I don’t watch football for the violence
Friday Night Lights author Buzz Bissinger writes in Newsweek/Beast of the Junior Seau suicide:
If you asked reporters why they were there, they would give some mumbo-jumbo reason that as hard as it may be, it was important to get reaction from the family in a case as sad and stunning as this one. Seau had been an absolute force during the prime of his playing days with the San Diego Chargers, ferocious, relentless, maniacal, beyond intense. Now that he was dead, it would be easy to say he was a joy to watch. But he wasn’t a joy to watch. He was scary to watch, just like the National Football League is scary to watch, which is one of the primary reasons we love to watch it, a human car crash on every play.
I have to disagree with this. I don’t like football because it’s violent, and I imagine the vast majority of football fans feel the same way. Sure, it’s nice to see a really solid, well-executed hit from time to time, but it’s not why I watch the game, and it probably wouldn’t even make a list of the top ten reasons why I like football.
If I really liked violence over all of football’s other positive attributes, I wouldn’t be watching football at all. There are many sports that are far more violent: boxing for example, K-1 and other MMA sports, even NASCAR or pro wrestling if two-by-fours, barbed wire, or Pabst Blue Ribbon are involved. In fact, if I really got a rise out of violence qua violence, I probably wouldn’t even watch sports at all. Instead I’d be watching Spartacus: Vengeance or Scarface or the evening news – unquestionably the most violent program on television.
Accordingly, I don’t think there is anything controversial about the research coming out from everywhere showing that concussions lead to early dementia, and I don’t think there is any sane conclusion other than that the NFL could be doing a lot more to protect the safety of its players. There are concerns that limiting violent contact in the NFL will destroy the sport, but again, I just don’t think those concerns are legitimate, because I don’t watch football for the concussions and don’t know anyone else who does.
…
So why do I like football then? Probably it has something to do with understanding the game and appreciating skill and strategy, but it can’t be just that or else I’d enjoy watching golf or chess on television as well, which I do not. Playing golf may be one of my favorite activities in the entire world, but I cannot stand watching golf on television.
Perhaps Christopher Hitchens had some insights into why we like football:
…picture this: I take a seat in a bar or restaurant and suddenly leap to my feet, face contorted with delight or woe, yelling and gesticulating and looking as if I am fighting bees. I would expect the maitre d’ to say a quietening word at the least, mentioning the presence of other people. But then all I need do is utter some dumb incantation—”Steelers,” say, or even “Cubs,” for crumb’s sake—and everybody decides I am a special case who deserves to be treated in a soothing manner. Or else given a wide berth: ever been caught up in a fight over a match that you didn’t even know was being played? Or seen the pathetic faces of men, and even some women, trying to keep up with the pack by professing devoted loyalty to some other pack on the screen? If you want a decent sports metaphor that applies as well to the herd of fans as it does to the players, try picking one from the most recent scandal. All those concerned look—and talk—as if they were suffering from a concussion.
Wait! Have you ever had a discussion about higher education that wasn’t polluted with babble about the college team and the amazingly lavish on-campus facilities for the cult of athletic warfare? Noticed how the sign of a bad high school getting toward its Columbine moment is that the jocks are in the saddle? Worried when retired generals appear on the screen and talk stupidly about “touchdowns” in Afghanistan? By a sort of Gresham’s law, the emphasis on sports has a steadily reducing effect on the lowest common denominator, in its own field and in every other one that allows itself to be infected by it.
Since I like sports, I can’t really agree with Hitchens here, although I think his idea of sport as template for deep-set tribalism is spot-on. The real reason I like football is that it’s in my nature to like football: team sports are playing at war – they require physical prowess, chemistry, strategy, endurance, loyalty, and a lot of luck.
I guess this means that I actually do watch football for the violence but in a whole different way than the media and the various interested parties in the ongoing concussion > dementia > suicide imbroglio imagine. This means we can still have all the more refined violence of the game with a bit less of the dangerous kind, and football will be none the worse for wear.
