The less THIS happens, the better.
I was wrong about the N.F.L.
On Tuesday, the N.F.L. owners voted to move kickoffs back to the 35-yard line, where it was until 1994. The new rule will make the game less exciting but more safe. I didn’t think they’d do it.
The league has a problem—I mean, other than the impasse in labor negotiations that threatens to disrupt the coming season and lose owners and athletes millions. Its game is more popular than ever, but little by little, the evidence is mounting that it is also lethal. Playing pro football injures the brains of a higher percentage of the athletes than anyone suspected, and far worse than suspected. Players are quite literally sacrificing their lives, or at least two or three decades of them, for the Sunday entertainment of America.
The owners decided to sacrifice some of that entertainment value to lessen the brutal collisions and brain trauma that come more frequently from kick-off returns than any other play. True, they declined to vote for some more extreme rule changes that had been proposed, but that’s all right. The owners did the right thing.
Not that the players are appreciative; they are not. Neither are the fans: the new rules will reduce returns, widely regarded as the most exciting play in the game, and make the game less violent, which hard-core fans regard as indistinguishable from less fun. Many sportswriters, not to mention Rush Limbaugh, are mocking the N.F.L.
Never mind. The owners, who are often and often justly attacked for greed and callousness, showed that their priorities are in order. Exciting plays that render men mentally disabled in their fifties aren’t worth the cost.
Ethics Alarms 
Sometimes, my non-American friends mock football for being a weak version of rugby. “Rugby players don’t wear armor,” they smarm. “That makes it better.”
1. Why is it better/more manly/braver just because they don’t take the proper precautions?
2. If the money that exists in the NFL was in rugby, and if anyone gave a damn about their healths, they would be wearing armor, too.
3. Most of these friends are Canadian, whose national pastime is the only sport where people wear MORE armor than football: hockey. (Though they pointed out that the need for the armor in hockey is in no way disputed.)
A bit of a sore spot for me. And I don’t even like football. I just hate poorly structured arguments.
One of the popular suggestions to reduce football injuries is to REDUCE armor and go back to leather helmets, on the theory that no players will deliberately butt heads if there’s less protection.
Jack – Just a point of clarification. There is NO “looming player strike” – the work stoppage has already begun and it is imposed by the owners in the form of a lockout. The players have not and will not strike. However, you’re not talking about the labor situation, so I won’t burden your blog with the details. I think that before giving them even an ounce of ethical credit, you might want to check out their 18 game proposal, roundly rejected by the players, and a source of contention in the recently concluded negotiations with the now-defunct players union (my employer).
I am, obviously, biased but I suspect that any public action at this point towards increased player health and safety has more to do with the butt-kickin’ they’ve taken in their recent moves against the players (and the fans by endangering the 2012 season) than this one step toward increasing the safety of the game.
You’re right; that was careless of me—I fixed it. Your suspicion occurred to me too. It would be odd, though, to take a step that is predictably unpopular with the public (who, as far as I can detect, is fine with players crippling themselves, just as they don’t seem to mind baseball players using drugs to mutate into the Thing.
As a youth sports official, I can tell you that the amount of protection has nothing to do with whether players butting heads. It is all in how they are coached. This past season, after ejecting three players in one quarter for illegally using their helmets, I learned that they were being coached to do it. I told the coach that if it happened again, he would be forfeiting the game. He pitched a fit. Youth league is where it starts and where it needs to end.
John, never mind the health and safety of kids. You’re missing the whole point of youth football. It’s for certain parents. It’s so pot-bellied, middle-aged guys can swagger and strut about, index fingers in the air, chanting, “We’re Number One!”
You trying to spoil their fun?
Absolutely!
Which raises the issue of parents endangering or pandering their kids in order to, 1) profit from them in the long run and, 2) use them to satisfy their own thwarted dreams of glory from their own youth. In so many ways are professional sports and Hollywood alike!
Jack: I weep for the Headless Horseman of the gridiron. I’m almost surprised that this HASN’T happened in truth. Maybe we should replace Pro Football with something more enjoyable and safer besides. I believe they called them “gladiators”.
I’m going to have to disagree on this one. The change in kickoff distance from the 30 to the 35 is not so much a safety change as a game balance change. A real safety change would be getting rid of kickoffs, or modifying some of the other rules (wedges, anyone?).