Yep. That's what happens to my Browns all the dang time.
If football dies, then America dies with it.
If it were any other job, where work conditions were such that the average worker had to retire before they were 35 and that the workers in the industry were prone to having dementia before they were 55, would there be anybody here who would disagree with the need for the industry to look at ways to make workers safer?
I’m not anti-football, but there was a time when players could enjoy post-football careers and weren’t at risk of being in senior citizen centers by the time they were 50 or simply blew their head off, because they couldn’t continue to bear their injuries.
Where's my popcorn?
If they succeed in prohibiting football, then bans on hot dogs and apple pie will surely follow. After all, hot dogs are full of fat and sodium and the buns are made from white flour, and apple pie is full of sugar, fats and refined carbohydrates.
He’s correct, football will become too boring to watch. It’s going to become like Basketball, with its crooked Refs rigging the games. Professional Basketball is now on par with Professional Wrestling. Football is next.
I played the game only in high school, but even there I remember coming home EVERY night after a game or full-pads practice with a headache. Now, maybe that’s just because I was a wimp, but it leads me to be less than enthusiastic about encouraging my son to play.
What’s the big deal?
Why CAN’T there be a weight limit?
Push limits back to what the average player weighed in the seventies, or early eighties, or whenever everybody thinks the ‘golden age’ was, before everybody started getting concussions.
How does this “destroy” the game?
If you think it's hard to explain football to an Englishman, try explaining it, in German, to a German.
Roger Goodell is a pussy. A real man like Pete Rozelle would stand up and defend his sport.
I think the game could become safer with changes that remove the advantage of size- bigger field (more routes, rewards agility), fewer downs (more passing & kicking). More important, season-long suspension for charging or head-hunting.
My son and his friends care far more about the English Premier league, and for that matter European soccer in general, than they do about the NFL or college football. I do think football’s days are numbered.
Without that 2003 alleged “racial” comment, Limbaugh would be part owner of an NFL team that will slowly lose its value.
It's going to take a government imposed “universal settlement” to stop the hurricane of injury lawsuits that is on the way.
And if parents stop letting their kids play football, the game will completely die from the loss of talent.
Players wear a lot more equipment than they used to. When introduced, those changes were promoted as increasing player safety. Who but a Neanderthal or a brute would oppose a rule against better, safer equipment?
Unfortunately, the real world threw up a roadblock on the path to Liberotopia. Coaches, and players, quickly figured out that better protective equipment all-but implied that players could be trained to hit harder, faster and in places where the old-school guys wouldn't have. In a nutshell: making players wear codpieces, in a competitive sport, legitimates hits below the belt. After all, the new and better equipment will keep the hittees safe, won't it?
If only it were confined to competitive professional sports, but it's not. Common sense says: the "safer" an activity is made, the more people engaged in it will take boneheaded risks and operate on autopilot. Thus, "safety" decreases safety.
Now, we have the sad tragedy of a group of professional athletes who have never been more equipped to be "safe" suffering long-term injuries that their "unsafe" forebears didn't.
Of course, the chances of this little analysis waking up the nanny staters from their own lethargy is effectively nonexistent. The logic of "safety," which forbids them from questioning their favourite hammer, all-but-compels them to end up advocating outright bans.
If this argument registers at all on them, they'll just switch to ban-it mode - as the original post shows. As a piece of unlicensed critical thinking, it'll be swept under a "safe" rug.
I could care less about a cat fight between El Rushbo and George Will who make their living in the political entertainment industry.
Football is AMUSEMENT for the unwashed masses no more, no less.
Our Republic will survive with or without professional sports.
Our Republic will NOT survive without a healthy working middle class which is something these two elitist propagandists know very little about.
As long as it can be shown that player size and performance is achieved naturally, nothing needs to be done to football.
I don’t know about the friendly fields of strife but George Will crossed the “partisan divide” a long time ago.
I disagree with Rush in that there is a problem in football — Will is right, players are bigger, faster, and stronger, and the human head is not designed to withstand that type of repeated punishment.
But I disagree with Will because it’s a fixable problem. The NFL (and lower leagues) will try behavior modification, as usual, with penalties, fines and suspensions, but it’s going to be technology that fixes the problem, i.e., better helmet design. The problem needs to be approached from the correct mindset — not for protecting players the way the rule book says they should play, but rather as they will actually play.
I’ve read every reply to this point and I don’t think I’ve seen a comment on something that seems obvious to me. Isn’t this the same George Bowtie Will that waxes poetic every late-winter about the onset of spring baseball practice? Hasn’t he long lamented that football has surpassed baseball as the national pastime? Am I the only one that perceives a patent conflict of interest here?
Yep. That's what happens to my Browns all the dang time.