OT: The Future of Football

[SalemPats]

I think the exact opposite is closer to the case -- if the NFL doesn't figure out that it needs to reverse its present strategy of containment, trying to hide, downplay and distract from the seriousness of the CTE issue, it will be the wholesale abandonment of the game by casual viewers that will sound the NFL's death knell.

"Casual viewers" aren't peripheral to the NFL or any other major sport, and haven't been since the licensing of their television rights became every sport's primary source of revenue. Currently, about half of all Americans consider themselves fans of the NFL to some degree. That's where the money comes from.

If the nation's stomach turns on football the way it did on boxing, the NFL won't survive the dry-up of its main revenue stream -- for obvious reasons, a multi-team sports league's structure and overhead won't allow it to down-scale as rapidly as boxing did.

Boxing died because of corruption not because fans were bored of it

 

[mosi]

If you don't like physicallity don't play. If you're a wimpy sportswriter who complains find another job. I'm sick of the ****ifcation of sports.

Agreed. Let them wreck each other for our pleasure. As long as they know they will be vegetables by 60, I guess it is ok.

 

[SalemPats]

The handwriting is on the wall: the sissification of pro football has already begun. Eventually the rules will become so goddam fussy that the "game" will become unwatchable.

I'm already in the process of transitioning to MMA as a place to get my violence fix. I suspect I am not alone.

And please, let's not lament the loss of such a fine way to "build character." That has always been a complete crock of ****.

I have to agree. I don't mind stiffer rules for dirty plays, but we have a lot of wimpy people crying about the game

 

[SalemPats]

Agreed. Let them wreck each other for our pleasure. As long as they know they will be vegetables by 60, I guess it is ok.

if you're so worried don't watch it.

 

[PatsWickedPissah]

It's clear with CTE that the game as we know it is headed the way of the saber toothed tiger. It has to happen. CTE is a horror.
So, my selfish reaction is to enjoy this run with BB and Brady and not give a **** about who the next QB may be.
The corrupt owners and crooked commissioner make it easy for me to take the short sighted view. I should take it on principal over the CTE issue but I'm not that good of a person.

 

[Dr Pain]

Boxing died because of corruption not because fans were bored of it

In the 40s almost every guy boxed at least once in school or the military. I went to middle school in the late 70s and we had a gym teacher who did boxing for day in gym. Now I can't imagine any school doing that.

Boxing survived because the poor young men went to the boxing gym to try and make it big, I don't see that anymore, they try and rap now.

Great story from my dad in the Marines from 1944. There was a golden globe champion in his barracks, call him Mike. The sergeants treated Mike like gold, special privileges etc.. They set up a fight with a different unit and the day of the match, the sergeants found some reason to discipline Mike for having a candy bar wrapper (the sergeant gave him the candy). They made Mike run in a circle for 6 hours with his M1 over his head. The sergeants had all bet on the other guy and set the whole thing up to make everyone bet on Mike and then exhaust him and kill his arms prior to the fight. Mike got in the ring and knocked the other guy out

 

[SalemPats]

In the 40s almost every guy boxed at least once in school or the military. I went to middle school in the late 70s and we had a gym teacher who did boxing for day in gym. Now I can't imagine any school doing that.

Boxing survived because the poor young men went to the boxing gym to try and make it big, I don't see that anymore, they try and rap now.

Great story from my dad in the Marines from 1944. There was a golden globe champion in his barracks, call him Mike. The sergeants treated Mike like gold, special privileges etc.. They set up a fight with a different unit and the day of the match, the sergeants found some reason to discipline Mike for having a candy bar wrapper (the sergeant gave him the candy). They made Mike run in a circle for 6 hours with his M1 over his head. The sergeants had all bet on the other guy and set the whole thing up to make everyone bet on Mike and then exhaust him and kill his arms prior to the fight. Mike got in the ring and knocked the other guy out

I like the story

when they introduced a million belts so good fighters could get a belt without fighting one another until it was a monster payday killed boxing. The promoters killed boxing

 

[PatsFanInVa]

Bull crap. Football will live on. Girls will play quarterback. Turf will get more and more artificial. Sorry, I was thinking Arena league.

