Curbing Violence In Football, And Society

THE NFL (National Football League, USA) has a new rule prohibiting the use of the helmet when blocking or tackling, newly required restraint which once upon less violent times was assumed, not mandated. A current player with the Minnesota Vikings, doubtless a Trump supporter, sported a ball cap which read: "make football violent again". The message is as misleading as Trump's campaign slogan. Both football and America have been great, and violent, for a very long time. The two cultural icons are going in opposite directions. The United States has always been violent, but over the recent few decades has become somewhat less so, domestically, according to statistics, although it doesn't often seem so. Violent crime rates are way down, compared to the nineteen seventies, although vicarious violence in mainstream entertainment is way, way up. Football has also always been violent, but much more so in recent years, with bigger, stronger, faster players, and an enhanced appreciation for the sport's inherent violence among its fans. The popularity of violence in sports may be viewed in concert with our appetite for vicarious violence, apart from America's long history of military aggression. NFL players now feign confusion about the new rule, which really isn't new, because it was already against the law, and called "spearing". Head first. its that simple. why the feigned confusion? well, maybe to impugn the validity of requiring football players to play the game with original, gentlemanly intent. What they mean is that they do not like the rule. Or, they have already sustained a few too many concussions. keep the head up, and out of the way. Simple. If they, and we the people do not like the curbing of violence, we'll all have to adjust, just like we might some day have to adjust, one can hope, to a decrease in America violence, foreign, domestic, and vicarious.