Monday Morning Quarterback

It's Monday morning and at least for some to time to rehash the play by play of a weekend of football. Here I should qualify that by saying "American Football" because to 95% of the world football means Soccer. Now I like Soccer too. My youngest son used to play in a junior league and we still occasionally watch a game on a Saturday afternoon, though Soccer is only carried by the Spanish language station. Actually I think sports are more entertaining when you can't understand a word the sports commentators are saying.

But back to Football, I am starting to question my relationship to the game. It's not just a sport but an entire industry that no longer has a season but a year round news and marketing cycle. There is talk of extending the season two more games, add in pre-season, the play-offs and the Super Bowl and that's over six months of football games a year. In the off season there's the drafts, all the drama of contract talks (to make the average fan fell like a insider) and if things are really slow the broadcasters can air a couple of summer games from a fledgling European Football League. Nothing is more smugly satisfying for an American audience than watching Europeans "trying" to play Football -but I'm sure the Europeans feel the same way when they see an American Soccer team.   
   

My problem isn't the hype or the marketing but the injuries. Football has always been a violent game. It was almost made illegal or at least banished from college sports. In the 1904 college football season there were 18 deaths and 159 serious injuries. Lucky for the game Teddy Roosevelt came to the rescue. The "flying wedge" formation was banned, new rules made the game civilized just like the Geneva Conventions took the most brutal edge off war -you could still cut a man in half with a machine gun but couldn't poison him with gas. With the start of the 20th Century both modern warfare and football began to emerge.


The metaphors between Football and War are classic, George Carlin made comedy of out of them but the comedy is fun because it is true. Still Football is more than a kabuki version of battle, it has its own arms race. When Vince Lombardy was coaching the Green Bay Packers to victory in the first Super Bowl, front line players were like 6 feet tall and 225 pounds. After the days of "Refrigerator"  Perry those same positions are filled by men that are an average 6 inches taller and 100 pounds heavier. These athletes are not only bigger but they are faster and they can smash into another player with the momentum of a small car crash. Today's player has almost been engineered -feed, trained and monitored since grade school to be a career athlete.




As the hits got harder equipment manufacturers up their game. The helmets and padding protected the players better but ironically that gave the players a false sense of security. It meant that players felt they could hit even harder and remain safe. Rugby is an equally physical sport but it doesn't rack up the injuries like Football even though Rugby players don't wear any protective equipment. Specialists in sports medicine have written about the "Superman effect". For a time the helmet became a weapon on the field.

One of the more notorious hits in Football was during the 1991 playoffs between the Kansas City Royals and the Cincinnati Bengals. It was when Bo Jackson was tackled and his hip was torn out of its join. It was like watching a nature film where a killer whale had snatched a seal swimming on the surface of the ocean. It was immediate and violent as Bo Jackson almost cartwheeled through the air before he landed hard on the field.

Bo Jackson was a once in a generation athlete, he played professional football and baseball at the same time. He was brash and like any other talented young man who knew what it's like to have thousands of fans cheering his name -Bo was a little full of himself. I wasn't the only person who thought a hit like that would take a some of the wind out of his trash talk but I felt sick when I heard how badly he was hurt. Bo did return to professional sports after surgery and rehab but that he was never the same, that tackle effectively ended his career.

The average career in any professional sport is short. In Football is about five years and it is a very rarefied few that last ten years or more. Cracked ribs, ACL tears, sprains and deep bone bruises have all been accepted risks in the game but recently the insidious nature of head trauma and concussions have come to light. The improvements in football helmets only help mask the damages. Players could be hit with forces of 40 to 50 g's. The helmet protected the player from the most obvious injuries but the brain inside was smacked from side to side as it impacted and bounced off the inner walls of the skull.

It is troubling and hard to enjoy a game where player's are put in harm's way like this. Football has working class appeal because some of the injuries of the game are not that different than many work related injuries. But nobody thinks a job should kill you. The repeated hits to the head not only shorten the athlete's life but also steal away their consciousnesses to have it lost to demencia and suicidal thoughts. Maybe it time to bring back the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt and re-civilize the game of Football again. 

Like so many things in life Football has fallen prey to the mentality that one must win even if it means winning at any cost. The blowback on this kind of thinking isn't always clear at first but history is full of cautionary tales where victory was worth the price. Today's Periclean victory might keep professional football selling beer and TV ad time for now but it could ruin the future prospects for the game. I mean wouldn't it be nice if Football was fun instead of just two teams pummeling each other with punishing hits.   

One little tune from Randy Newman and a few football memories -oh the first six seconds are silent before it starts. Enjoy.