San D-ie-go super chargers, San D-ie-go super chargers, yea!Report
I’m unconvinced, because I think we’re learning that football most often causes brain damage, not by the monster hits that could be outlawed, but by the accumulation of normal-sized hits, without which football wouldn’t be a contact sport.Report
Yeah, I am not in a position to dig up the article, but I read that they took a bunch of high school offensive lineman and fitted their helmets with sensors to indicate the types and force of hits they were taking just on play-by-play occurences, nothing really outlandish and whiplash-y, just run-of-the-mill blocking plays, and they were amazed by the amount of force, like minor concussion kinds of force these guys endured over the course of a game.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120202164823.htm
OK, I went and found it. The one thing they did find was the change in brain function, even among those players who didn’t suffer concussions.
Finally, notice some of the O-line and D-line player’s helmets sometimes. They’ve got scratches and skid marks all over the front from banging against the other guy’s helmet.Report
I imagine there are some people who derive much pleasure watching bone-crunching hits and such, but I’m not one of them. I think back to Theisman and Lawrence Taylor, or Steve Young and the Cardinal blitzer who took him out. That shit is scary and horrifying to watch. The fact that other players can continue to play in the very same game after watching those is amazing.Report
The appeal of violent sports, and let’s not kid ourselves about the violence, goes right to the core of our tribal little brains. Stylised warfare has formed the basis for group identity since human groups began.
Linda Schele, of blessed memory, observed the Maya engaged in stylised warfare where few men died. They went to war encumbered in vast costumes and headdresses. They also played a curious courtyard game called pitz or ulama, still played in some places. It seemed to be accompanied by human sacrifice, though we don’t know how the two were related.
There’s no “I” in team, we’re told. That’s nonsense, of course. It’s all about the individual, just not the individual on the ball court or the gridiron. The individual who watches the game, gets up and rants and gibbers as Christopher Hitchens describes him, he’s the I in team. I am sitting here wearing a Green Bay Packers shirt. I got it as a present for Christmas two years ago from my girlfriend. The vicarious thrill we derive from watching these superb athletes, the hubristic little nuggets of wisdom we dispense about how the Pack might do against the Chargers come August — each such person is the I in team.Report
Shortly after the Seau news came out, I cancelled my subscription to DirecTV’s NFL pacakage. Whether or not Seau is ultimately shown to have CTE is beside the point, it’s a move I had been contemplating for a while.
Even taking head injuries out of the equation, there are strong ethical concerns about paying people to trade their long term health for our entertainment, even if the players are fully informed (which I don’t necessarily think is the case) and willing to make the trade themselves. Adding in a degenerative brain disease just makes my choice clearer.
It’s still hard not to get caught up in football talk with coworkers, friends, and family.Report
balthan-
I had a post up on this very topic recently. I find this statement interesting:
“Even taking head injuries out of the equation, there are strong ethical concerns about paying people to trade their long term health for our entertainment, even if the players are fully informed (which I don’t necessarily think is the case) and willing to make the trade themselves.”
Will you likewise refuse to watch women’s gymnastics at the Olympics this summer? Will you abscond from eating king crab legs, which are fished under treacherous conditions?
These aren’t “gotcha” questions, mind you. I’m attempting to suss out where that ethical line ought to be and what our role and responsibility as consumers are.Report
The thing is, the assumption is that gymnasts are not suffering permanent debilitating injury as a result of their performance. And as for king crab, for most diners you could replace it with imitation “krab” stuffed into a painted ceramic shell and they wouldn’t know the difference–and, again, the risk is generally not the intent. (Sure, for some people there’s a conspicuous-consumption thing; but then, there are some people who do watch football for the hits and watch NASCAR for the wrecks.)Report
that ought not to be the assumption for ballet.
HOWEVER, there’s a big difference between “cripple” and “braindamaged”Report
“The thing is, the assumption is that gymnasts are not suffering permanent debilitating injury as a result of their performance.”
This same assumption was made about football for a very long time. And there are clear quality of life and health sacrifices that gymnasts (females in particular… I don’t know if the same holds true for male) make to pursue excellence in their sport and entertain us. Maybe not on the level of football, but they’re there.
As for king crab, I’m personally not the biggest fan of it. I do wonder if the fascination with it stems from the exclusivity of it, which is directly borne out of the danger and difficulty in catching them.
Mind you, I’m not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with where balthan, among others, are attempting to draw a line when it comes to the ethics of watching football. But I do get bothered when people reserve all their sanctimony for sports, which far too many media members make their hay doing.Report
Pro Football was pretty much the one sport I followed. I don’t usually watch the Olympics when it’s on.
