The Sport Report

While the NFL has been attempting to crack down on illegal hits within the scope of play for what seems like years now, week 6 of the 2010 NFL season marked an unequivocal turning point in the discussion of what qualifies as helmet-to-helmet contact and how that situation should be handled, but did they overstep their boundary? After all, isn’t this the very league that has made its name of off it’s hard hitting brand of athletics. Hasn’t the NFL released DVD after DVD, better yet VHS tapes, celebrating quarterbacks getting rocket-launched from the blind side for decades now? The NFL, once christened the No Fun League for its excessive crack down on off the field behavior may need to remind itself that NFL should also stand for Not a Flag-football League. Players are paid to get hit, paid handily because hits generate revenue. The NFL makes whopping bucks off of these hits, thus it is inherently hypocritical to fine players for hitting other players. The NFL is in essence double dipping their chips into the big hit salsa, with no problem marketing bone-crunching collisions on video but no qualms about penalizing players for overstepping the bounds of aggression.Yes, concussions are dangerous, and yes there should be certain precautions in place in terms of equipment and on-hand medical staffs, but as far as changing the way football is played, the NFL is taking a huge risk. No one wants to watch a watered down version of football, with receivers picking up an extra 3 yards on every catch and should be incomplete passes suddenly turning to over the middle downfield strikes. God forbid fans start clamoring for an XFL revival. With all due respect to the players, professional football is a chosen profession, and not just any profession, one that pays extremely well. At want point does getting your clock cleaned qualify as simply an occupational hazard? Look over at the world of boxing and mixed martial arts. Inside the ropes, octagon, what-have-you, athletes take blows to the head and put themselves directly in harm’s way with little concern for their long term health. Is this particularly wise? No. Then why do it? Because the pay is good and they’re skill set matches up? The central question here is, how is the NFL any different?If a person doesn’t want to risk a long term toll on his or her body, there are plenty of other sports to try ones hand at, most of which cater to exceptional athletes with sub-4.5 speed. On the other hand, there is also a long list of occupations by which the rest of the working world makes ends meet every week. From manual labor to med school there are plenty of chosen career paths that cater to brain and brawn, none of which require going over the middle, but many of which require hard work and result in smaller paychecks. In short, there’s no reward without risk, which is perhaps why pro contracts are so lucrative. Should salaries be restructured so that the NFL, perhaps the most violent of any major sport, has similar guaranteed contracts to its professional sports contemporaries? Yes, but that’s an entirely different discussion. Football is a contact driven sport and helmet to helmet contact is bound to happen because it’s the way generations of football players have been taught to play. It’s impossible to adapt one’s tackling strategy due to the speed of the game, without changing the way the football is played entirely. That’s the hard-hitting truth, and if at some point a player can’t hear the “I won the career jackpot” sirens going off because his ears are ringing too loud, it might be time to walk away from the game.