There’s been a lot of talk recently about how to make football more safe. So far, most of the rule changes have served to chip away at the fundamentals of the game until it eventually won’t resemble football, although to be fair some of the reforms are pointless symbolism aimed at placating critics. Don’t lead with your head! Why not? What if that’s the most effective play.
The point of tackling is to take down your opponent. You should be able to do that by any means necessary. Don’t bring posture into it. They’re discussing a wrap-up rule now, so you won’t be able to deliver a forceful hit. Brutality is all football has going for it. It’s ironic such a sport is becoming the most regulated. Nobody’s telling boxers not to hit as hard. That’s why football has so many rules. Rules you’ve never heard of. Rules that confuse Chris Collinsworth and Bill Belichik. Because it’s on its way out. They’re just making stuff up now.
The CTE issue is huge right now. It appears that repeated blows to the head kill your brain. Seems pretty intuitive. Now we have to figure out how to make football more safe. I have the answer. Stop playing football. The whole debate is a total charade. You can’t make football safe any more than you can cliff jumping. Most of the game is predicated on smashing your head into someone, tackling someone, or trying to avoid being tackled and failing most of the time.
Any time you have a bunch of giant dudes pushing toward hostile territory, there’s going to be damage. Rule changes or different helmets can’t do anything about it. It’s time for football fans to admit the obvious, they’re watching people kill themselves for entertainment value. These guys are Gladiators, true, but we’re living in a society where people freak out if you leave a dog in the car and hiring a prostitute is considered tantamount to endorsing human trafficking. It’s tough to rationalize football in that case.
I have a solution. Perform a simple pivot. Just switch over to rugby.
Rugby is basically the same thing as football. Big dumbass dudes charging at each other in order to place an oblong ball into hostile territory. I don’t know anything about rugby but from what I understand they don’t wear pads and there’s a more constant flow of play so the guys don’t have as much energy to truly maim each other. It’s tough to measure CTE rates in NFL players. Contrary to popular belief, they commit about half as many serious crimes than the general public, adjusted for the same age group. That doesn’t factor in guys like Ray Lewis who murder people and have others take the fall. An NFL player is obviously much more financially secure than your average 26 year old dude, and clearly has less motivation to resort to a life of crime. The fact is, a lot of them are beating up women and brandishing guns in waffle houses. It appears there’s a problem.
According to the American Journal of Sports Medicine 1 in 100,000 college and high school football players die each year from singular on-field football accidents. That’s actually pretty low. 45 of every 100,000 people are killed every year just by living in Detroit. Still, this seems unnecessary. Luckily no NFL players have died on the field yet, but it seems a statistical inevitability that it will happen at some point. As you see more and more players retiring early, it’s becoming clear that even the athletes are admitting a significant sacrifice to their own personal well being. Of course, most of those guys are white, come from more privileged backgrounds, and have much more opportunity outside of football than your average player. There are always going to be guys who weigh the options and decide it’s worth it, and those guys are going to increasingly come from more and more impoverished communities, leading to the eventuality that the people society has marginalized are putting their lives on the line so we have something to watch while drinking beer, and that’s kind of icky.
There aren’t any crime stats comparing rugby players to the average citizen, which leads me to think it’s less of a problem. On-field deaths are nearly nonexistent, and CTE is obviously less of an issue since they don’t wear helmets. This should be an easy switch. There’s not a lot of skill involved in most positions in football, so learning the game should be an easy transition for most players. Running backs and receivers are going to be good at it. Rob Gronkowski will be amazing. On another positive note, there will be less of an emphasis on the quarterback position, which features by far the most annoying men in all of professional sports. Some of your larger fat asses will be weaned out but the NFL rosters should stay mostly in tact. The differences in the actual game play would be ironed out within a season or two. If need be, the league could make some minor adjustments to allow for incessant commercial breaks.
So, you still have large men running into each other for entrainment purposes, but on a far safer platform. It will still be played on Sunday, and most fans will eventually come around. For those who don’t, they’ll be replaced with a bevy of international fans and viewership will increase. This is the best solution I’ve heard on the issue, and I’d like to go on record as being the originator of the idea.
Let’s make the NFL the NRL. It’s either this or nothing. That guy in the photo is the same person.