Chris Borland retires

Chris Borland retweeted
Neil deGrasse Tyson @neiltyson · Feb 1
Just an FYI: A 250 lb football player, running 15 mph, has more kinetic energy than a bullet fired from an AK-47 rifle.

I don’t know. We might see a player retire early, once in a great while, due to injury risk. But I think the NFL will keep raising the salary cap, throw more money at the players, and make it harder to walk away.

It’s not a bad bargaining chip for the union, though.

So many NFL players know the risks and play the game. Borland is one exception. A notable exception, but just one. It usually takes a player to get multiple concussions before deciding to quit the game. I respect Borland’s decision, though. Respect the hell out of it.

What bothers me in a topic like this is the traditionalist rejection of change.

The game demands physical toughness, and that requirement won’t go away. I don’t see much of a way to protect, for example, knees. And the game is going to feature hitting.

But there are things to do to reduce the threat of truly serious injury, especially to the head. Consider the helmet. The hardness of the shell and the masks were developed to protect. But I think it’s pretty clear that they don’t protect much and have become weapons.

Want to cut back on concussions? Make the helmet soft. And remove the face mask. Force the players to play with exposed faces. That’s how football was played for many decades. And rugby players today have no protection for their faces. A few guys wear soft head gear, mainly the front rowers who are protecting their ears. But no one has face protection.

Watch a rugby international some time, and you’ll see that it doesn’t prevent people from playing a rough game very hard. But it DOES affect the technique used for tackling. No one head hunts using the unhelmeted head. That would be suicide. People learn classic tackling technique that limits damage to both tackler and tackled.

Now, there are a lot of concussions in rugby. More today than in the past. The players are bigger and faster and the game is chasing American football-styled violence. After all, the TV screens are lighting up with “big hits” as they do here. And this is a change. Old-school rugby was an incredibly tough sport, but the violence tended to involve punches and stamps, and so forth. The sort of aggression that hurt, but didn’t often maim. People knew how to tackle relatively safely. The gamje is still played that way at mid- and lower-division clubs. My son played mid-division rugby for 6 months in Leicester, and there were 50 year old guys turning out for the C games. They knew how to play without getting hurt. The game CAN be played that way. Traditionalists talk about ways to return the scrum to what it used to be–a finessed wrestling match requiring skill rather than today’s “hit”-based collisions between front rows.

The point is that you can play the game in different ways. And sporting culture determines how it will be played. And what ultimately decides everything is the culture.

When it comes to the NFL, we tend to think about what “the league” does, and how that is dictated by TV interests. But think about it for a moment. TV wants to make money. When people talk about “flag football,” TV would resist because they don’t want to lose money.

But notice what that statement means. What if flag football were MORE POPULAR than what we’re used to? TV would show that and be delighted. TV doesn’t care what is broadcast so long as it makes money.

“Flag football” wouldn’t work because American football culture WANTS THE OLD GAME! You can see that in comments on this board, all over the net, and in any conversation between fans. Football lovers WANT big hits and they WANT the sort of ersatz armor image that comes with shoulder pads and helmets. We all love that shit. I can remember when I first put on pads and helmet in HS, Damn, it felt cool. And we all love highlight reels with huge hits and the heroics of those who withstand them.

WE ALL LOVE THE GAME THAT CAUSES CONCUSSIONS!

Now, set aside for a moment our traditional expectations and demands. Just imagine a slightly different game.

Soft helmets with no masks. A football culture that from the earliest ages taught KIDS how to hit without using the head. There’s still plenty of room for toughness. Again, watch rugby and you can see it. But if the CULTURE were broadly committed to changing the techniques of contact, if football people–fans, coaches, players–shifted their values to eliminate head-hunting, you could have a pretty damn good game and a lot fewer concussions.

Of course, that’s a pipe dream. At least for now. There’s no push for that. Pundits, coaches, players, and fans are nervously wondering about all this, but no one is really willing to IMAGINE a game without traditionally key elements.

So, OK. I understand why that is. But if we are going to be intellectually honest, we need to understand something.

A traditionalist model of American football pays an unnecessarily high price in concussions because of traditional equipment, techniques, and values.

Anyone who defends that model ought to be willing to understand that price, and say, honestly, “I am willing to let human beings pay the price with body and mind so I can hold on to the entirety of my idea of football. It COULD be different, and the differences could be wonderful. But I am unwilling to take the human costs seriously enough to imagine a different game.”

‘Cause that’s where 95% of the American football establishment–fans perhaps even more than other levels–resides these days. We are willing to let young men pay the price to sustain an unnecessarily vicious game ’cause we like that game the way it is. And we especially like the helmets and vicious hits that costs people their brains. Don’t ask us to consider changing it.

What I detest is the average fan’s unwillingness to honestly recognize the price of it all.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 9 months ago by rfl.

Well, I agree with all of that, RFL.

I don’t want flag football. I wouldn’t watch it. I mean–if that’s all there was, who knows? But I don’t think I’d be interested.

I love the hits.

And somewhere in my mind, I push the horrible cost of those hits away.

And I enjoy the game.

