I'm thinking mainly in terms of hockey, because that's the sport I know best. There are collisions in hockey that can be very damaging even though they're not against the rules of the game, simply because you have large men in lots of protective equipment going as fast as possible across a surface with minimal friction. There are some players who are much more aggressive in their body-to-body contact than others, and some of those players become forces within the game, through means of intimidation and sheer power. Within hockey they're known as power forwards. Peter Forsberg, a Swedish player, is a good example for my purposes. He was a power forward who played a tough, fast style of hockey. If someone was in his way he would knock them out of the way as often as he'd try to skate around them, all perfectly legal within the sport. He was one of the highest scoring players for a number of years. But his playstyle likely caused him to become worn down by injuries, and he was forced to retire earlier. It was his choice to play that way, and he benefited greatly from it until the consequences caught up to him.

But many other players, even if they still play hard, don't play that hard. They'll pull up sometimes rather than always put their body on the line in order to physically dominate their opponents. Some players rely more on speed, some more on accuracy, and these players can be hurt or have their effectiveness reduced by players who are more aggressive and reckless. It's part of the balance of the game as it's played today.

But if Peter Forsberg, and players like him, were able to recover faster from injuries, that would affect the balance and tip it toward reckless, physically powerful play at the expense of speed and accuracy. Your point about the regulatory body of the sport is well taken, though. There are ways to curtail the type of play through application of the rules, but I still find it troublesome.

Hockey's not the only example. The sport I know second best is baseball, and Buster Posey, a catcher for the San Francisco Giants, plays into this example. During the 2011 season Posey was blocking the plate to stop a runner from scoring, and the runner collided with him, which is allowed in baseball rules. Posey's leg was broken on the play and he missed the rest of the season, damaging his team's chances. Posey is a powerful batter as well as being a catcher, so his team didn't want to risk further injury. When he came back after his leg healed, the team instructed him to no longer block the plate. Posey now attempts swipe tags instead, which reduces his defensive effectiveness as a conscious trade-off for his health and longevity. A drug that increased healing would see teams making different decisions. There would not longer be such a trade-off, no longer a need to balance risk and reward in the same way as they do now. A player like Posey could be more defensively effective with less worry, because if he got hurt he would heal up faster.



Not in every case, as I think I've shown. There are other examples, in hockey and baseball at least, that I could point to.



But this is a good point, as I said above. Imbalances in a game can be corrected by its governing body. However, this could be at a cost to the game itself. In hockey again, if players started hitting harder and in a more reckless and dangerous fashion because of a reduced chance of lasting injuries, the NHL could mandate stricter penalties for hitting too hard. But that could have a negative effect on the game as a whole. Fans love the hitting, so reducing it in the game might hurt the appeal. At any rate the sport would be a little different than it was before, so I guess the sport would have to ask itself if the possibility of change would be worth reduced healing time for its athletes.