Great societal commentary relevant to our win and the Falcons' loss

I don’t think it is the risk of injury that I enjoy when watching football. It is overcoming the pain that comes from those hard hits and from pushing yourself to the limit that makes the game more exciting. I wouldn’t want to watch two coaches just calling plays on a video game.
 
What's really happened here is the people running the sport realized the way it was being played was such a danger to the players that it threatened the future of the sport. Even the most old-school fan would be hard pressed to watch a "Jacked up!" segment from the early 2000s these days and say, "Oh yeah, clearly visible brain damage, we need to go back to that!"

So they implemented rules to make it safer. And, for the most part, they have worked! It was rough to start, with tons of flags and people getting pissed, but eventually players adapted and "Jacked up!" hits were virtually eliminated As a result, the game is much safer today while still being plenty physical and exciting.

However, they went too far, mainly around the QB. Everyone has seen the terrible calls on QBs, and they are reaching a fever pitch. Almost certainly, the rules will be adjusted in the offseason, because believe it or not the NFL actually wants a good product and fans that aren't pissed off. It just takes a while to get it right, especially when you are understandably trying to err on the side of safety.

But in the meantime, pundits will use a few bad roughing the passer calls to illustrate that gender surgery on kids is wrong, because again, everyone loves mixing sports and politics.
 
verdi said:
If you’re an alpha, you don’t care about politics or whatever the latest loser-made-up-thing on the news.

Source: I’m an alpha.
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The alpha male is too self absorbed to care about anyone or anything except himself.
 
Love the old school hits.



I think Lawrence Taylor killed the game as we knew it. Once guys started getting that big and that fast, the rules had to change or skill players weren’t going to last more than 3 years.
 
WracerX said:
I don’t think it is the risk of injury that I enjoy when watching football. It is overcoming the pain that comes from those hard hits and from pushing yourself to the limit that makes the game more exciting. I wouldn’t want to watch two coaches just calling plays on a video game.
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Bingo. Almost nobody would watch it if it was a virtual simulation. A hologram.

The combination of violence and sport is why american football is the #1 sport here. We have entertainment that is pure sport (golf, tennis) and entertainment that is pure violence (boxing, MMA). Both are very popular. But American Football is the Reeses Peanut Butter Cup of sports.
 
I’ve read stuff from Whitlock in the past that I liked. This did not seem like his best work - it’s kinda half-baked and strained. That roughing call sucked and needs to be fixed, but I don’t need to see people getting permanently injured to enjoy football. There needs to be a middle ground. Pulling in all the alpha/beta, gender reassignment stuff just seems like a reach.

JRjr
 
andrew said:
Even the most old-school fan would be hard pressed to watch a "Jacked up!" segment from the early 2000s these days and say, "Oh yeah, clearly visible brain damage, we need to go back to that!"
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Me watching one of those segments:

laughing-laugh.gif
 
andrew said:
What's really happened here is the people running the sport realized the way it was being played was such a danger to the players that it threatened the future of the sport. Even the most old-school fan would be hard pressed to watch a "Jacked up!" segment from the early 2000s these days and say, "Oh yeah, clearly visible brain damage, we need to go back to that!"
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I just looked up one of those Jacked Up segments and in the second one I saw from 2004, a player did that finger-curling 'I have brain damage now' thing. öööö
 
justafan said:
Violence and infliction of pain might be key parts of football's appeal, but I don't think it's true that danger is. I'd be totally happy with a football where no one ever got injured in a serious way. The possibility of injury doesn't really add to the drama.

You have other popular sports like golf or tennis where there is almost no danger.



Guess I'm a woman then.
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Tell it to Jack Tatum
 
The physicality in football is integral to a game that boils down to claiming territory. But there’s a big difference between that and the hits they’re trying to remove. Like yeah the phantom roughing the passer penalties with 0% chance of causing injury need to be addressed. But we’re still in a better place now than where we were.

There are some hits / truck sticks that stick out in my Tech fandom memory. But they are ridiculously outnumbered by specific players, plays, stories, and wins. I couldn’t care ööööing less if we have 100% wrap up tackles if we win the damn game.
 
This also plays into why I’ve long held the view that football is fundamentally a flawed sport when it comes to determining champions. It’s too violent to play enough games to sufficiently separate teams.

The idea of MLB / NBA / NHL / etc playing 17 games and then going to playoffs is laughable. Now add 100 more teams, remove a third of the games, shorten the playoffs, and you have college football.

If removing injury-prone hits allows us to play more games then I’m all for it. Seems to have already done that for NFL.
 
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