Any athletic endeavor obviously carries risk. I haven’t seen any information on the long-term health of female gymnasts, so I don’t know how “dangerous” it is, but I’ve wondered (especially after the brouhaha over the Chinese gymnasts last time) about the potential impact of training and competing internationally at their relatively young age. Adolescent athletics is certainly something I’ll need to think about more as my own daughter gets older.
Likewise, I don’t eat crab (or seafood in general), but have watched The Deadliest Catch in the past. If I were to start watching again (is it even still on), that’s something I’d have to ponder.
And I’m certainly not perfect when making choices. I bought a new smartphone recently and I don’t know if it contains conflict minerals from the Congo. I have electronics that were likely produced at Foxconn. I’d like to be more selective in my choices in the future, or at least more willfully informed of what I may be supporting.Report
Thanks for responding, balthan. Not sure if you are new here or if I just haven’t run across you, but good to have you in the mix regardless.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. All of our discussions have moral and ethical implications. They are harder to ignore when someone on the idiot box is shouting them at us. When the next sports controversy/nontroversy comes up, this will likely pass and, with it, much (but not all) of the ethical issues.Report
even if the players are fully informed (which I don’t necessarily think is the case) and willing to make the trade themselves.
That’s a good point. In one sense, players views on this ought to be the last one’s considered: they want to play football. It reminds me of a survey of Olympic athletes (which may be an urban myth, for all I know): lots of them conceded that if there was a drug or a training technique or whatever that allowed them to win a gold medal but would kill them a year later, they’d do it.Report
Don’t we all make these decisions every day? I’d live longer if I never drank beer. But my quality of life would likely suffer. I’ve always maintained that I’d rather live 70 great years than 80 good years or 90 average years.
To get back to balthan’s point, he sees an ethical issue with seeking entertainment from folks who trade their health for a paycheck. Turning the situation around a bit, is there an ethical issue for a brewer who derives his paycheck from my decision to trade my health for a bit of entertainment?Report
Sports are not part of some deep tribal ancestry thingy. They’re relatively recent (at least team sports, which is what we’re focusing on).
[again, insert unpc comment about homosexuality and football]Report
The particular team sports we watch now are relatively recent, yes. But team sports in general have been around for quite some time.Report
name me a few pre-agriculture, as that’s when we started needing those skills that team sports taught/selected for.Report
You mean you want me to name some sports that existed before written language?Report
Lacrosse, probably.Report
Great piece. As I started it, I was tempted to yell, “OF COURSE YOU WATCH IT FOR THE VIOLENCE! YOU JUST DON’T THINK OF IT THAT WAY. YOU WOULDN’T WATCH THE NFL IF IT WAS TOUCH, WOULD YOU?!?!” Reading the rest of it, I see that you took a very nuanced and interesting perspective on the matter.
Most of us don’t enjoy watching others experience pain. We might enjoy the drama or excitement of a big hit, but we pretty much usually want both guys to get up and dust themselves off afterwards. But humans, I think, enjoy conflict. A story isn’t a story without some type of conflict. Physical conflict seems to tap into a more primal sense, as it was the primary means of resolution amongst our ancestors but is increasingly rejected for the same purposes nowadays. So we seek “appropriate” outlets to indulge in physical conflict, as both participants and as spectators. Football is a perfect avenue, especially since it is a bit more sanitized than sports like MMA and boxing, which allows us to pretend we’re not watching for the violence.
Again, great piece.Report
If there were the same level of athletic talent on display and the huge media machine behind it that the modern NFL has and 60,000 screaming fans and 50 years of tradition behind it, I’d watch professional flag football in a heartbeat.Report
Why do you need other fans and tradition and a media machine? I get the athletic talent, but why the rest? That seems to point directly at the tribalism… you want to be part of something bigger.Report
Ever try following a sport nobody cares about? It’s not nearly as much fun. I think Arena Football is actually superior to the regular game, but it’s not as fun when others aren’t paying attention.Report
Oh, sure. That is why millions (billions?) of folks watch the Super Bowl but not a single regular season game. I wasn’t criticizing JVH, just pointing out what I thought was obvious but going unsaid. I’d argue it is human nature to want to be part of something bigger. Sports offers an amazing and easily accessed avenue for that.Report
Yeah, sure. The sense of community and history is important. But not, I think, as important as the horse race that surrounds the whole thing. I get a lot more enjoyment out of debating power rankings, comparing historical teams, figuring out what to do with my fantasy team, and making predictions on how the season will go than I get out of watching the actual games, though those are fun, too. And none of that is possible if no one else is really passionately engaged. Sporting events are one type of good whose consumption actually produces positive externalities for the other people who use it. Like the internet.Report
The whole thing sounds like that old “traffic lights cause traffic accidents” thing; that is, allowing people to take more risks results in more failures.
