What Would The End Of Football Look Like?
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Especially thinking about universities -- to me, college football is not much more than a tragic exploitation system. Kids are recruited from age 14 and get promised the moon by coaches/staff, spend 5 years getting banged up (concussions etc) for life, and most wind up scraping through with a useless degree if they graduate at all. A tiny percentage go pro and the rest are left out to dry with few career prospects having missed out on their education. Most pros don't make that much during their career and don't have great quality of life after it's over (run out of money, lack of marketable skills, head damage).
The big media companies love it, and heads of universities like the "school spirit" and brand appeal (even though most schools lose money on football). But for the players involved, it's basically a scam. Even though they're getting a free education.
You might make similar arguments for other college sports (not sure how I feel about that having been part of one), but for football I think it's the most clear-cut.
Sure, universities make money off college football, but let's not call this a "tragic exploitation system."
The players aren't forced to play. They 'love' football. That's why they're playing.
The far majority of college players (in all sports) know that they're not going to be playing professionally. But yet they still play. Because it's their dream to play.
It can be your dream to play, but in many cases it's about trading 5 years of "living the dream" for a reduced quality of life, for the rest of their lives. Job prospects, marketable skills, physical and even mental health. The current system offers kids the chance to live their dream, yeah, but in doing so it runs them through the mill and tosses them out the other side.
Not true in all cases or for all sports, but true in football far too often.
Football is by far the most dangerous sport but players know the risks before they go in.
I played high school football 15 years ago and the big issue back then was paralysis.
The first day of every season we were shown an extensive video about paralysis and the best way to avoid making risky tackles.
It was a scary video to watch. But players know the risks.
I truly enjoyed football and the friends I made playing it. I've played many other sports and IMO there's no other team sport like it: no room for ego, a lot of pain and a lot of perseverance and discipline required. But I got my bell rung a lot and I was just a "skill" player. Several times I walked back to the huddle after getting hit on an across-the-middle route, not really sure where I was. Injuries happened all the time. It's a fast and violent game.
I use to feel retrospective fear whenever I think about the things I did when I was that age... even knowing the risks.
American football is totally unknown to me, but in my country there's that bullfighting thing. People that likes it doesn't seem to realise that it will disappear anyway in less than fifty years, probably much less. So I've found the article very interesting because the similarity.
He can be a fool, get beat up and leave without a degree or he can take advantage of an opportunity many people only dream of. The coaches aren't telling him what classes to take. He can take whatever he wants. He can choose a useless program, a great program or anything in between. He can choose to meet the minimum requirements to stay on the team and keep his scholarship or he can choose to excel academically.
On the field, he can choose to hide a concussion or take some time off. He won't lose his scholarship over it. Most players feel pressure to play through injuries, and although it can come from peers and coaches, they often place most of it upon themselves. They are incredibly competitive and don't want to be sidelined for anything.
My point is all the choices are his to make. The same applies to other players. There are few victims in this who aren't victims of their own decisions. If a kid washes out of some dumbass cake walk program for kids who don't give a shit about school, sustains injuries in a sport he would play with or without a scholarship and has zero career prospects is that the fault of the system? I don't think so.
There are ways to twist it around to make it look like a scam, and it's true there are plenty of things wrong with college football, specifically the BCS. It's a feeder system for the NFL, a bunch of people make piles of money and the kids don't make anything. It may be all of those things, but it is also an opportunity for the lucky recipient of a football scholarship to change his life, either for good or bad.
First, scholarships aren't guaranteed. They are only for 1 year and renewed at the team's discretion. A team can cut you if you get permanently injured. They typically don't because that would look bad to future recruits but if you can't continue with school they aren't going to keep you on scholarship. They can move you to a medical scholarship but that happens less often than you'd think.
Second, I don't think you realize the amount of time it takes to play a college sport. There's a reason a lot of athletes take something like General Studies, and it's not because they are all 'dumb jocks'. The college and university will be accommodating but the fact is that there's a lot of practice time (4+ hours a day) and travel. The football season is longer than most, even longer if the team is good (bowl games). Any hard science that has a lab or field work is probably out.