 

[Bobsyouruncle]

Fewer kids will play, fewer schools will accept the risk and have programs. Colleges will cut back on practices and many programs will fold. The NFL's talent pool goes to hell. I think we have already seen a decline in players in the draft being ready for the NFL, especially quarterbacks. I think the crap teams we see which seems to be the rule rather than the exception, are the result. We just basically saw the Patriots skip the draft and those players they did take, have the physical skills to be trained.

I started playing football in 4th grade and played through college. I did not encourage my son to play.

The world has no problem filling the ranks of far more dangerous jobs with less pay.

The talent pool will not disappear before the revenue pool. The revenue won't disappear unless the audience does. The author has cause and effect mixed up. Even College with a fraction of the talent of the NFL talent finds an audience and players showing that even "lesser talent" is a billion dollar business.

The idea that NFL owners will be sitting around with million dollar checks and nobody to cash them is absurd.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

PS thank you, great read. I'm having one of those moments when I'm glad only so much more can happen to the game before I shuffle off the mortal coil.

It's intriguing to think about allowing any number of players, provided an absolute weight maximum. Today's technology could make this a legitimate possibility... if it weren't that the NFL's use of "today's technology" does not extend to having two PSI gauges similarly calibrated.

 

[miloofcroton]

I think this is all exaggerated, but if it came to be, I would no longer watch football. I'd retreat to maybe rugby, the one remaining field sport where you can tackle. Maybe I'd watch a little more martial arts too... wresting, BJJ, boxing, MMA, etc.

BTW, the irony of being worried about some concussion issues (which, if you simply tackle correctly and also *stay out* if you do in fact get injured, seem kind of minor to me) while doing almost nothing about the fact that America has the highest obesity rate of any modern, wealthy nation is a almost too much for me to bear... We'll have tens or hundreds of millions of people get fat, sick, and die prematurely (while wasting taxpayer money on health care) before we have more than 10,000 football players have any sort of brain issues.

Also, the guy who wrote this article sounds like someone I would hate. I can't stand it when people compare football to things like soccer or basketball with lines like: "In contrast, almost every player in almost every other major team sport has to be at least competent at almost everything." It strikes as this tall poppy syndrome, this leveling of greatness down to the level of everyone else.

I don't think you can just magically design a game that is safe for everyone involved and is still challenging and fun. You have to make sacrifices and tradeoffs. I know people that play a lot of different board games every week, and that's just not my scene. I don't really enjoy playing according to some cute little rulebook that you wrote. I think you need to let people compete.

 

[unoriginal]

Pretty much every day I struggle over my deep love for football on a strategic level, and my growing disgust for it due to the CTE issue.

I cannot see allowing my own children to play this game.

 

[lamafist]

Boxing died because of corruption not because fans were bored of it

The storied history of corruption in boxing dates back to the late 1800's, and has been part of the sport's own mythology since the 1920's to the present. It both pre- and post- dated the sport's heydays. Clearly it alone didn't kill the sport.

Obviously, there were numerous factors to the decline of boxing as a spectator sport in America, and its inability to shake its association with organized crime and general shadiness played a part. But so, too, did the deaths in the ring, and the brain-damage it inflicted on its long-time participants, especially once the TV era forced audiences to watch all the sport's one-time greats' steady debilitation in front of their eyes.

 

[lamafist]

Football doesn't have an audience because there are so many players, there are players because there is an audience- and money. If you offered 500,000 dollars to anyone will to get kicked in the head and get a DEFINITE concussion- the line would be around the block to cash in. That money for POSSIBLE concussions will sell like hot cakes forever.

To kill football you need to kill the audience. Obviously they're trying but all this will do is help funnel money into some new hands.

The world has no problem filling the ranks of far more dangerous jobs with less pay.

The talent pool will not disappear before the revenue pool. The revenue won't disappear unless the audience does. The author has cause and effect mixed up. Even College with a fraction of the talent of the NFL talent finds an audience and players showing that even "lesser talent" is a billion dollar business.

