Football produces more injuries than any other sport in the United States, both in total numbers and in the rate at which they occur. Between 2015 and 2019, high school boys’ football alone accounted for an estimated 1.93 million injuries, more than double the next closest sport. At the college level, football’s game injury rate hits 36 per 1,000 athlete-exposures, the highest of any NCAA sport.
But the full picture is more nuanced than a single winner. The sport most likely to injure you depends on whether you’re looking at raw totals, per-game risk, specific injury types, or the severity of what happens when things go wrong.
Total Injuries: Football Dominates by Volume
A five-year study of U.S. high school sports published in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine tracked national injury estimates from 2015 to 2019. The top five sports by total estimated injuries over that period were:
- Boys’ football: 1,932,145
- Girls’ soccer: 870,016
- Boys’ soccer: 685,289
- Boys’ wrestling: 353,710
- Boys’ basketball: 351,461
Football’s numbers are partly a function of roster size and popularity. More athletes playing more practices and games means more opportunities to get hurt. But the sport also has a genuinely high injury rate per exposure, so even when you control for participation, football still lands at or near the top.
Competition carries far more risk than practice across every sport. In football, the competition injury rate was roughly 12.6 per 1,000 athlete-exposures compared to about 2.1 during practice. Girls’ soccer showed a similar pattern: 5.8 in competition versus 1.2 in practice.
Injury Rate Per Exposure: Football Still Leads
Total counts can be misleading because some sports simply have more participants. Injury rate per 1,000 athlete-exposures (where one exposure equals one practice or one game for one athlete) gives a fairer comparison. Football’s college game rate of 36 injuries per 1,000 athlete-exposures reflects the collision nature of the sport. Every snap involves intentional high-force contact between multiple players, creating risk that non-contact sports simply don’t match.
Wrestling, ice hockey, and lacrosse also rank high on a per-exposure basis. Cheerleading, despite its reputation for dramatic falls, ranks 18th among 22 tracked sports at roughly 0.71 per 1,000 athlete-exposures. Its overall injury rate is lower than most team sports, though the injuries that do happen can be severe.
Concussion Risk Varies by Sport and Gender
Concussions follow a slightly different pattern than overall injuries. The CDC ranks boys’ tackle football at the top for concussion rates, with tackling responsible for 63% of football concussions at the high school level. But girls’ soccer comes in second, ahead of boys’ lacrosse, boys’ ice hockey, and boys’ wrestling.
The full CDC ranking of youth sports by concussion rate per 1,000 athletic exposures runs: boys’ tackle football, girls’ soccer, boys’ lacrosse, boys’ ice hockey, boys’ wrestling, girls’ lacrosse, girls’ field hockey, girls’ basketball, boys’ soccer, and girls’ softball. The presence of so many girls’ sports on this list reflects a real biological pattern. In sports played by both sexes under similar rules, female athletes consistently show higher concussion rates. In girls’ basketball, 51% of concussions result from colliding with another athlete. In wrestling, 59% come from takedowns.
Knee and Ankle Injuries: Soccer and Basketball
Not all injuries are created equal, and the type of injury matters as much as the count. Soccer and basketball lead in specific categories that can end seasons or require surgery.
Female soccer players tear their ACL at 2.79 times the rate of male players, with an overall incidence of 1.06% in females versus 0.38% in males. This gap appears after age 14, likely tied to hormonal changes, differences in neuromuscular control, and knee alignment that shifts during puberty. At the professional level, muscle and tendon injuries account for 46% of soccer injuries, followed by ligament injuries at 19%. The knee and thigh are the most frequently injured locations.
Basketball’s signature injury is the ankle sprain. Lateral ankle sprains account for 16.2% of all injuries among college basketball players, making them the single most common injury in the sport. The constant jumping, cutting, and sudden direction changes put enormous stress on ankle ligaments. Between 19% and 22% of all basketball injuries are recurrent ankle sprains, meaning once you roll an ankle, the odds of doing it again are high.
Overuse Injuries: Baseball’s Elbow Problem
Baseball doesn’t rank high in total injury counts, but it leads in a category that’s harder to measure: overuse damage that builds slowly over years. Elbow pain affects 20% to 30% of youth pitchers aged 8 to 12, jumps to 45% for 13- to 14-year-olds, and exceeds 50% among high school and college players. Somewhere between 30% and 70% of pitchers develop throwing arm pain at some point in their careers.
The ligament on the inner side of the elbow takes the brunt of repeated throwing stress. Surgical reconstruction of this ligament (commonly known as Tommy John surgery) has shifted younger over time, with an increasing trend among 17- and 18-year-olds. About 22% of youth baseball elbow injuries result in more than three weeks away from play. These aren’t the dramatic, visible injuries that make highlights, but they can alter the trajectory of a young athlete’s career just the same.
Catastrophic Injuries: A Different Measure of Risk
If you define “most injuries” not by frequency but by life-altering severity, the picture shifts again. Cheerleading accounts for a disproportionate share of catastrophic injuries among female athletes. Data from the National Center for Catastrophic Injury Research spanning 1982 to 2002 identified 39 catastrophic cheerleading cases: 52% were head injuries and 32% were cervical spine injuries. Basket tosses caused 35% of these, and pyramid formations caused 23%. College cheerleaders experienced a catastrophic injury rate five times higher than high school participants.
Rule changes have made a measurable difference. After the International Cheer Union banned hard-surface basket tosses in 2006-2007, the catastrophic injury rate dropped from 1.55 to 0.40 cases per million participants, a 74% reduction. The overall cheerleading concussion rate (2.21 per 10,000 exposures) is actually lower than the average across other tracked sports (3.78 per 10,000 exposures). So cheerleading is relatively safe on a day-to-day basis, but when something goes wrong, the consequences tend to be more severe.
How the Answer Changes by What You Measure
Football is the clear answer if you’re asking about total injuries, injury rate per exposure, or concussion frequency. It ranks at or near the top in every major metric. The collision mechanics of the sport create risk on virtually every play, and the large roster sizes multiply the effect across millions of participants.
But if you’re asking about ACL tears, female soccer is the standout. If you’re asking about chronic overuse damage in young athletes, baseball pitching carries unique risks. If you’re asking about the chance of a single catastrophic event, cheerleading and football both warrant attention. And if you’re asking about the most common everyday sports injury, basketball’s ankle sprain epidemic affects a huge number of recreational and competitive players alike.
The sport with the most injuries depends on what kind of injury you’re worried about, but by almost every broad measure, football sits at the top of the list.