THE SUPER BOWL may be the single most noticed sporting event in the world, assuming that the world cup and the olympics are both a collections of many sporting events. People who don't know anything about american football know about the super bowl.
One famous american football player predicted that within twenty or thirty years american football would be extinct, because somebody will get killed playing it. A death, right there on the field, which has never happened before. At least, no nationally televised NFL on in game fatalities.
every year, all over the country, particularlly in august, high school football players drop dead from dehydration - heat exhaustion. Rarely does a year go by without at least one such death. Older retired professional football players are developing dementia at an alarming rate.
The consussion controversy is well known. The number odf consussions is rising rapidly each year, at all level, from junior high to pro. Bigger, stronger, faster players, resulting in harder collisions, is the reason most generally given, and its undoubtedly true.
Twenty five yearas ago few football players for weighing over three hundred pounds, and teh few who did were famous for doing so. Now, nearly halef of them weigh three hundred or more, including nearly every college and professinal lineman.
The protective equipment, helmets, pads, are better, more protectived than ever, which can, ironically, by more dangerous for opponents. Getting hit with a modern helmet is like. getting hit with a cannon ball at high speed.
The culture has changed too. Americn culture in general. The violence is more extreme, and in much greater demand. Gun battles in moveis are bloodier, fist fights are far more gruesome and bloody, and the death toll in both mediums is higher than ever before.
The cultural shift to more graphic, intense, extreme violence has infected football, like every other aspect of culture. Its obvious even in the language of football. Football used to be a game of blocking and tackling, now its a gamd of hitting. Everything is a hit, the harder the better.
believe it nor not, the culutre of football used to be to block and tackle as efficiently as possible, with as little unnecessary roughness as possible, no more unnecessary roughness than is needed to get the job done. There was even as penalty for non compliance, called "unnecessary roughness".
unnecessary roughness penalties are rarely called anymore, even when its obvious that it should be, and only when it involves the quartetback, because we really don't want the start quarterbacks to get hurt, while the rest of the players don't matter as much.
we the american people want the hard hits instead of the effective blocking and tackling because we want the violence, we love the violence. Ultimate extreme death fighting in cages surrounded by bloodthirsty screeching animals has replaced boxing, and violence has replaced american football.
no matter how big and strong and fast the players are, or ever become, it wouldn't take more than a few unnecessary roughness penalty flags to get the players to play the game effectively, not unnecessarily violently.
there's really no need to make the game go extinct, or to drastically reform it in any way, or change it; just a few yellow flags thrown to the ground singaling a fifteeen yard penalty for unnecessary roughness, early in every game if need be, and the message will come across.
before you know it, american football will be safer and more exciting than ever, because reliance on speed, quickness, and smarts will replace reliance on brute force and violence, and it'll be a better sport, yet less gladiatorial...
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