By Stephen Cooney
Watch a high school football practice, better yet watch a Midget, Pop Warner, Mighty Might, or whatever you want to call a group of kids playing football, and you know what you will see? A bunch of tough little kids running around the field trying to be as physical as they possibly can be.
At the youngest age, young football players are taught to play the game as tough as possible and to punish their opponents. As long as it is between the whistles and not outside of the rules, no one cares about it. No one will say a single word. As a matter a fact, the kids that play this way usually end up in the newspaper or high on recruitment lists.
They are the players everyone wants to talk about; they are the kids other coaches fear, they have the attitude that college coaches love. It is the same attitude that the NFL drafts. Too bad that by the time they get to the NFL they are expected to hold back just a little bit so no one gets hurt.
How come no one cares in high school or college or below? Simple: money – everyone knows that football is a violent game, but the violence is only an issue if someone is going to lose some money.
How many horse-collar tackles did you see before TO broke his ankle – think about it. Probably at least one a weekend, and they probably changed the tide of a game. Is the horse-collar a great way to tackle? No, but you’re taught to do what you have to do, and sometimes people get hurt. The fact of the matter is that everyone who plays football knows they might get hurt; they just don’t care about it. The guys who care about it aren’t on the field.
The horse-collar tackle didn’t really bother me, but it was the floodgate that opened after the rule change that came in the costume of player safety. Helmet-to-helmet hits, and all the new calls that fall under “the protection of the quarterback” should just be called what they are: hitting too hard, endangering a star and (how about a new one) playing football.
It is becoming ridiculous that the NFL is fining players for playing football. The new rules that have been put in for personal safety are being more aggressively enforced than the Patriot Act, and football is suffering for it.
As the league continues to hand out fines for actions that are not flagged on the field, players will start to hold back just a little bit, and that is not the essence of the game. Football is a game based solely on effort. Everyone has talent, especially in the NFL, but it is the effort and the “extra mile” that determines the game. If players are holding back and scared to play as they want to, they are hurting the integrity of the game and are more likely to get hurt. No one is scared to get hit in the NFL. They might not like it, but they accept it. They are football players. The league, on the other hand, doesn’t like it.
They don’t like it because it hurts business. No one wants to see anyone get hurt, but the league definitely doesn’t want to see their stars on the sideline, not because they care about them, but because they need them to make money. The fact of the matter is that the NFL is always going to make money. America loves football, but America loves football for what it is: a physical game played by hard-working players who are willing to lay themselves on the line for the betterment of the team. It is an American ideal, and the new safety precautions and ridiculous fines in the NFL are starting to take that away. Some players are starting to agree.
No one wants to get hurt, and players don’t want to get themselves hurt more than the league does. They leave their teams in a lurch, they hurt their legacy, and they miss games.
But players want to play football.
They want to be able to hit quarterbacks and they want to hit other players hard. Big hits cause reactions in the crowd, but they also shake up the team. They can change the pace of a game, and they can alter a season for good or for bad.
When you play football, you understand this and you take the risk every time you step on the field and when you play football the way it has always been played you shouldn’t be fined for your actions, especially a week after the game when no flag was thrown.