Maybe the solution to the problem of repetitive brain injury is to eliminate helmets. The idea being that the helmets don’t protect you well enough against repeated impacts, but they feel protective and encourage risky behavior.
Or, maybe, have the helmets include crushable liners that are replaced after every play.Report
That’s not a trivial point. When I was playing football back in the day, we were specifically taught to use our helmets as a third arm to either ring someone’s bell, force a fumble, or reinforce a solid wrap-up. You seldom see the head used in this fashion in other similar contact sports like rugby or ice hockey.Report
There are games very similar to football and just as violent that are played without any protection except a gum guard and a cup. Both versions of Rugby and Aussie rules football, for example. Rugby players don’t hit so hard as foot players and they don’t get brain damage. On the other hand they do get all kinds of horrible musculo-skeletal injuries …Report
Another comment about “no helmets means fewer head injuries”
Really, I’m thinking about that oft-cited “traffic intersection in Europe where they removed all the stop signs” thing.Report
FWIW, I see kids with concussions from football consistently throughout the season. It easily outpaces all the other sports combined in that regard.
And one of the few absolute prohibitions I have for my son’s future is that he will absolutely not play tackle football.Report
Mike Golic, a former NFL player who makes up half of the radio duo “Mike and Mike in the Morning” made an interesting point today, namely that a very tiny percentage of children who take up football make it to the NFL and sustain any sort of career. Right now, research points to NFL-ers struggling with long-term health issues as a result of their playing careers. There doesn’t seem to be any research on players who peak at college, high school, or younger. I have no doubt that kids suffer concussions at all levels, but it is very possible that there are little to no long term impacts for playing full-contact football as a youth but ceasing at 14 or 18 or 22. Mike Greenberg (the other Mike) made the always silly argument that if just one kid suffers from football, it is a MASSIVE problem. That made me want to shout, since neither guy is usually prone to such hyperbole.
But it is worth considering. Football may far outpace baseball when it comes to concussions among children. But if the incidence rate of concussions among sub-18 football players is 10% and only 10%* of those who suffer concussions endure any sort of long-term ill effects, we are looking at a mere 1% of sub-18 players. That is tiny! Kids engage in a number of activities with equal or greater likelihood of long-term harm without anyone testifying in front of Congress about it.
The assumption that many folks make when insisting they will never let their child play football is that they will be the next Junior Seau. That is like saying you’d never let your child enter politics because he might end up the next JFK. The odds are your kid hangs up his helmet long before his voice cracks.Report
* These numbers are completely made up. If anyone knows the real numbers and they challenge my assumed ones here, I’m happy to revisit my theory and/or eat crow.Report
I agree with everything in here, except for this: “Mike Greenberg (the other Mike) made the always silly argument that if just one kid suffers from football, it is a MASSIVE problem. That made me want to shout, since neither guy is usually prone to such hyperbole.”
Mike Greenberg is absurdly prone to such hyperbole. Golic much less so.Report
Mark-
I suppose I’m viewing him in the context of other sports personalities, especially those with ESPN. I tend to see the two Mikes as two of the more reasoned folks on their various networks. Which isn’t saying much, given the current state of broadcasting.Report
With this I can fully agree. Skip Bayless, anyone?
Although I quite like Scott Van Pelt’s show.Report
Skip Bayless should be shot. Once, in a conversation about a divide along racial lines of players’ perceptions of Michael Vick, he felt the need to bring up Lil’ John because something-something crazy black people.
I went to a taping of the Stephen A. Smith show once, back when he had his own television show. It was amazing to see how he was between takes, when he bantered off-the-cuff with the audience, compared to how he was when the cameras were rolling. Smart, succinct, reasoned, nuance, no shouting… everything you’d WANT to see. But folks need a shtick. You don’t get ahead in the game being smart, succinct, reasoned, and nuanced. You get ahead by shouting in increasingly high octaves and bugging your eyes out.