I just don't think you are realistically looking at what your brother is getting himself into and your expectations seem way off. He'd have to be one of those rare individuals to get a high-end degree and play a scholarship sport. Choosing to be a scholarship athlete is choosing to work on a sport instead of working on a degree of 'substance'.
I read through the paperwork for the scholarship that was provided to my brother by the university so I understand how it works. He's spent the past year visiting schools and talking to various people about this. People have visited the house and his school to go over it all. I've been hearing all about it the whole time. This is exciting for the whole family. It's not like a letter showed up in the mail out of the blue one day saying he could go to school for free. I understand the year to year thing and how it works with injuries. In practice, it is uncommon to lose a scholarship unless you are a screwball.
I also realize that it takes time to play a college sport. Four or more hours of practice every day is nothing new. My brother has been doing it for the past four years at a school that demands a high academic level. He also has his own personal coaches that he works with. Half of the games he played in required travel-- quite a few of them three or four hours each way on a bus. This is all piled on top of hours of homework that always got done. Hell, his days are longer than mine and I have a full time job and a toddler. Granted, he never had to stay overnight anywhere, but playing football was still a huge time commitment. He made many sacrifices to do it.
My brother loves playing football and also places a high value on education and future career opportunities. I think it's every college football player's dream to play in the NFL, but he is realistic about the possibility and planning to make his money doing a regular job like everyone else.
There are plenty of kids that make this work. There are also many that don't. For some of them it's too difficult. Others didn't care much about school in the first place.
In the end, I'm just not buying the argument that the whole system is a scam designed to make a ton of money off the hard work of these kids that get nothing. Both sides benefit. One side gets the money. The other gets the opportunity of a lifetime. Besides, no one is forcing these kids to accept scholarships, and if they are playing at the kind of level to even be considered for one they know damn well how hard it is.
http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/nli/nli/document+library...
I'm sure your proud of your brother, I get that. And I'm sure he's a smart individual. But how many of us skated through high school? I played 3 sports in high school and graduated at the top of my class without even trying. College ain't high school.
Take the money out of the equation. Let's talk about time because that's all that matters. The coach will come by the house and tell you you can be pre-med and play football. Consider them as car salesmen. They need to sell you a product and will say just about everything to make that happen.
But one of two things will happen with a heavy class load AND a season of D1 football: either grades will suffer or the sport will. Do you think the coach is going to tell you to skip a couple practices to catch up? Nope, he's going to ask you to take some easier classes and you'll have to to keep your scholarship, otherwise you'll get replaced by someone who will.
Here's a great article about the athlete turnover even at a school like Stanford:
http://paloalto.patch.com/articles/stanford-football-players...
I saw this firsthand in Seattle when the Sonics left for Oklahoma City. Several of my friends who were lifelong fans swore they would never watch NBA basketball again and became hardcore MLS (Major League Soccer) fans.
Fantasy football has a nice rhythm: Peak at your team on Thursdays half-way through the season because of the handful of Thursday night games, adjust your team at lunch on Friday, check your scores on Monday.
At least for casual people. Maybe those hard-core will move to fantasy golf...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_sport#Modern_founding_-...
But regardless, their points about the potential resulting benefits outside of the sporting world still has merit in my eyes. For example, there are large universities that derive much of their funding and student enrollment based heavily on the marketability of their football programs. Schools like Ohio State, Oklahoma, Alabama, and LSU come to mind. Without the marketing strength of their football teams, perhaps the schools would be forced to put more effort into enhancing and promoting academic achievement.
But for most universities, the opposite is true. The football team runs a big deficit and is subsidized by the university (as are most sports, but football is by far the most expensive). Those smaller or less successful schools are the ones really hurting themselves by devoting so many resources to football.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopath...
Maybe without football, we'd be closer to finally decoupling youth sports from the education system.
American Football was always this violent, even before the pads. They managed to kill 19 (NINETEEN) people playing it in 1905, well before the helmets came in (1939ish, although: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_football_helmet).
Rugby doesn't have these problems because there are very specific rules about what constitutes a legal tackle and what doesn't.
