Saving Football From Itself

TODAY'S FOOTBALL PLAYERS are bigger, faster, stronger, and better than the players fifty years ago, during my childhood. That's true of athletes in every sport. The style of play has changed in every sport as well. I remember college football teams had offensive and defensive linemen who weighed 240 and 250 pounds, probably averaging fifty pounds less than today's linemen. And they still had trouble catching up to the quarterbacks, who tended to be smaller back then. Now, linemen are not only huge, but quick and fast as well. They tend to catch quarterbacks when they chase them, making life for the modern quarterback especially dangerous. Most quarterbacks get injured numerous times during their high school, college, and pro careers. When I was a kid players made tackles with their heads up, back, and out of the way. Now they lead with their helmet, perfectly willing to engage in contact to their own head. Blocking and tackling, as I remember it, was originally intended to be completed as efficiently as possible, as effectively and mistake free as possible, without regard to the force of impact. Now, its all about hard hard can I hit somebody. it seems to be the result of the demands of an increasingly violent culture, where violent entertainment makes money. And because football is nowadays all about hitting hard, making high impact collisions, we have an epidemic of brain damage among football players, it seems. This poses a threat to the very survival of the sport, as people are likely to turn against it. The solution is right in front of our face. The unnecessary roughness penalty flag. A rule could be implemented requiring that all blocks and tackles, all "hits", be made with the least amount of force and impact needed to complete the task. It would seem strange at first, and all the bad asses would make fun of it, would suggest that the players wear skirts, but we'd all get used to it, and it just might save the sport, and a lot of brain cells.