Along these same lines, Chris Webber’s game analysis has been amazing during this year’s playoffs. However, he is also a fairly mellow and understated guy, with most of his charisma being subtle. Which means he’ll be canned in the off-season so they can bring back Bill Walton to whine about the Grateful Dead or something.
ARGH!!!Report
Skip Bayless should be shot.
I do read this blog for the violence.Report
New Blog Title… “Let me tell you why Skip Bayless should be shot…”
Best of all, you can swap out Skip Bayless’s name for just about anyone!Report
Jim Rome is a somewhat guilty pleasure of mine. It seems like a weird thing to say, I know, but his show has a genuine moral center. Most sports talk-show hosts rip people because they’re playing badly, but when Rome really rips into someone, it’s because they’re behaving inexcusably. e.g. when Odalis Perez stopped giving away Dodgers tickets to underprivileged kids because he didn’t feel he got enough recognition for it.Report
Holy crap, did Perez really do that?
I had a coach that instilled a value in my long ago. Basically, he had no problem with physical errors. There were times you were going to swing and miss or drop the ball or stumble around the base paths. These things happen. He’d never get mad at us for these. The problems arose when we committed mental errors. Not knowing the number of outs and failing to properly advance on a two out liner was a huge no-no. Etc.
REAL problems arose when mental errors led to physical errors. When one of our pitchers didn’t follow the prescribed warm-up protocol and got bombed, the coach lit into him like I never saw. And he was dead right to. He didn’t mind the guys velocity or location being off. But he sure as hell minded that they were off because they kid was goofing off pre-game.
We didn’t really have many “moral” errors, but those would seem to be on another level entirely.
This, in part, has informed the approach I’ve taken thus far with the sports posts on MD (PLUG!). X’s and O’s are fun to talk about, but I tend to be more interested in the bigger meaning of sports. I might have to check Rome out. Is there a button on the remote that eliminates his smugness?Report
TV Rome (whom I can’t stand) and radio Rome (where he treats the more intelligent callers more or less as equals) are different personas.Report
Holy crap, did Perez really do that?
He was a Dodger at the time. What do you expect?Report
Ugh… now I’m thinking of Michael Kay. Which makes me think of how much I hate Michael Kay. DAMN YOU, THOMPSON!Report
Heh. This is all part of my secret plan to get more people to listen to Dan Patrick, ya know.Report
Dan Patrick? DAN PATRICK!?!?! Has anyone more obviously practiced the “chuckle, chuckle, sigh” response as DAN FISHING PATRICK?!?!?!Report
It may be that only a small fraction of those who sustain concussions go on to long-term problems. I think the data are still too limited and preliminary to know with any confidence. But even the short-term negative consequences can take an inordinately high toll on quality of life, academic performance, etc. And there’s just no way that I will allow my own child to be exposed to any significant risk of long-term neurological or cognitive disability for the sake of playing a game.Report
I’m with you about the violence:enjoyment thing. I watch football for the same reasons you do – the elegance, the chess match, athleticism, teamwork, etc all performed at a really high rate of speed and with a lot of strength and power – but I think that enjoyment would go down if we overly restricted the types of hits players could make (the normal hard hit for example). But I’m also with Schilling in that the NFL’s concussion problem isn’t the result of one or two head shots, but repeated blows taken over the course of a career. I don’t know what they can do about that other than find better headgear.