You can't:
- Tackle a player without the ball
- Tackle a player in the air (e.g. a full-back going up to catch a high ball)
- "Lifting a player from the ground and dropping or driving that player into the ground whilst that player’s feet are still off the ground such that the player’s head and/or upper body come into contact with the ground is dangerous play."[1]
- Many more
[1] Full list here - http://www.irblaws.com/downloads/EN/Law_10_EN.pdf
Going off track, but by finally are you saying that's a positive thing?
I'm a nerd. I've always been a nerd. I had the absolute minimum mandatory participation in sports during school. That is one of my biggest regrets. Sports have incredible importance in so many ways.
In my high school there were a large number of prominent sports, with participation covering a hefty percentage of the student base. Wrestling, basketball, football, swimming, badminton, track and field, volleyball, among others. There was something for almost anyone, and it was a fundamental part of the social, learning, and physical wellness recipe. The school heavily promoted and celebrated academic excellence as well (and, contrary to the common bigotry, many of the academic leaders -- the ones who I competed with -- excelled at sports as well).
If a particular school focused only on football, then of course that would be a problem.
What I read that post as saying is "sports should be extracurricular activities that do not interfere with or take the place of education". This doesn't necessarily preclude your normal PE classes.
How old are you, because you probably have time to make sports a part of your life.
My mother, never having run more than five kilometers at once, ran her first marathon at 66 -- http://joshuaspodek.com/redefining_possibility -- and she talks about running more. Plenty of other sports are available to people of every age.
I'm proud to have inspired her. I'd love to inspire others!
Where would an adult go to learn to play baseball, basketball or football? I know there are after-work adult leagues, but do they let people with no talent and experience play? What about coaching?
It's quite crazy though how much these football towns rely on a sport. The rivalries, the competition, and the booze. I always said if you wanted to rob a house, a friday night would be ideal because literally 50% of the town is at a football game. I really think it's just something everyone can relate to. In these towns where textiles and industry are prominent and there isn't much innovation, looking forward to that friday night football game with the guys is something that gives peoples lives meaning. I'm not sure my point, but I figured I should but in and say that there are such things as these towns and football is very real in the south and without it I would be very interested to see what people cling to next.
Basketball is big-ish, but most schools either have one or the other. I'm a big fan of Kentucky basketball, but everyone knows their football team sucks. That's usually how it goes. So maybe it would go like the article said and basketball just gets huge and more rounded in all towns.
I think the big draw of football, though, especially among low-income people, is that it's an accessible way for your average fan to engage in analysis without actually being responsible for failure.
I'm not a huge fan of the sport, but even I find it hard not to get sucked in.
Football is a dangerous sport, I'm not denying it. But the players know the risk when they start playing. The risk is why they make as much money as they do.
Source: http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/kidscorner/football.htm
Soccer, god rot its socks, is probably a better model. Hours of furious sprinting and jogging, lots of posturing and almost nobody ever wins convincingly.
I have never been to war, but I have friends who have, and your description of gridiron sounds just like their description of war. 2 month faffing around at base, 2 hours all out mayhem and intense fire fights, repeat for 12 month.
Then why isn't the rest of the world just as enamored by American Football as Americans? It's an almost non existent sport anywhere outside the US. If it really were more fun to watch than soccer or rugby, it would surely be more fun to watch in the UK, Germany, Brazil, etc.
It's only more fun to watch because you're used to it and your sporting culture is built around it.
>Linemen are constantly banging their heads. Each of those sub-concussive impacts is having some negative effect on the brain. I really don't know how long I expect to live but it's been a great 30 years. I'm kind of willing to sacrifice a decade or two for the chance of not having to work in my 40's or 50's.
If you say something is 20 times less. It means you take the original value and multiply it by 20, then subtract the new value from the original. This will always give you a negative value.
x-(x * 20)
What you want to say is that it's one 20th of the original value :)
"20 times less: x / 20"
20 * x is "20 times as much" but only "19 times more", IMO.
Beyond that, maybe robot football would take off instead. Sort of like in the movie Real Steel, where robots brought boxing back to prominence.
