Those who know me know why that's kind of a big deal. I played football for most of my young life, from middle school through college. I have life-long friends because of football. The sport helped me get into an extremely competitive and challenging academic institution, which in turn assisted me in gaining access to law school, which leads me to where I am today. Some of my fondest memories during law school, in fact, entailed coaching football at South Eugene. When the Saturday mornings are sunny and crisp in October, my instant recollection goes back to when I was 12, playing football on soggy fields before going to Oregon games. I bonded with my mom and dad over Notre Dame and the Denver Broncos, learning at a young age both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat (and also how to interpret Lou Holtz).
My football career, though brief compared to some, has left me with a legacy of creaking joints, a left shoulder that gives out every now and then, and a neck that tightens up and makes a loud popping noise that kind of freaks me fiancee out...but I never tore any ligaments or suffered any catastrophic injuries. As a lineman, I was rarely exposed to any high-impact collisions aside from the occasional blitzing linebacker with cruel intentions. And even then, I had little or no qualms with cut-blocking, so my bell generally speaking remained un-rung.
And I am fully aware how incredibly fortunate I am. The odds of that happening--of me making it all the way through my senior year of college football without so much as missing a practice--are so staggering when you look at the sheer numbers and percentages of attrition in the sport that I can only surmise that I was blessed with a malleable body, decent balance, and an incredible training staff. (Thanks Steve Graves, head trainer of the CMS Athletic Department.)
I played my last down nearly a decade ago now. Every week, my college team celebrated the biggest hits of the prior game with a video segment labeled "crunches." We oooh'd and ahhh'd at the hellacious hits we inflicted upon opposing players, (disclaimer, this clip includes a guy in college acting like a guy in college) with members of the Crunch Club receiving Nestle Crunch bars, and the Crunch of the Week recipient getting a t-shirt honoring the accomplishment. As players, you love to see the big hits. As players, you love to make the big hits. Part of what is fun about playing football is feeling invincible in your armor and seeing guys fly after contact. It's a thrill.
Yet the older I get, and the more removed I become from playing, the more what football has become today scares me. From an early age on, kids are getting bigger and faster and stronger at an exponential rate. The J curve in football is shocking to me personally. As a senior at South Eugene High, I was 6'2", 250 pounds. There were not many guys in the Midwestern League bigger than me. Now? I almost guarantee you linemen of that size are the run of the mill in the 6A Southwestern Division. The biggest, fastest, and strongest of those players go on to Division 1 football in college. And the biggest, fastest, and strongest of THOSE progress to the NFL. By the time we get to professional football, we have a league full of incredibly gifted athletes who could, at any given moment, end another man's career with a shot to the head. James Harrison has stated that he's considering early retirement because he doesn't want to get fined over what he considers to be the way you're supposed to play football.
He's not exactly wrong, and I can't exactly blame him. That's how it's been marketed, coached, and played for as long as I can recall. (Consider that Harrison was fined $75,000 for his hits on Mohammed Massaquoi and Josh Cribbs this weekend, but that the NFL is selling the officially licensed photo of his hit on Massaquoi. Explain that message to me.)
Gregg Easterbrook of ESPN.com has been on top of the concussion discussion in football all season long, and he, along with writers such as Bill Simmons, has been decrying how the institution must change from the ground up if we are to continue playing a game that so many Americans love without seriously placing everyone's well-being at risk. Age levels that most urgently need state of the art equipment protecting their brains--children--can't afford this equipment in leagues unless participation costs are to sky-rocket. The coaching at these young ages is typically about as advanced and skilled as the parents willing to volunteer their time to organize practices and orange slices happen to be. Old-fashioned blocking and tackling techniques have been largely replaced as you get into high school and up by highlight-reel collisions and blindside impacts. Without blaming the media and older players too much for not "setting a better example," blah blah blah (and there certainly is merit to that point), we all have to recognize that teenagers are going to do what they can to get noticed and get props from their peers. The loudness of a hit captures the imagination of a 16 year old football player much more easily that the soundness and angular perfection of a stock block on a cornerback.