Hockey also has the same problems. Concussions are becoming more of a factor in player health and safety, and a bigger concern for the League. In that case, tho, if the NHL made eliminated fighting made shoulder to helmet hits majors (or worse), I think the game would actually improve. Because like you and football, I like hockey despite it’s violence: I’d love to see a cleaner, less violent game which let the skill set of the players shine a bit brighter.Report
it’s a better argument for hockey. you could probably make a damn fine touch hockey game (or one where bodies of players weren’t being used as inertia laden weapons of destruction)Report
Actually, now that I think about it, the shoulder/elbow to head hit is banned in some sense of that word. The league has gone so far as to review plays after the fact and hand out suspensions, etc.Report
College hockey, Olympic hockey, and European hockey all tend to be a lot less physical. I’m not sure about the last two, but I know the first bans fighting. The overly physical, goonish hockey is uniquely American (even the Canadians fret about it at times), with the assumption being that it is the only way for Americans to keep up with their faster, quicker, and more skilled foreign counterparts. Hockey is the sport I know the least about, so I’ll defer to others, but having watched some other leagues and having gone to a hockey powerhouse for college, it is certainly possibly to maintain all the excitement of the game while reducing a lot (but not all) of the violence and physicality.Report
Yeah, I agree. Euro hockey, for example, is much more like Euro soccer (phootball!): an emphasis on puck possession, skating and strategic breakdowns of the opponents defense. I think you might be right that they ban fighting over there, but since the game itself is so different, fighting never emerges as a part of the game the way it does in the NHL. As a hockey fan, I’d love for us to eliminate fighting from the game entirely. Then the goons would be replaced by skill players, which is a win-win from my pov.Report
I’d argue that college hockey is more “physical” in that there is little tolerance for goonish behavior and fewer stand-out stars that the only way to win is with positioning, solid body checks, etc. In the NHL, you’ll see an enforcer just plaster someone and take a two-minute roughing penalty, time and time again, because the game isn’t based on fundamentals: it’s based on star-power.Report
I do agree that hockey seems like a better sport, in terms of long-term player health, than football. Unfortunately it takes a lot more equipment and training to play hockey than it does to play football, so it’s less likely that people will have personal experience of the sport; and that concept of personal experience is a large part of what makes football popular. Hockey needs sticks and (usually) skates and (sometimes) a specialized playing surface; football just needs a largish patch of ground and a ball. The ground doesn’t even have to be prepared all that well, unlike basketball which needs a hard surface or soccer which needs a good field for the ball to roll.Report
It’s worth pointing out that a strong majority of hits don’t actually happen during the games we’re watching. They happen during practice. The real question is not “Would we still enjoy it if we further restricted how tackling occurs in games” but rather “Would we still enjoy it if players were made worse tacklers by heavily restricting their ability to practice tackling?”Report
Alternatively, “would we still enjoy football if the players had protective gear commensurate with what we now know are the actual risks of the game?”
I’m picturing some sort of giant foam triangle that attaches to the player’s shoulder pads and extends across and about a foot above the head.Report
I imagine them all in those giant inflatable balls that people roll down hills in. Basically, an American Gladiator game. BRING BACK AMERICAN GLADIATORS!Report
The future of sports:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alUoayexlwYReport
I anticipate masturbation one day looking like that, what with all the safety regulations in all other areas of life…Report
They’re called zorbs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9vhXOiD6AwReport
Will-
I’d venture to guess that there are safe ways to teach and practice tackling, such that there wouldn’t be a massive decline in the quality of the game. These tactics tend to be eschewed, in large part because coaches get their rocks off by watching folks below them in the power pecking order destroy each other in the name of gaining coach’s affirmation.Report
As it stands now, any decline would be unacceptable if the other coaches aren’t experiencing it. My alma mater had pad and hit-free practices (except once a week) one season because we had an unusual amount of small speedsters and injury-prone players without a lot of depth (due in part to the injury-proneness). I don’t know that I would call what happened a “massive decline,” but it was notable against the teams we were playing who were beating one another up in practice. It only lasted one season and the defensive coordinator was a scapegoat (he didn’t institute the policy, and he laterally moved to be the DC of an equivalent program).Report
Oh, yea, of course. It would have to be an across the board change, likely mandated from the top down.
The GAME could survive a GAME-wide shift. Any individual team likely wouldn’t.Report
I completely agree. There actually have been some moves in this direction among the less competitive and more academic leagues. I think the Ivy League limits themselves to 2 full-pad practices a week. And since they play a relatively insular schedule and don’t perform in broader competition (they don’t do playoffs), they can afford to as a unit. I think it would be a positive thing for HS and the NCAA to do it as a unit, as well, and if push came to shove they absolutely would.