I think this is great point. Transition the game to avatar like mode with skilled players at the controls. Human element still present using players pilots and NASCAR like sponsorship of individual robots and drivers. Think of CS, AI, Engineering programs that would have a boost. Also, video game training of players starting in grade school which Madden already has a "lock" on. Doesn't FOX have that Cleatus Mascot that already is a fan favorite of this type of thinking. Now to the question becomes home come we don't remove the drivers from NASCAR and replace with Avatars.At which point the number of hits required to knock someone out of the game tends to decrease over time, the length of time during which a game contains the best players tends to decrease over time, and the desire of anyone to keep playing this game tends to approach zero.
For NFL games, there are exactly three commercial breaks per quarter by broadcast contract - college is similar. After the contractual number of breaks, the broadcasters simply do not cut away.
Furthermore, one issue with football from a spectator standpoint is that the coaches so often seek the limelight at the expense of the players - there's more emoting than a amateur production of A Streetcar Named Desire. It is hardly something which attracts fans.
What is unique is the level of violence for a team sport - it is the rare college or professional game in which someone is not carted off with an injury that puts them out for at least several weeks.
Also, while there are certainly plenty of fine points in the game to obsess over, it's a less open game in general so there's less room for tactical variation. There's no way to turn attack into defense, defense into attack, or possession into both at the same time, but there are plenty of ways to make the opposing middle linebacker take a misstep and leave him two seconds late to react to the play and hence win an extra few yards.
(or, more sarcastically, dive-ball)
http://www.amerikanskfotboll.com
http://www.cheerleadersofsweden.se/
(That's right people: free money, blonde women, socialism, cheap Ikea furniture, cheerleaders, AND proper football. Paradise on Earth?)
If the sport can survive in a country where there is absolutely no tradition for it...
Also, I would think that the velocities and masses involved in American Football are higher - it is more of an anaerobic sport due to the short play duration, frequent breaks between plays, and frequent player substitutions.
football is the opposite, especially with runs up the middle , receivers cutting across the middle of the field, and the smaller, but constant, impacts experienced by the linemen on both sides of the ball.
- American Football allows blocking, whereas rugby does not. This means it's perfectly legal to blindside someone as hard as you can, often helmet to helmet.
- Football allows tackling above the waist without wrapping your arms around the other player, whereas rugby does not. This means people can launch themselves at the other player as hard as they want without wrapping up, basically turning themselves into large projectiles. The goal, up until recently (since the league started cracking down), was to have a helmet-to-helmet collision in order to knock the other player out (most often happening to wide-receivers). Knocking out another player is a point of pride and a strategic advantage as well.
- Football has armor, Rugby does not. This actually works against Football. It encourages harder hits and head-to-head collisions. Football helmets protect against skull fractures but not concussions. The brain moves independent of the skull in a high impact collision despite how shock absorbant the helmet may be. In rugby, players are a LOT less likely to crack each other's heads together because of the risk of fracture.
I played rugby for 7 years through high school and college, and Football 2 years in high school. I never received any concussions in Rugby (let alone any serious injury at all), but did receive them in my short experience playing football, and at the Junior Varsity level no less.
If I ever have a son, as much as I love the sport, he is banned from playing American football.
In football it's the opposite, every yard is fought for because the team maintains possession after being tackled, and the way you keep possession long term is by moving 10 yards in 4 downs.
In rugby this means 2 players slamming directly into each other at full speed happens very rarely, while in football it happens all the time, and is in fact practiced.
For people that never played, it might be interesting to hear that at all levels, many programs institute reward systems for hard hits, amongst other accomplishments. It's mostly pride based, coming in the form of a sticker on the helmet, but it's part of the ethos of the game. When watching game film, coaches will replay hard sticks over and over to the great amusement of the whole team. Most embarrassing is being on the other end of one of those hits.
In pre-college football a certain class of players form their part of their identity around the ability to inflict and take hard hits, amongst their other duties. These also tend to be some of the most athletic kids. I'd assume just about any non-kicking NFL player has at some point in their life been one of those guys.
The article says:
> the NFL keeps changing its rules, but it turns out that less than concussion levels of constant head contact still produce CTE
Sure, but that's not true, because eventually, they'll reinvent rugby.
