The Violence of our Beloved Football

Don’t know yet the extent of the waves of repercussions caused by the NFL rulings and punishments against the Saints’ organization concerning the bounty hunting scandal on the Saints’ defense.

First, I feel sorry for the Saints’ players who did not participate, like Drew Brees and all the offense. The coach who used to be with the Saints and ran the bounty program now has his career ruined; gotta feel sorry for him. Does the head coach deserve such a suspension? Does the team deserve the punishment in draft choices, etc.?

Now, despite the fact I have always never been a fan of overly-strict rules, having taken hits from such personally, I do agree something had to be done. It was just like when SMU in college was dealt the death penalty by the NCAA: the Saints, like the Mustangs, were told not to do it anymore or suffer the consequences; they ignored the warning, just like SMU did, and the “book” was thrown at them. Just like the NCAA back then, words like “making an example” and “so it will not happen again” are being bandied about by the NFL (again, sounds personally familiar).

I do not think the NFL would have reacted so harshly say, 20 or 30 years ago, as the philosophy and spirit of the game has evolved, and I’m not sure it has done so for the better. Oh, it has done so for the betterment of the health of the players, but, and this is my first point, this is football (like hockey and rugby, not ice skating or tennis) — a game played by most because it is violent. I am a fan of football only, never having been a player, but since high school I have “come through” the game, seeing it from the “inside out” as a manager (trainer) for the HS team in Cisco all four years of HS. I emerged an incurable fan of the game — an incurable fan of its violence, I’m afraid. As I’ve told my classmates who were players, in HS I did not remember offensive moments very well; what I do recall are great defensive plays and plays in which players were nearly or literally knocked out. I remember having to administer to them doses of strong ammonia (“Am-caps”) on the field and on the sideline, just to get them to “come around.”

I am a season ticket holder for the home games at Texas A&M each season; I long for the days of the old Aggie “Wrecking Crew” defense that could shut anyone down; I remember the days when relief and optimism came upon the crowd when our defense went in, not our offense. Hits and sacks were the emotional moments, not touchdowns.

I have been, it seems, a lifelong NFL and Dallas Cowboy fan. I love any great NFL defense, because the pros play defense as no others, of course. I don’t think of Don Meredith and Roger Staubach as much as I think of the Doomsday Defense, and Bob Lilly, Leroy Jordan, and Chuck Howley. I remember the Minnesota Vikings’ “Purple People Eaters” and that defense the year the beloved Buccaneers won it all. Today, I am more impressed by the Ravens than by any teams that lead the league in scoring.

In other words, give me a 13-10 game any day over a 38-35 one. Give me a balanced offense. I know, I know, you cannot grind it out exclusively like they tried to do in the NFL’s infancy: you can’t do that because the defenses are too good. I would rather see a form tackle by a linebacker or a pancake block in front of a running back by an offensive lineman than see a pretty-boy quarterback throw a long pass down field to a graceful gazelle of a wide receiver. If you want to see people throw and catch, like glorified touch-pass, watch baseball; if you want high scores, watch basketball.

The essence, then, of football, is the violence of body-on-body collisions, by definition potentially dangerous. When you sign a pro football contract, you are essentially signing off on others’ having the duty to physically abuse your body, and to do it at the highest possible level. Because of the violence, a long career in the NFL is rare if you are someone besides a kicker.

Yet, the NFL game has evolved into such a big business, that quarterbacks are major investments rather than one of a team of 11. New rules and regulations have been put in place protecting the expensive pretty boy QB. They might as well put a “no tackle” practice jersey on QB’s every NFL game. Papa Bear Halas, Vince Lombardi, Tom Landry, Bud Grant, and Al Davis are rolling over in their graves. It was Davis who famously said, “The quarterback must go down, and he must go down hard.” And the Raiders became the most notoriously dirty defense in the league, knocking out long lists of players each season. How much different is that than seeking to knock out of the game certain players? If there was no bounty involved, could we tell the difference between Al Davis’s defenses and today’s Saint defenses? Only the NFL commissioner knows for sure.

I know what you are saying: But NFL athletes train year ’round now — they are more capable than ever of shelling out violence that can hurt people, despite the advances made in protective gear players have got to wear nowadays to avoid getting hurt. But are these collisions more violent than in rugby? Or in hockey? Imagine if rules were put in place restricting the ways a hockey player can check an opponent, or the ways a rugby tackler can square up and stop a runner cold. Remember, the rugby players have no equipment protection comparable to football or hockey. Is the new NFL equipment a licence to go “beyond reason” and launch “to maim,” something rugby players cannot morally do?

Now it seems football is not about players like Dick Butkus crowding the line of scrimmage as the Bears’ middle linebacker and spitting on the hands of the center before the ball was snapped; rather it is about the influence of players like Michael Vick or Tim Tebow on our young people. It is not about Sam Huff running down a ball carrier clear across the width of the field and taking him out of the game with a hard clothes-line; rather it is about the long term effects of dirty hits. It is not about Ted “The Stork” Hendricks rushing the QB from his defensive end position, delivering a fore-arm shiver to the poor running back trying to block him and keep him off the QB, spinning and grabbing the jersey of the QB so he cannot throw, and flinging the QB down onto the dirt for at least two or three rolls; rather it is game of one-ups-man-ship the NFL owners try to play with each other over salary caps and new stadiums. It is not about Jack Lambert grinning his toothless grin and submarining a sweep play to his side, taking out two blockers and the ball carrier; it is about who Tom Brady and Tony Romo marry. It is not about equally toothless Larry Wilson coming full speed on a safety blitz and lauching himself completely over the blocking back to land on top of the QB’s head; it is about speculating on what broadcasting career such-and-such a popular player will enter when he is forced to retire.

You can’t have violence in sports like figure skating (ask Nancy Kerringen –?), but don’t you have to have it in the new arena cage fighting, in boxing, and in football? Sanctions against the Saints should be for perpetuating violence in unscrupulous ways, unscrupulous even for football, not for reducing the violence. Defenses should still go after the QB and other offensive players, just don’t be systematic, descriptive, and so open about it — for football’s sake, don’t overtly pay players for specific acts of violence! In the NFL even defenses have to be smart, like the old Raiders’ defense.

Then again, maybe Al Davis had an NFL league office easier to circumvent and bend rules with than the Saints have today.

If the NFL is, by its new rulings, bringing itself closer to a day when games become high-tech feats of men in robot armor moving with artificial enhancements playing keep-away by tossing the football among themselves, and every throw and catch judged for its aesthetic quality, like a synchronized swimming performance, and every act of bodily collision penalized as too barbaric, then I fear I will have to dust off old NFL archives and watch games of yore, in the best tradition of the crowds in the Colosseum in Rome.

RJH