“It is no easy task to so modify the rules as to stamp out the evils and make (football) safer, while retaining the tactical beauties and the essential features of the game.”
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? The sort of thing we’ve grown accustomed to, these days, as the most popular sport in America, and a National Football League that has grown into a multi-billion dollar business, grapples with an inability to keep its star players on the field, a full-blown brain injury crisis, and a growing fear that the next generation will shy away from the gridiron in favor of safer options.
Except that, well, this isn’t actually a contemporary quote. Far from it, in fact. The passage above was actually printed in the New York Daily Tribune, more than a century ago, in December of 1905, as a committee of collegiate officials, at the urging of President Theodore Roosevelt, set out to reform a game that had become so brutal in its vicious, close quarters, rugby-like scrums, that dozens of players had been killed in college competition in the last few years.
All of which is to take notice of two things, really. One is that football has survived, and even thrived, despite the violence inherent in the game, for more than a century now.
But the second is that – even after more than 100 years of competition – the problem has never really been solved either.
You may have noticed that an increasing number of football headlines this season have very little to do with, well, football. You’re not at all crazy to have noticed that the actual game itself, the one where 11 men on each side line up against each other in truly impressive demonstrations of tactics and athleticism, has quite frequently taken a backseat this year to related, but ultimately peripheral issues.
There are, of course, the continuing player protests during the national anthem, a story that’s only grown in prominence thanks to Colin Kaepernick’s being out of the picture, and of course, our President’s determination to insert himself into it. There’s been the endless wrangling over the suspension of Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott, one that’s been lifted and reinstated so many times that even seasoned NFL fans have had trouble keeping track.
Most recently, there’s been the rather delightful drama emanating from the league office, where Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has made it his mission to involve himself in the extension negotiations of league commissioner Roger Goodell, even going so far, according to recent reporting, as to threaten a lawsuit against his fellow owners if they move forward with a guaranteed contract over his objections.
And if you’re wondering why all of this has managed to overshadow the action on the field, well, it might have more than a little to do with the players who’ve been knocked off it.
All Injured Reserve team about to add one of the NFL's best corners pic.twitter.com/QjoawDS5q8
— Josh Davies (@daviesinator) November 10, 2017
As many an observer has pointed out, halfway through the season, this 2017 “All Injured Reserve Team”, when healthy, would probably be talented enough to make a run to the Super Bowl. This past Thursday night, Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman became the latest brand name to find himself out for the season, suffering a ruptured Achilles tendon in his right leg.
It’s really quite remarkable, given the fact that divining the reason for declining NFL ratings has become a cottage industry, how relatively little time is devoted to what seems like it ought to be a major factor: The fact that so many of the best football players in the world aren’t playing football! What other form of entertainment, after all, carries with it a practical guarantee that it will, by its very nature, destroy the biggest reason you’re watching?
Nobody goes to a concert expecting the lead singer and bass player to be missing for the second set. Noone lined up for Hamilton tickets with an expectation that the stars would be gone by intermission and replaced with their understudies. Can you imagine the outrage if your favorite characters disappeared, without warning, from the latest episode of Game of Thrones? (Oh, right. Well consider that the exception that proves the rule.)
The point is that for all of the problems the NFL has been forced to confront of late, there is no getting around the one that is daunting, dangerous, and intrinsic to the game itself, the one that has lingered for more than a century now: When you take the premier athletes of our time, train them for peak size, strength, and speed, and tell them to hurl themselves at one another in a 5,000 or so square foot box … well … somebody is going to get hurt.
More than a few somebodies, as it turns out.
None of this is exactly new, of course. We’ve known about the incredible toll the game takes on those who play it for some time, though it is obviously worth noting that greater scrutiny and medical advances have put the costs of the game – physical, mental, and emotional – in stark relief, not just during a player’s career, but in the years that follow. And if you, or I, or Roger Goodell, or any of the wealthy white men who have turned this game into a rather lucrative business, are looking for a solution, the harsh reality is probably that there isn’t one to be found.
Sure, you can fix things a bit at the margins, paper over the problem with some new rules, new equipment, a new and heightened awareness of the importance of safety. It worked for ol’ Rough Rider Teddy, after all!
Of course, we’ll all have to get used to the lamentations of the football ‘purists.’ You know the type, the ones who decry the ‘softening’ of the sport, worry that legislating out the ferocity will make it ‘too politically correct, ’and claim that if you try to make football safer, it’s not really football any longer. Heck, you can count our current President among the group. And sure, we’ve all grown accustomed to rolling our eyes, to sneering at their lack of compassion, to shaking our heads at their stubbornness, their unwillingness to evolve the game and move it forward.
Except, the thing of it is … They’re probably not wrong.
Maybe there’s no such thing as ‘safer’ football, because at this point, we’ve got one hundred plus years of evidence that the savagery, the brutality, the devastating impacts that give any reasonable person pause all appear to be baked right in. What if, in fact, violence is one of the ‘essential features of the game’, and once we’ve grappled with that, the game doesn’t seem so essential anymore?
Monday brought news that the war between Jerry Jones and the rest of his compatriots continues apace, with the latest reporting indicating that the league’s Compensation Committee has given Double J a cease-and-desist warning to stop involving himself in Roger Goodell’s compensation package. And if you’re wondering how Jones, generally accepted as the most powerful owner in the league, someone seen as the NFL’s ‘shadow commissioner’ in recent years, ended up completely sideways with the man who holds the actual title, the answer, as you might expect, is complicated.
No doubt, the battle over Ezekiel Elliott’s suspension, one that Jones seemed certain would be avoided, has created some bad blood. And sure, Jerry might just be sticking up for his best pizza pal, Papa John, convinced that protesting players have had a real impact on his bottom line. Heck, maybe the NFL’s prominent owner sees Goodell as an utterly disposable figure and has designs on a replacement.
But if you want to know what all these squabbles are really about, there’s only one number you have to keep in mind: $25 billion. That’s the goal that was set out by Roger Goodell for 2027.
And sure, maybe tacking on another $10 billion didn’t seem so daunting a few years ago, but now? With ratings stagnant, attendance lagging, and the game confronting a very real existential crisis? All of a sudden the dream of endless growth – of onward and upward, of bottomless profits for everyone – seems a little harder to obtain.
Nothing lasts forever, after all, especially the unbridled expansion of a game that takes a monstrous physical toll on those who play it, and an increasingly psychic one on those that watch it.
If you’re wondering why football suddenly seems like it’s consuming itself, both on, and off the field? Maybe it was just built that way.
