There are a few things that are guaranteed in the life of a football fan--death, taxes (not "85 will always be open," Ochocinco diehards), and your favorite team suffering injuries.

There are a few factors at play in determining the team's big picture ramifications of a player suffering an injury, like who sustained the injury, when the injury occurred, and, of course, the severity of the injury. Your fifth corner's sprained ankle in the lighter part of the schedule is hardly an injury compared to your starting quarterback's torn ACL sustained during training camp (Unfortunately, I'm dealing with the latter right now, but we'll get to that later). Of course, the sheer nature of football essentially forces coaches to have their team prepared in the case of an injury, and this is a concept that fans often lose track of in the heat of the fanaticism with which they unconditionally support their teams.

But the catch here is that football has an aspect of chance to its structure, one that involves a little stroke of luck. Football is a game where nothing is predefined, no matter how certain a preseason projection looks, and that's just the way it is. Thus, just because disaster strikes once, in the form of a sprained MCL, doesn't mean it can't happen again. Even the deepest of talented football teams have a certain threshold for damage control, and when injuries start to pile up, coaching staffs and fan bases alike are left to flounder, pondering the motivation behind the football Gods' unfair, unjust acts against their team.

Before I go any further, let me just take a second to establish the fact that injuries, quite bluntly, suck. If you're still not convinced, consider this scenario: You just finished your Junior year on the field as one of the most disruptive pass-rushers in all of college football, and since many scouts are projecting you as a top five pick, you've decided to forgo your final year of eligibility at the University of Florida to enter your name into the NFL Draft. The Jacksonville Jaguars select you with the third overall pick in the draft. You've never missed a game in your high school and college careers, but during your first Rookie Minicamp practice with the Jaguars, you blow out your knee. They run an MRI on you, and inform you that you've torn your ACL and won't be seeing the field for another year.

Dante Fowler Jr., the aforementioned sequence unfortunately became a reality this past spring. They say that proper training is the best remedy to aid the body in preventing physical injury, and I can attest to this, being a former football player myself. However, I can also attest to the fact that a three-hundred-plus pound offensive lineman falling backwards headfirst into your knee with your foot planted in the ground will shred every vital ligament in your knee, no matter how much weight you can lift or how many sprints you can run. Just like that, all your hard work becomes obsolete, because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Obviously, you can start to see how, when multiple players end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, it can become inconceivably frustrating, especially when the unlucky players are key contributors to your team. At a certain point, if the injury list grows long enough in length or large enough in effect, I begin to have largely one-sided conversations with the football Gods about their actions, conversations that involve some not-so-friendly words on my behalf.

Currently, I'm sitting down on Saturdays and Sundays to watch decimated the Penn State Nittany Lions and Pittsburgh Steelers, respectively. As a team still recovering its roster depth in a post-sanction era, there may be no other college football team in the country that can afford an injury less than Penn State can (thanks, Mark Emmert). So, of course, they lose their star middle linebacker and key defensive cog Nyeem Wartman-White for the year to a torn ACL sustained in the first game of the season. Of course their starting running back took a helmet to the knee three weeks ago and hasn't played since with an "unspecified injury." Of course a San Diego State player rolled up on our most explosive offensive weapon's ankle, and we've been without him for two weeks. You know, football Gods, we don't have that many capable players to begin with, and we've suffered enough, so why are you doing this? Why do you hate us?

So, that was not very good, but the Nittany Lions look like they have guys who are willing and able to step up, and they haven't really been hurt significantly by absences (yet). This, on the other hand, was downright horrible.

Now, there are a couple of things I need to say about this. Firstly, it was probably the most gut-wrenching injury I've seen in recent history, because I know that the Steelers are not quite the same threat without their All-Pro quarterback at the helm. Add in the gruesomeness of the hit screaming torn knee ligaments, and you could easily understand why my hair caught fire at the thought of Ben Roethlisberger being sidelined for the season.

Secondly, it was an entirely illegal hit. Since this is completely beside the point of this piece, I won't spend much time disputing the level of dirty. It's not like a penalty flag would have magically reversed Big Ben's injury anyway. All you need to know is that, by Rule 12, Section 2, Article 9(e):

“A rushing defender is prohibited from forcibly hitting in the knee area or below a passer who has one or both feet on the ground, even if the initial contact is above the knee. It is not a foul if the defender is blocked (or fouled) into the passer and has no opportunity to avoid him.”

Gee, my vocabulary must have seriously regressed since I started studying engineering in college, because I'm pretty sure that language from the rule book perfectly described Mark Barron's contact with Big Ben on that play. But there was no flag on the play, and Barron wasn't even fined, as are most offenders of hits such as these. Of course.

Thirdly and finally, football Gods, what gives? Now I have to watch Michael Vick, a shell of his former self, conduct the Steelers' offense, who, by the way, struggled pretty mightily through the air in their first game without their familiar face under center. Our playoff hopes are officially in jeopardy, but I guess I can't be too upset with you, because I would almost bet my house that Mark Barron would have blown open any other starting NFL quarterback's kneecap with that hit. I guess it's completely legal in the NFL to fall on the ground and crawl with full force into the quarterback's kneecap.

While these are just my personal examples of the pain of injuries extending far beyond the player, they are effortlessly applicable to any team on any level in the entire country. It's dreadful to think that your team's entire season is one shot on the key player away from being laid to rest, but that's just the nature of the game anymore, and it makes fans palm their faces in despair when they see their team's uniform laying on the ground well after the end of the play.

If you're part of the allegiance to a healthy football team that hasn't suffered any serious injuries this season, do me a favor. Take a step back, knock on the nearest piece of wood you can find, and please, for the love of everything that is good, understand just how lucky you are.