Playing flag football this weekend one of the guys I play with quipped, ‘Soon they’re gonna call it the NFFL’. He figures the new rules point to a shift dictated by one person, the commissioner of the league. While I agree that the NFL changes do point towards a reduction of violence in a sport that dictates violence, I don’t think the change is about one person. The change is a weak gasp from an organization struggling to stay ahead of a shifting culture and not understanding how to do so.
Football is about violent collisions at high speeds, about the nimble players who can avoid those collisions, and the rugged players who survive them. Football is also about concussions and severe brain injury. The organization is working to keep players safe–or so they lead us to believe. While the suggested changes seem to lower the risk of head injury, there is nothing on the table to reduce the turf caused leg and knee injuries that ruin careers. I don’t mean to doubt their intent–clearly brain trauma is more damaging than a blown knee. I mean to suggest the effort is being forced by societal perceptions and perceived standards.
Football players are heroes in America. We don’t want to see our heroes degraded in the fashion of Muhammad Ali. We also don’t want the children who follow these heroes to place themselves in a situation where brain injury is a high likelihood. Still, we don’t see this level of commitment to safety from Hockey (where fights are allowed to continue) and that could point to the leadership, as some suggest.
Ten minutes is not long enough to figure out what these societal cues are that are making the NFL need to be safer, but it is enough to notice that a safe game, at least in the way that is being suggested, is not football as I was raised to play. We can only wait and see what the game effects of the changes will be.
reflection of