Insuring and Saving Football, Socialistically

FOOTBALL, AMERICAN STYLE has changed considerably over the past fifty years. Linemen have put on about a hundred pounds, skill position players run the length of the football field about half a second faster, and blocking and tackling have been replaced by what is now generically called "hitting". Bigger, stronger, faster players, responding to the cultural imperative to "hit hard' has produced predictable results, which were not predicted; many more injuries, including injuries which cause permanent damage, particularly to the brain. In the eerily days of hard helmets, when dense plastic replaced leather, players continued to tackle with their heads up and out of the way. No longer. Now, the helmet is a weapon, and even with the increase in penalties for leading with the helmet, the practice continues, largely unabated. And all these debilitating injuries are taking football in a dangerous direction; towards extinction. The ordinary component allowing football, an inherently dangerous sport, to exist is the very component which makes all risk taking acceptable, the component which makes us all yawn but without which an aggressively over achieving risk taking culture would not be possible; insurance. The diminution of risk through the process by which a risk taker may pay for the privilege of assigning risk to another entity, which in turn redistributes the risk across large segments of society, is the very essence of the principle in any society in which risk taking is unavoidable to achieve economic advancement and general material progress. Football leagues and teams from pee wee to the National Football League are underwritten by insurance policies, without which sponsors and owners would never even bother to get close to the game, risking their investment money. In recent years, at all levels of competition, as the injuries have piled up, insurance pay outs have risen dramatically; the most famous example being a one billion dollar settlement by the NFL to cover the costs of care of permanently brain damaged retired players. In the United States, insurance companies write insurance policies at their own risk, at their own discretion, always and only after a thorough and comprehensive study of the likelihood of securing a profit by so doing. Nobody forces insurance companies into, or out of business, and nobody law forces them to write any particular kind of insurance. and now, the unthinkable is happening; insurance companies are taking their football and going home. All across the fruited plain, insurance providers are getting out of the game, and if the trend continues there will be but one option, an option which might, in desperation, be demanded by tens of millions of avid football fans unwilling to witness the death of their beloved gladiatorial games; government football insurance. it may comedown to exactly that. if private capitalistic, profit seeking insurance companies abandon football entirely, what other option will there be, other than the extinction of the game as we know it?