Football Gone in 20 Years?

[BTTA]

The likelihood is that we will see change in all of these areas - rules to reduce the violence but keep the strategy, athleticism, and speed; equipment improvements; and legal liability limitations. None of the three will solve the problem alone, but together they will get close.

The one comment in all that's said above that really makes me think is the one about class distinctions. My son (6'4", 225) was a high school sprinter, javelin thrower, basketball player, and state volleyball MVP on a championship team. He had a great time with high school athletics. In college, he did all of that again.

The college football coach tried to recruit him to play, and he came to me for advice. My comment: "Will playing football be more likely to enhance your future life, or limit it?" It didn't take him long to answer it. He went on to grad school and a career using his head (brains). He's recently quit his job at the White House and is motorcycling around the world, which he considers less dangerous than playing college football.

I suspect that will be the question that divides the haves and have nots - is football more likely to enhance your life or limit it?

 

[TriplecHamp]

I love football and played at a very high level through college. I did have 3 or 4 concussions and have memory loss from two of them where it was as if I woke up sometime later and don’t remember what happened. My son who would have easily been playing in college if he took up football, was never that interested and I never brought it up ever. If I had said to him that he should play he would have. He mentioned playing a few times but I never responded. Didn’t tell him no but I didn’t say that’s a good idea either.

Whats my point? There will be no middle class or above playing football and it will just be the poor. There will be enough players as long as they don’t expand the league. Someone is going to die in the game soon. The players are just too fast and too strong and the consistency of a brain is the same if you are 100lbs or 350. Look at boxing which is another sport I loved. In the 60s-80s it was huge. Can you even name a current boxer now?

Most people who don't even watch boxing know who Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather jr are. The problem boxing is suffering from now is a lack of a great heavyweight American fighter like a Tyson. The heavyweight division is almost irrelevant today with the dominance of the Klitchko brothers and their less than appealing style.

 

[vyrago]

Lem Barney: Football will be gone in 20 years

It's off season and this may be an extreme viewpoint but with the threads about Goodell wanting to eliminate kickoffs and the myriad rule changes ongoing and as we learn more about the science of concussions, I would not take the bet against this. Then I'll probably not be here in 20 years.

Not if you play football, you probably won't.
Perhaps boxing is the example that football will follow. It still exists, but name me the heavyweight champion of the world (a silly title if there ever was one). MMA is sort of boxing, but it is hardly as popular as boxing was in the 40ies, 50ies and 60ies and those pictures of bloodied, broken fighters don't help.

When it finally sinks in that we are getting immense pleasure from watching huge, talented men maim themselves and their opponents, I think football will morph--through disgust, guilt and legislation into a faint shadow of its present self.

 

[RayClay]

Not being an American, but wasn't the soft helmets they used in the 50's/60's (?) replaced because hard helmets provided better comfort (and protection) ?

I do agree with the sentiment, however, Unfortunately I think it will not happen ...

Actually, that's addressed in this article, but I don't think the past matters since no one predicted the extent to which these hardcaps would be used as missiles by players launching or battering.

There have been soft helmets used in the modern NFL and the inventor is making more. You simply aren't going to batter with your head when you have a soft helmet on

 

[primetime]

this is horrible...you mean someone may even die soon??? that's it...OUTLAW the NFL immediately!!!..."...hic...hey buddy, you got a light???...thansk pal...hey barkeep, what's the damages???...8 Buds?...hey wait a minute, I only had six...wasshatalkinaboud, man....wheresh my keys?..i gotta get outta here fast...."

peopel smoke and drink to the tune of a million + deaths a year...I don't see anyone outlawing the tobacco or liquor industries...playing NFL football is a conscious choice...every player knows the pros and cons...the league will disappear when people put more value on their health than making millions of dollars...which means ,most likely, never....

Or that 40,000 people a year die in car accidents, which we consider an acceptable number for the convenience of our cars. It's the same thing we were talking about in the other thread, though - sensationalism versus statistics. We'll have extremely tight and inconveniencing (and expensive) security and rules in airports, sporting events, etc. or a country where our government collects all our data on a massive scale and houses in on servers in Nevada to maybe save a handful of lives (maybe - it may never happen, it may not save anyone) every few years yet we're willing to keep driving cars and smoking cigarettes and those claim exponentially more on a daily basis.

