ a team sport. In addition, football isn’t the easiest sport either, so a time commitment is needed to play well.

However, you can see this as a positive because if you love football, time spent with it isn’t a disadvantage but an advantage.

4. Big Learning Curve

As I already said before, ESPN ranks football the 3rd most difficult sport to learn, just behind boxing and ice hockey. Therefore, the learning curve is big in strength, agility, game intelligence, rules, hand-eye coordination, nerve, and more.

This is why the sooner you start football, the better. It can be difficult to pick up a new sport when you’re older, and this is true, especially when it comes to football.

There are many weird rules, plays, many positions, a ton of equipment, endless game strategies, and you name it. Getting into the physical level alone can be difficult, and when you add the other things, the learning curve is steep.

5. Lack of Motivation

With a big learning curve, you can experience phases of motivation loss. This isn’t good, especially when football requires a large time commitment, so you can feel unmotivated to do it if you don’t feel like it.

I have learned that when you experience a lack of motivation phase on something you love to do, you need to take a break, and 90% of the time, motivation and joy will arise.

6. Can Interfere With Personal Life

As all things require time, focus, and effort, you are taking it away from something else. If you’re a passionate football player doing it several times per week, hours at a time can intervene with your job, relationships, energy levels, etc.

If you are a recreational player, I won’t recommend playing as much football that it interferes with the rest of your life negatively.

However, if you find football exhilarating and wouldn’t do anything else over it, then knock yourself out. After all, if you enjoy it more than other things it might be interfering with, it isn’t a huge problem.

7. Trouble With the Teammates

When you lock up dozens of young boys or men in a locker room, there’s bound to be some trouble. This can and usually will happen even if you are amongst friends because friends fight too.

I remember times when I was training; there were some serious disagreements, roasting, and even fights. I’m quite calm, so I rarely played a part in them, but they sure happened.

You should be prepared to face disagreements and some manly roasting if you’re up for football. Most of the time, it’s in good fun’s name, but it can get overboard rather quickly.

8. Football Is Very Physical

Football is a sport that requires more endurance, strength, and power than almost any other sport. Therefore, it will be harsh and tiring, and you will be sore after a match or training.

Personally, I’m a fan of muscle soreness and tough endurance training because it makes you feel like you achieved something, and the feeling after a shower is beyond incredible. However, it can be excruciating during training.

If you hate muscle soreness and physical exercise, I’m sorry, but football isn’t necessarily for you. Although, you can always learn to love them because when you get a taste of that feeling of achievement, you can’t live without it. Football is a great way to get it, but certainly not the only one.

Related: 11 Useful Ways To Prevent Blisters From Football Cleats

9. Hard to Reach Professional Level

If you want to go pro in some sport, I’d highly suggest looking elsewhere than football if you don’t possess unique skills in the sport.

Football is by far the most popular sport in the United States, and the number of players that can be on the roster is limited. In fact, each NFL team is allowed to have 53 players on its roster, and as there are 32 teams, there are a total of 1,696 professional football players at all times.

When comparing the number of 1696 players in the population wishing or pursuing the sport, it’s nearly impossible to reach that level.

Want to be a professional fisherman? Your chances are probably a hundred times more likely, although the glory and money won’t be as good.

10. You Need Others to Play Football

There are ways to train football alone, yet you can’t play the sport without ten other players on the field and the same 11 players on the opponent’s side. When you need 22 players for a sport and a massive field to play it on, you can be certain that you can’t just decide and play football.

In most cases, you will need to be part of a football club, a recreational football community, a high school or college player, or even a professional football player. If you’re really lucky, you can gather 21 friends plus yourself and start playing proper football!

Still, it’s good to have an option to throw a football with a friend or practice with various drill options with fewer people. But keep in mind that for a proper football contest, you need others to play, and the amount isn’t low.

11. Finding a Field Can Be Difficult

The last advantage isn’t the most insignificant one, as it sometimes can be a pain. Football fields aren’t the most common area needed for sports, so it can be difficult to get a game started even if you have enough people.

There are football stadiums scattered around the United States, but they’re off limits most of the time for the public as they are highly used by college and professional football teams. High school fields are far easier to access, so that’s a positive note.

All in all, football is an amazing sport with many advantages and disadvantages. I’m certain that if you enjoy football, the pros outweigh the cons. However, if you feel that the negatives about football are too much for you to get into football, don’t worry; there are various other sports out there. In this case, I’d suggest looking at various racket sports that aren’t similar to football.