But players can’t just push that stuff away. They live with it, as do their families. I’m amazed sometimes that anyone signs up for this–even at the big money. Still, they keep signing up. And while some may walk away, many more will not.

wv wrote:

Food for thought, RFL.

Again, WV, I’d simply point out that the videos you cite are all about the “dirty secret.”

I think as long as the question is posed that way, there’ll be no progress.

We need vision casters to lead the pursuit of ways to raise safety without destroying the game.

One of the problems is that everyone thinks immediately of rules changes. But as you know from inside the legal profession, rules applied as band-aids never work. Rules, regulations, and laws without community consensus are useless.

Personally, I think the best way forward would be to question the helmet. Change the helmet and techniques would change WITHOUT rules changes.

Anyway, things to think about.

I appreciate your honesty, Man. But consider this:

Winnbrad wrote:

But nothing will change unless the players force that change. As long as they’re willing to cash the checks and bash their brains in, people are gonna watch.

See, I think this is backwards thinking. Checks will lead people to risk their lives. Indeed.

My point is the SOURCE of those checks! The checks arise from a massively consistent consensus in the football culture about what “we want.” Change the culture, and you change the source of the checks.

My question is this: are we willing to imagine a game that does less damage to brains?

It has to be far more than a few rules tweaks. They don’t work anyway. We have rules to “protect” QBs and they distort the game because they don’t change the fact that violent men armed with brutal weapons in the form of helmets are trying to stop the QBs. The rule can’t change that core reality.

The CULTURE has to change. That will change the source of the checks.

And it has to be done at a far more organic, core level than the play of the professionals in the league. Remember, tens of thousands of young men, many of them children, are affected by this. It’s not just NFL guys. Hell, I played a game mildly concussed once at Div. III level.

And that, really, is where change will have to happen. In a sense, I think it’s inevitable. There will be lawsuits involving Pee Wee leagues and school districts and gradually parents will demand change. Eventually, those changes at the grassroots level will change the game and people’s expectations.

Of course, all that will take time. A generation or more.

Which is American football’s existential threat. If changes aren’t made faster, there is a good chance that enough parents will sign their kids up for soccer or la crosse to undermine the football fan base. That actually seems to me to be a fairly likely scenario. I don’t think we’re all that far from a tipping point where we become a soccer nation. And parents of children will lead the way.

rfl wrote:

See, I think this is backwards thinking. Checks will lead people to risk their lives. Indeed.

My point is the SOURCE of those checks! The checks arise from a massively consistent consensus in the football culture about what “we want.” Change the culture, and you change the source of the checks.

My question is this: are we willing to imagine a game that does less damage to brains?

It has to be far more than a few rules tweaks. They don’t work anyway. We have rules to “protect” QBs and they distort the game because they don’t change the fact that violent men armed with brutal weapons in the form of helmets are trying to stop the QBs. The rule can’t change that core reality.

The CULTURE has to change. That will change the source of the checks.

And it has to be done at a far more organic, core level than the play of the professionals in the league. Remember, tens of thousands of young men, many of them children, are affected by this. It’s not just NFL guys. Hell, I played a game mildly concussed once at Div. III level.

And that, really, is where change will have to happen. In a sense, I think it’s inevitable. There will be lawsuits involving Pee Wee leagues and school districts and gradually parents will demand change. Eventually, those changes at the grassroots level will change the game and people’s expectations.

Of course, all that will take time. A generation or more.

Which is American football’s existential threat. If changes aren’t made faster, there is a good chance that enough parents will sign their kids up for soccer or la crosse to undermine the football fan base. That actually seems to me to be a fairly likely scenario. I don’t think we’re all that far from a tipping point where we become a soccer nation. And parents of children will lead the way.

I agree with you, RFL. I really do. I think a culture change would impact football in a positive way. I’d love to see it.

Our culture moves so slowly, though, unless something catastrophic happens. And even then, it has to effect a lot of wealthy, and middle income, white people. That’s when the shit hits the fan.

As for parents, yeah, I could see them sending little Johnny to play soccer, baseball, whatever, instead of football. Football still rules the roost, though, at least in popularity. But could it lose ground to other sports because of the long-term injuries? Yeah, imo. It could. It may even be inevitable, without some changes to the league.

So to your question – “are we willing to imagine a game that does less damage to brains?”

It’s just my opinion, of course, and I hate to say this, but right now the answer our culture would give you is, “hell no”. Personally, I would like to see less damage to everyone and every body part. But I just don’t see it happening without players being the driving force behind it.

There was an interview, several years ago, with Carson Palmer and some other vets. It was one of those “round table” discussons. I don’t remember who was running it. But one of the questions was about what would cause the NFL (the league) to change the culture among players and coaches, as it relates to safety. Carson said “someone would have to die on the field.”

Now Carson is a pretty smart guy, and I don’t think he’s prone to hyperbole, although he could be. But that whole room went silent. It hit home with everyone there.

So our football “fan culture” needs to change, but it needs to change with players, too. And imo, the players have more power to instigate that change, and faster, than anyone else.

Winnbrad wrote:

I think a culture change would impact football in a positive way. I’d love to see it.

It’s a tough issue, no doubt.

Good discussion. Thanks for letting me rant a bit.