The idea that NFL owners will be sitting around with million dollar checks and nobody to cash them is absurd.

What the author of the article is suggesting is a gradual simultaneous, synergistic diminishing of both the talent and revenue pools -- a burning of the candle at both ends.

Think about this: already in this thread, a handful of PatsFans.com posters, myself included, have expressed discomfort about our continued fandom in light of all we're learning about the inevitability and severity of CTE. As members of online fan communities, we are by definition part of the minority of the most engaged, committed fans out there.

If the spectre of CTE can make a nontrivial number of us, the game's most engaged, dedicated consumers, think twice about our fandom, than the NFL should absolutely be worried about the affect the issue will have on the more casual fans who make up the vast majority of their TV viewership.

 

[Simpelton]

Pretty much. I can't get entirely behind a sport that exists to kill its athletes off. Hell, I was put off hockey for a couple years because of what happened to Marc Savard, and at least the NHL went the extra mile after Savard and several similar incidents raised the awareness of PCS and CTE through the roof and went hard after the headhunters. The deaths of players such as Derek Boogaard, Eric Rypien and Wade Belak and some statements made on the record by enforcer Georges Laraque make it clear that hockey has exactly the same problems but is making a show of trying to be open about it and fixing them.

If the NFL can't match the same level of commitment to its players as an almost literal blood sport like hockey, I dunno. Hard to get behind that.

 

[miloofcroton]

Pretty much every day I struggle over my deep love for football on a strategic level, and my growing disgust for it due to the CTE issue.

I cannot see allowing my own children to play this game.

He then shared some statistics that were a bit confusing, to say the least. I interpreted it to mean that 63 cases of CTE were found in youth football players over a 59-year period from 1954 through 2013, when 30-to-40 million kids played football.

“It’s a rare phenomenon,” Dr. Maroon then explained. “We have no idea the incidence. There are more injuries to kids from falling off of bikes, scooters, falling in playgrounds, than there are in youth football. Again, it’s never been safer. Can we improve? Yes. We have to do better all the time to make it safer. But I think if a kid is physically able to do it and wants to do it, I think our job is to continue to make it safer. But it’s much more dangerous riding a bike or a skateboard than playing youth football.”

NFL doctor says CTE is being “over-exaggerated”

Call the source biased if you will, but these are my feelings.

My understanding is that the main issue with CTE is when people continuously sustain concussions (even minor ones) and play through them. Quite simply, don't do that.

 

[Tony2046]

If you don't like physicallity don't play. If you're a wimpy sportswriter who complains find another job. I'm sick of the ****ifcation of sports.

I agree but that isn't what the article is about. The article bases the changes from the Insurance and legal side of the game.

A couple of the hit points:

1. Lawsuits for Injury will continue to climb. "Which could have been somewhat avoided if the NFL had not played Tobacco industry type cover up games"

2. Because of Lawsuits et al, High schools will no longer be able to afford the Insurance necessary to run a football program.

Both of those factors plus lawsuits aimed at the NFL and College level will force the game to change from top to bottom.

So it won't be about the wimpy sports writer rather it will be about a collective legal attack that includes ex football players and parents to which the NFL is vulnerable because of the way they hid or denied the CTE correlations and hid or denied its "create a pain medication addict" program by dumping oxycodone pills in player's laps so they could continue to play.

I do agree with @Bobsyouruncle that there will always be players willing to gamble their future health for big dollars but I'm not sure how that plays out legally at the High School and College levels. If the game doesn't change will there be a point in which Insurance companies won't cover players for CTE? I don't know.

 

[Brandon_Cox]

Malcolm Gladwell and Bill Simmons had a great back and forth on how to save football from itself. It makes an interesting companion piece to this article. Linky

 

[mosi]

if you're so worried don't watch it.

What are you talking about? I am serious. I am not worried.

 

[Ochmed Jones]

Sadly this sport is doomed because it destroys players lives.

Everybody with young children needs to see the piece on Earl Campbell or Kevin turner.