Choosing Violence

AMERIAN CULTURE, from the beginning nurtured in violence, long since decided that violence provides the best entertainment.That decision gains reinforcement more as we the American people make our choices, and we choose violence. We choose football over all other sports. Geroge Carlin's hilarious stand up comdey routine about the diffrence between the relatively gentle sport of baseball an the brutally rough sopot of footabll is among his many inconic philosophical dissertations couched in comedy. How true it is.Old folks can remember when football involved the skills of blocking and taclking. Now,the one overarching skill is what we call "hitting", colliding with other players with the maximum force possible, rather than with the minimum force necessary. We love it, so we watch it more enthusiastically every year, sending football rankings, pro, college, and high school, to saoring heights of popularity.There is a direct correlation between the rise of the NFL to the status of supreme American sport, and its steady increase in violent content. We notice all this, we express concern, and we do little or nothing to change it. Meanwhile, assisted living facilities fill up with former players, still young, with serious, debilitaing brain damage,unable to function independently. Repeatedly heading a soccer ball causes damage; helmet to helmet contact, now illegal but still frequent, does exponentially greater harm. Our remedies are bandaids covering gushing wounds, cosmetic adjustemts to rules and equipment, mainly. In college and profreesionl football, the most damaging play of the game, the kick off and kick off return, have nearly been legislated by new rules entirely out of the game. An actual kickoff return is now a rarity. There are two problems with this.The most exciting play of the game has been vrtually eliminated, and, the change does nothing to improve safety in the other ninety nine percent of the game. Drastic solutions are possible, in theory, but would never pass American muster. One would be to remove helmets from the game, and "rugbyfy" American football. No go on that, in all likelihood. Then to, there is a penalty called "unnecessary roughness", seldom used. OK,start using it.Technically, in today's game, there are few if any plays from srimmage in which there is not unnecessary roughness of some kind, somewhere on the field. OK, fine. Simply start throwing a few yellow flags, and calling the penalty so as to protect all players, not merely the quarterbak,and maybe, jsut maybe, we might begin to see some old fashioned blocking and tackling, and a bit less hitting. What about reinstating the good old fashinoed kickoff, but with one basic rule change:making it illegal for anyone without the football to make physical ontact with any othr player. No blocking, no tackling, no hitting, other than the desired tackling of the return man. Sure, it sounds wild, crazy, and silly, because its so much different than what we're accustomed to seeing. But a few moment's thought helps. Under the revised system, a kickoff becomes a positional game of strategy and chess. Players on the kickoff return team impede other player's progress merely by positioning themselves between the ball carrier and the would be tackler. Players on the kicking team try to get around the interceding players to get to the return man. Depending on the relative effectiveness of the respective players, a kickoff could either be a short lived failure for the offense, or a huge run back, resulting in a touchdown, just like in the old days. The problem with permanent, debilitating injuries in football has become extreme, more extreme each season. Drastic problems call for drastic, innovative solutions.