Career and death, football and architects.

For fun, I started compiling names and the ages at death of well-known football players and compared them to equally famous architects and some related architectural theorist / critics.  It quickly became obvious that there is a difference in age -- as one might come to expect -- but without a much wider sampling, I couldn't tell for certain that this was a real phenomenon or just one from an exclusionary bias.

For what it's worth however, there are a couple dozen currently practicing architects who are in their 70s and 80s, including Frank Gehry, Toyo Ito, Renzo Piano and Norman Foster, in the prime of their professional careers.

For certain though, I'm sure this is why my parents banned me from taking up football as a kid.