Intentional helmet to helmet hits are forbidden. Indeed, blindside hits are a pretty dangerous ground, with any hits touching the victims head or neck yielding significant penalties. Further there's the concept of a "defenseless" receiver, again bringing major penalties.
They constantly amend the rules to try to make the game safer, while still physical and exhilerating.
Likewise, while above-the-waist tackles are legal in football, they're certainly not the preferred technique because they aren't as reliable.
here's a great example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tggk0tvRhYI&feature=relat...
here's another even scarier example, especially given the fact that it's youth football. My kids will never play this sport: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlsTpx_-tlw&feature=relat...
I imagine if you came up with the right visualizations, that fans would be interested, e.g., "omg, did you see how the LB lit up that receiver coming over the middle! 150 Gs of impact . . . "
And you know, since we are on HN, "Football Physics: The Anatomy of a Hit" http://www.popularmechanics.com/outdoors/sports/physics/4212...
* Rugby Union / Rugby League. USA already has a relatively decent national Rugby Union side - certainly not top drawer, but able to compete at World Cup level. The facilities could be relatively easily converted and while there are certainly game subtleties that are very different (a complete ban on forward passes, for example), it'd likely be an easier player transition than to soccer or basketball.
* International Rules Football. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_rules_football) An existing hybrid of Gaelic football (for which I'd be astonished if there weren't east coast teams...) and Aussie Rules Football. Again, American teams exist, the pitches would be relatively easily converted, the skills are based around ball carrying and throwing...
Universities make too much money from football to just kill it. Too many large franchises make enormous sums from it, too many towns have it as a significant percentage of GDP. No transition to a new code would ever be easy but, if the writing was on the wall, the financial incentive for (say) one of the large conferences to give 3 years notice of transition to a new code in preference seem enormous in comparison with simply shuttering.
(Now, speaking as a Brit sports fan, if North America could only switch from Baseball to T20 Cricket then.... ;-))
Insurance and incidents of the sort outlined could push a turnaround in 2-3 years, quite easily IMHO. Insurance changes could make it extremely expensive in the space of a single year if they're on annual policies. If school boards are given the sudden option of running football at a substantial loss, pulling athletics programmes altogether and losing their value while mothballing their assets or trying to switch code, I'd bet on the latter.
Instinctively the elephant in the room is the different college conferences. Varied enough to go in different ways if push came to shove, big enough that they could impose a code change on their feeder systems. Plus, a big enough bottom-line contributor that if the numbers turned around fast enough I suspect administrators would try a roll of the dice rather than a mothballing.
(And I still want to see a greater uptake of cricket! :-))
(Honestly, I've tried watching baseball and, well, incomprehensible covered it well. Trying to work out what was and wasn't a strike a) confused and b) bored me, what with the slowing effect on the game. Then, they keep doing hits which get easily stopped and they're out before even making first base! Gimme T20 every day.)
I don't have much constructive to say about the issue, but this is a fun comparison I came across the other day: http://proxy.espn.go.com/nhl/story/_/id/7550059/nhl-john-buc...
MLS is growing fast in most of the metropolitan areas that have it, average attendances for MLS exceed those of the NBA, and TV ratings for the UEFA Champions League final last year almost doubled over the year before.
by a Canadian :)
This is not possible because if this started to happen schools would require you to sign a contract before being allowed to play. The contract will forbid you from suing the school for any injuries. This will then become standard practice.
Football is not going anywhere any time soon.
The world club championships would be more interesting, that's for sure.
All my friends in the UK are obsessed with the NFL.
Concussions are a major concern. This will lead to better helmets and more rules changes to protect player's heads. It will not mean the end of football.
Which one?
From: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2027053,00.ht...
On top of that being probable, players try to hide concussions (resulting in compounded head injuries the next time), and players rebel against the NFL's attempts to legislate fewer dangerous head-related hits and tackles. Actually, even fans and the media have the tendency to pine for skull-crushing, cringe-inducing hits at high-velocity.
I could probably have summarized the problem in one word: "culture".
The defensive side of American Football is very much brute force orientated especially for the larger players.
The mouthguard is actually the key safety gear for reducing the likelihood and severity of concussion injuries. The soft headgear sometimes worn is primarily for protecting the ears during the breakdown and scrum.