Look, the NFL has done good things to improve player safety and could probably do more. Science needs to look into ways to prevent concussions. The league needs to improve options for retired players, and not just start it at age 50 or 65. But I think it's being more than a little sensationalist to suggest that football will be gone in 20 years.

 

[Raymond]

........... and houses in on servers in Nevada to maybe save a handful of lives (maybe - it may never happen, it may not save anyone).............

What ? Huh?

 

[ctpatsfan77]

FWIW, don't forget that in 1905 (before the NFL existed), 18 athletes died from football injuries.

That contributed to a movement to ban football outright (the New York Times, at the time, called it a "curable evil").

But in came Teddy Roosevelt, who convened a meeting where the college folk agreed to make some major changes to make the game less rugby-like. The most notable of those: the legalization of the forward pass.

IOW, football's adapted before. If it has to change to survive, it will.

 

[Gwedd]

Personally, I see the NFL embracing technology in a bid to improve safety on the field.

In addition to helmets and shoulder pads, hip pads, etc, I can see a type of "flak jacket" made like modern Dragon Scale armor, with a hard shell surface and dense-foam padding beneath, like shoulder pads. Very flexible yet very protective of the torso. Similar pieces for the upper and lower legs, arms, etc. Not limiting of movement, or adding much weight, but helping to prevent fractures, ruptured spleens, sports hernias, etc. In fact, it wouldn't be at all out of the realm of possibility to develop a free-moving device on the back of the helmet that looks like a neck roll, or soft tail, that hardens under pressure when hit, keeping the helmet from being forced back or to the side more than a specific amount, thus preventing neck strains and potential C-series fractures. Kid's already have a toy clay that does the same thing. It's soft and pliable until you squeeze it, when it becomes firm and solid.

I can definitely see moves towards the tech/equipment area before any sort of decline in the NFL begins.

Having said that, we have to understand that football, like track & field, swimming, boxing, wrestling, etc, are all just pandering to our base instincts for competition and warfare. The Olympic games, and the sports they began with, like javelin, discuss, running, wrestling, boxing, etc, were all training for war. It was a way then, and is now, of showing our potential for combat through the actions of the best warriors. Sports, at it's most basic level, is a blood sport without the maiming and death. It's always been that, and it always will.

There's a reason that the modern NFL, boxing, wrestling, etc, all look so much like the arenas of ancient Rome, that the phrase "gladiator" is used so often. It's who we are as a race, it's in our genetic makeup, and attempts to lesson that go against the basic grain of our personalities. We do so at the risk of depressing our abilities to defend ourselves in the future.

Now, that's all probably better suited to another thread here, but that's my argument against the further dilution of football. We can embrace technology, but in the end, it, like all sports, is a violent thing and it's an outlet that society needs.

 

[Tunescribe]

I think the NFL will exist for many decades to come. Heck, the Roman gladiator games flourished for hundreds of years before Rogerius Goodellicus replaced them with maypole dancing in the 5th century.

 

[spacecrime]

NFL is a $10B industry.

Folks need note that relatively bigger industries have vanished in similar 2 decade timeframes.

Can you name a few $10B industries that vanished in two decades?

All I can think of are print newspapers (still alive but dying), and record industry. But newspapers didn't vanish, they just morphed into a bigger cash cow (internet), and if the record industry is now the recording industry. THeir 'death' was also stupidity in not embracing a new way of doing business. I doubt the NFL will rigidly stick to a format that is dying. If nothing else, they are business savvy.

Oh, maybe bookstores? They're still around. Borders is gone, but then so is the USFL and the XFL.

Video rental stores?Again, the base product (movies) remained. Only the format changed. Adapt or die. I think the NFL will adapt.

But what $10B industries vanished?

 

[Pewsterbaby]

Well, if someone said 20 years ago that Rock & Roll would die, they'd get laughed at.

Well, it did.

As a reactive rule, I'll never completely dismiss a prediction, having already lost my faith in humanity.

 

[PatsWickedPissah]

US textile industry
Minicomputer industry, Sic Transit Gloria DEC etc.
US TV set industry...