(I will note that there are people who would disagree with us, and who believe that it would be extremely detrimental.)Report
Gregg Easterbrook always talks about the ass backwards nature of change in football. If the NFL adapted certain safety procedures, you’d see almost immediate and universal adoption of them. Helmets, mouth guards, practice conditions… Goodell could improve these across the board, for NFLers AND kids alike, with a few well-thought-out changes. But the NFL has had their head in the sand, leading to a slow trickle up that leads to changes in dribs and drabs and allows the problem to persist.Report
Interestingly, in baseball, little leagues went forward with full face-guard helmets without leadership from the MLB. I wonder why that is?Report
I’d say a primary reason is that LL has a centralized system that I don’t believe most other sports have. A quick Google search shows several governing agencies for basketball, football, and soccer. LL is really the only game in town for baseball.
Additionally, I think there is a more evident impact of face guards. The difference between a baseball helmet with and without a face guard is obvious. One allows the possibility of getting hit in the face with the ball and one doesn’t. The difference between two football helmets that otherwise look identical but have different types of padding or shock absorption or whatever is harder to see and, thus, likely a harder sell.Report
Hurm. Not where I grew up, actually. We had a local feel-good league (everybody plays) and a more competitive-minded national organization (PONY League) that wasn’t LL. The LL existed, though that was the league the rich kids over in that other town played. We called all of these things “little league” (the same way we call Coca-Cola and Pepsi “coke”).
Good point about visibility.Report
Is that still the case? We had three leagues… two of which I know for a fact were LL and the third one eventually dissolved or shrunk to near nothingness. The third initially grew out of the Orthodox Jewish population’s need to not play on Saturday, but as the primary town league became more Orthodox, they simply adopted that as the rule to accommodate. This was back in the 90’s.Report
And while there may be other leagues, I don’t think they compare to LL. Pop Warner, the largest youth football league, “only” operates in 43 states.Report
By the latest numbers I could find, LL proper is about 2 million kids, and Babe Ruth another million.Report
I stand corrected. In my hometown you played Babe Ruth after you aged out of LL. I assumed that was the norm. I defer back to the “visibility” theory, if only because Will endorsed it!Report
When did that happen? My son played LL until about 4 years ago. There were other safety-related changed (pitch counts, breakaway bases), but no face masks. My daughter’s softball league did face masks, but they also did silly things like having two first bases (one for the fielder, one for the runner) to avoid collisions there.Report
When I was in high school (late 90’s) the girl’s softball leagues used the double-base.Report
My high school only used it in the orchestra.Report
Baseball is a much less violent sport than football, of course. There are only a few situations where contact is tolerated:
* Baserunners taking out an infielder to prevent a double play
* “Purpose” pitches
* Collisions at the plate
It’s very rare for the first to cause any injuries. The play is much more about the threat of contact than actual contact. In the second, because the risk of serious injury is so high, even the pantomime of drilling a hitter (e.g. throwing behind him) is enough to cause brawls and ejections. And a pitcher who intentionally hits someone anywhere near the head would face at least a long suspension, if not expulsion from the game.
The last one is the strangest. It can cause very serious injuries, like Buster Posey losing most of last year to being hurt in a completely clean collision. (There wasn’t a second’s serious thought about punishing or even admonishing the guy who ran into him.) Nor did the depth of the injury (which wasn’t, thank God, career-ending, but could have been) result in a serious reconsideration of the play. It’s part of baseball, in fact, one of the most exciting plays in baseball. If the catcher can’t set himself properly, he needs to get out of the way and try for a sweep tag.
The strange part is, there’s nothing in the rules that says the catcher can block the plate in the first place. The classic bang-bang play where the catcher blocks the runner off the plate, receives the ball, and turns to tag the runner (who hasn’t been able to get through or around the catcher to touch home plea) is, by the rule book, interference, and the runner should be awarded the run. The rules are de facto ignored to allow this bit of violence.Report
I’ve also read here and there over the years that football is a gigantic outlet for frustrated homoerotic fantasies.
Your basic point is well-taken. If it’s only about the violence then there are plenty of better entertainment choices than football. Horse racing, for instance. Or dramatic television. I mean, if the Martians are monitoring our prime time drama broadcasts they must be convinced that the human race is evenly divided between police, forensics experts, and violent sex criminals. Probably deters them from invading our planet.Report
One watches football for the skill used to win within the margins of the field and within the boundaries of the rules; football is celebrated because teams win. Anyone celebrating the violence does not understand the skill needed to play the game well.Report
I love watching football game, and also other games. Now a days we don’t see much violence in game, it’s a great news for sports lover. Now we see some rivalry, I think people enjoy this. But this is not violence.Report