Football is a violent sport.

It is not meant for everyone.

Players are bigger, stronger and faster than ever before, making for greater impacts.

Every level of the game has tried to make it safer. Rules are different, equipment is better and coaching has become more about avoiding big hits than actually making them.

Still each week players are carted off fields from high schools to the largest of stadiums. Careers both promising and established come to lightning-quick endings because the player took the wrong hit on the wrong part of his body.

Yet we watch, just as before, cheering the body blows and then grimacing at the slow motion replays.

Now parents question if they will even let the next generation of youngsters start playing the game that has become our national obsession.

All this while we wonder why these men play the game. We also wonder if it is worth it, or what price it is worth.

Chicago Bears safety Chris Conte gave us all an inside look at what players think about their profession recently.

“I’d rather have the experience of playing in the NFL and die 10 to 15 years earlier than not play in the NFL and have a long life,” Conte told WBBM radio in Chicago Monday. “I don’t really look toward my life after football. I’ll figure things out when I get there. As long as I outlive my parents.”

Ironically, Conte said that while sitting out the Bears’ game against New Orleans with an injury. He has missed eight games this season with injuries, including concussions.

At 25 he has a long life ahead of him, but he also has seen and heard the stories of what his future might be.

Dave Duerson, a player who once played the same position in Chicago as Conte, shot himself in the chest on Feb. 17, 2011, after complaining for years of headaches. Duerson was just 50 and left a family behind.

He was on the surface the perfect player/citizen. A graduate of Notre Dame, he was an All-Pro on the famous 1985 Bears’ defense and NFL Man of the Year in 1987 for his work in the Chicago area.

Duerson was thinking of others even in his last moments. He shot himself in the chest so that doctors could examine his brain.

He left this note: “Please, see that my brain is given to the NFL’s brain bank.”

There doctors found he was suffering from “classic pathology of CTE and no evidence of any other disease.”

So Conte knows all too well that what takes place can lead to a lifetime of issues. But he is like so many other players who can’t see life without football being nearly as good.

And it is not just about the money.

“I’m not saying I’m going to go die when I’m 45, 50,” Conte added. “I’m fortunate to go out and play football.”

Most players in the NFL agree. They all now know the risks and have seen what the game has taken from those who played before them.

It is the same in high school and college. Players who used to dismiss what could happen believing they were unbreakable are no longer that naive. They all know their life is one bad hit away from changing forever.

Still they go out each week and practice and play with little or no concern for their future health.

Each one knows you can’t win when you are playing it safe.

Conte’s words come as no real surprise to anybody, but rather proof that the game of football can become bigger than life to the men and boys who play it.(Associated Press)

Nam Y. Huh