If you make a broad definition of "morphing" then nothing vanishes, e.g. the buggy and buggy whip industry became the automobile industry, but thats just semantic word games.

Point being that the oft cited $10B figure for the NFL says nothing about its divine right to exist.

To be clear as I stated in post #1 the article cited represents an extreme outlook for football in my eyes but only fools oblivious to the rapid pace of change of culture and style would deny that industries, especially in fickle entertainment style do go out of favor. It's possible (though I don't believe it) that rapidly changing US demographics, cultural shift, and litigation make what we today call soccer the giant industry in sports entertainment in the 2030s.

 

[Mike the Brit]

Good, thoughtful thread -- thanks.

Personally, I don't think you can separate the "football players are bigger, faster and stronger than ever" theme from the very weak (actually, pretty much shoulder-shrugging) attitude towards PEDs.

Apart from the direct harm that may come from PEDs (which, for obvious reasons, we don't have good scientific information about) they make every impact that much more devastating.

 

[PatsWickedPissah]

Bottom line, those of us who like NFL football and want it to continue should embrace effective measures to improve player health. I join those lobbying for improved helmet technology. It's a travesty that more R&D hasn't been done to make helmets (1) safer and (2) less weaponized. Secondly although I'd not been too comfortable about some of the rule changes initially, if they're sincerely beneficial to player health then I'd rather see the game evolve somewhat than risk it being insurance priced or litigated out of prominence.
We'll see what happens, or at least the younger forum members will.

 

[Joker]

Bottom line, those of us who like NFL football and want it to continue should embrace effective measures to improve player health. I join those lobbying for improved helmet technology. It's a travesty that more R&D hasn't been done to make helmets (1) safer and (2) less weaponized. Secondly although I'd not been too comfortable about some of the rule changes initially, if they're sincerely beneficial to player health then I'd rather see the game evolve somewhat than risk it being insurance priced or litigated out of prominence.
We'll see what happens, or at least the younger forum members will.

Uh...I think we've been discussing this on this board since 2004 when Ian brought the latest version of Ian Logue's Patsfans.com on line. In fact we all expected that this priority would be set into full motion when the owners voted in Goodell. Well, it hasn't. The league is paying lip service in a tepid way to this issue while trying at every turn to get more games on the schedule. The rule changes SEEM to be a nice thing but when you WATCH games where the rules are ignored by the refs the entire game, just what exactly has changed?

edit: and to take it a little further, my OPINION is that the players will have to SUE the league to really set the wheels of change in motion.

 

[PatsWickedPissah]

That's why I qualified support of "rule changes sincerely beneficial to player health"

What Goodell and his complicit boss owners say they're doing vs actually what they're doing is a separate topic always worth ranting about!

 

[Gwedd]

That's why I qualified support of "rule changes sincerely beneficial to player health"

What Goodell and his complicit boss owners say they're doing vs actually what they're doing is a separate topic always worth ranting about!

Concur. As is said: "Actions speak louder than words"

 

[mgteich]

This is a relatively simple proposition. Either the NFL (and NCAA) will greatly decrease the possibility of concussions or the game will be played by only poor people. We have a long history of being willing to watch poor people risk their lives for us.

More and more folks do not want their sons to play football at any level. And yes, the situation is similar to boxing.

However, I think that the owners, the union and the commissioner are dealing with this issue, and will continue to do so. Of course, almost every effort at safety will be rejected by most on this board.

 

[Patsrock]

How come when these discussion of safety happen. No one ever places blame on the sometimes reckless plays of players. It is always Roger Goodell trying to ruin the game. People seem to forget Goodell can't just insert playing rules whenever he wants, the teams owners vote.

 

[ctpatsfan77]

This is a relatively simple proposition. Either the NFL (and NCAA) will greatly decrease the possibility of concussions or the game will be played by only poor people. We have a long history of being willing to watch poor people risk their lives for us.

More and more folks do not want their sons to play football at any level. And yes, the situation is similar to boxing.

The issue with the boxing analogy is that there were a number of other reasons for its decline independent of the concussion issue (e.g., the rise of other sports, the fact that it is/was widely seen as corrupt/rigged).