Rick Reilly: 'Football getting harder to watch'

three_bags_full: 'Rick Reilly getting harder to read'

 

The NFLPA under Gene Upshaw was the NFL, Joe. Anyway, I think we're at an impasse here. Suffice to say, the work conditions are light-years different, starting with the weight/speed growth and also including the fact that a championship season in 2012 can be 20 games, almost twice as many as it was 50 years earlier.

The data you're citing, as long as it goes back that far, is rigged to obfuscate the issues facing today's league.

 

You might be right -- but there is no data to back it up.

I will contend, however, that the NFL was at least as dangerous and probably moreso before 1980 (and certainly before 1970) compared to today. The size and speed of the players is offset by the much better safety equipment and rules protecting the players.

 

But, isn't the idea that helmets protect the brain pretty much a myth? They might protect your skull, but your brain bounces around like a pinball.

 

Yep, that's my understanding.

Football trends somewhat like the military in this regard. The last Iraq War was the "Brain Injury War," because so many vets were coming back with TBI, way more than previous. The big reason is that the injuries they sustained used to be enough to kill them, but now the armor and medicine are better, so they survive. But they're brain-damaged, often severely.

The principle is similar in football. You can treat a knee or a shoulder and get someone back out there pretty quick. But there hasn't really been any improvement in treating the brain. So we're left with the force that the head snaps back, and when you get nailed by a 260-pounder who runs a 4.5, it snaps back pretty fucking quick.

 

"And Leon's getting laaaaaaaaarger."

 

Wait, fat people die quicker than people who are in shape? Alert the media!

 

It's why I have mixed feelings about the "Why I love football" spots. Obviously meant to remind people why they like the game. I love the game, many great memories associated with it, but I can't help but feeling like somewhat culpable when I see heroes I cheered growing up having mobility issues and worse in their later years.
When I was a kid my dad got a book about the NFL called "The Gladiators" - a coffee table book detailing the game like I'd never seen it before. I spent hours looking at that book, not realizing how appropriate the title was.

 

Tom Boswell writes the same sentiment today, and better, in my opinion: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/richie-incognito-bullying-allegations-are-the-latest-in-long-list-of-nfl-problems/2013/11/06/a29f48a0-46fe-11e3-b6f8-3782ff6cb769_story.html

 

Yeah, I remember all the NFL Films "Crunch Course" and "Biggest Hitters" videos from the 1980s. Guys like Ronnie Lott and Steve Atwater became among the most admired NFL players around when their entire game was built on trying injure guys who came across the middle.

The networks got a lot of mileage out of crazy NFL violence in their pre-game shows as well:

As for concussions/head injuries, I really believe they're more common now because the equipment is better. It's easier to use your helmet as a missile when you're not going to get seriously injured (at least not in the short-term) by launching it into an opponent.

Guys in the no-facemask/small facemask era probably got fewer concussions because of that reason. Now broken teeth, broken noses and gouged eyes are another story.

 

Rigged is your opinion, not a fact.

And you are sidestepping joe's point. If you are going to dismiss data regarding older players, it's not fair to go on about 90-year-old owners.

 

I think the constant rules changes to make it easier to score and pass have a lot to do with it, too. If DBs could still ride receivers down the field, maybe there wouldn't be so many high-speed collisions. If holding hadn't been decriminalized, linemen might not have found that their optimum weight was 350 or so. Then there's the influence of money. Today's players, and really since the late '70s, are in training, weight training, all year long. Back in the '50s, NFL players went to real jobs in the offseason. They had less time to make their bodies weapons.