So much is made about the foundation of football, and the tough guys from the days of yore; names like Ditka, Nitschke, Butkus, Night Train Lane, Deacon Jones, and Mean Joe Greene. We glorify how the game wasn't "sissified" back then. About how they were warriors and didn't need all this protection. Look at these veterans now. Many died early as a result of the physical punishment they received. Many of those who linger on suffer early-onset dementia. Mike Webster, one of the best centers in the history of football, died alone in his car homeless under a bridge in downtown Pittsburgh. Andre Watters, renowned for his hard hitting when he roamed the defensive backfield in Philadelphia, killed himself some say because of the mental anguish and torment he was enduring losing his faculties so soon in life. Every day we hear more stories about retired veterans who actually sustained more concussions than even they knew when they played. "Concussions" as we know them today were not part of the football lexicon then.
And those men PALE in comparison to the speed and strength of their modern-day counterparts. Equipment and sports medicine have advanced in space-age ways to try to protect the health and well-being of these athletes. We can now literally put an entire player's spinal cord on ice instantly through chilled saline injections in cases of spinal or cervical fracture, helping stave of once-certain paralysis. But there's no way to keep a brain from rattling inside someone's head. The more we learn about the science and physics of head injuries, the more scary the information seems. Harrison is frustrated right now, because he is not out on the field trying to maim anyone. He's played football one way his entire life, and he's come from literally nowhere to become a defensive MVP and handsomely paid man by hitting hard and playing ferociously. The NFL, through mixed messages and convoluted actions, has given him and every other hitter in the league notice that their trademark is about to be revoked....at least publicly.
But how can anything actually change? Referees are now authorized to eject players for hits to the head, but none of them will. With the speed of todays game, refs would have to review most hard collisions on video to see whether a player led with his helmet, connected with the other player's helmet, or visually seemed hell-bent on doing so. Refs just won't. The culture has shifted already in the league somewhat, with players becoming more career-savvy, and head-hunter icons like Jack Tatum fading into obscurity; you no longer actually get paid based on your capacity to injure someone else. But that doesn't stop the highlights. Will ESPN be instructed not to play up huge hits? They have to attract viewers. Will college teams stop ooohing and ahhhhhing over bone-jarring shots? These are testosterone driven 21 year old men. Don't hold your breath.
Simmons half-jokingly has suggested weight limits in football. That said, however, most of the damaging head shots in football don't come from the big guys. We're usually not limber enough or fast enough to meet vulnerable targets head to head in the open field. Weight limits position by position? That's a possibility. But then we slide down that slippery slope of dangerous eating disorders....which could open up a gigantic can of worms as far as the examples being set for impressionable young athletes. Easterbrook wants everyone to shift the focus back on body tackles, wrapping up, grabbing cloth, etc. etc.
Listen, I don't know what the answer is, clearly. I know I don't want parents to get in fights in the stands over hard hits during a pee wee football game. I know that rule changes, possibly such as no hitting until a receiver has two feet on the ground, sound good in theory, but are nearly impossible in reality, and might not change anything anyway. I also know that NFL players are all doing something they've dreamed about since they were kids. They would never trade spots with me. They assume the risks of injury when they go out on the field, and they have each other's livelihoods in their hands every Sunday.
When the time comes and my sons (or daughters, if they really want to) have to make choices about what sports they play, I won't forbid them from playing the sport I loved playing, and the sport I enjoy following so much. I'll teach them as best I can. I'll give them whatever information makes sense to their little heads....but if they're tall, let's just say I'm going to actively imbue them with the sense of how awesome squeaking sneakers sound on hard wood, how to shoot free throws with their eyes closed and listen for that swish, and how to dribble with both hands by the team they're 3.
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