The End of the NFL

First of all, this is not a doomsday type, woe is me story. I am not one of the voices crying about the rule changes (at least I try not to be). I am not a sadist. If the league can make life better for it's players while maintaining the quality of the game then I am for those reforms. No, this is not a digression about the sissification of the league or a comment on the effect that the league's popularity among women has had. No, I still love the NFL in all of its manifestations and I will certainly be a fan until my last days.

This is a short little ditty about our beloved National Football League. The rediculous coverage of the so called "Bounty-gate" Saints has got me thinking again about the future of the league and the sport. The NFL is enormous, of course. In popularity. In profitability. In social relevance. The NFL is big in all ways. A quick history lesson, in case you did not know this, it was not always this way. There was a time before football. A dirty, stupid time when the second sunday of February (the only Sunday that always gets capitalized!) was not a time to gather with friends, to drink excessively and to bitch about how commercials used to be better. Football is king. Larger than large, but...it doesn't have to remain so.

This is a story of slow decline. Not even the NFL is immune to popular culture. There is no big that is big enough to resist the march of time. Western society (I do not mean to be ethnocentric here, most human societies are progressive but I am talking about us...the U.S. of A. so f@ck you) is progressive in nature and for centuries that which is considered "acceptable", "humane" and "normal" has changed continuously and steadily.

Progressives of the early twentieth century would be largely considered racist, sexist and offensive by even the harshest illiterate rednecks alive today. Women get to vote these days (a strong argument could be made that this is not an example of progress but for now, all you sexist a-holes please shut up). Judging a person by the color of their skin or the flavor of their religion is not considered simply immoral today but as a really insane way to look at things. And don't even get me started on the most tolerant, brilliant and enlightened minds of the 18th century. Michael Vick would think Thomas Jefferson barbaric in all meanings of the word.

It is this march of time. This forward push of popular thought that really is the impending doom of not only the NFL, but of football in general. The comparison of boxing and horse racing has been made far too many times but the point is valid. Once the pinnacle of the sports world, these contests have been pushed to the very edges of sports society largely because of their brutish nature. We have largely come to the consensus that two men bashing each other in the head in an attempt to inflict brain injury is bad. Most of us have also come to view horse racing as cruelty to a noble beast. I could see the sport being outlawed within a generation or two.

But, those are old boring sports. It couldn't happen to football, right? Technology is the real villian here. I can see a day in the very near future when medical technology allows for instantaneous MRI type brain scans to be available on the sidelines of football games. I can't see why this wouldn't happen very soon. It seems that this would be a benefit to teams, players and fans. Once the technology is there, the league will certainly mandate it. But what happens when it is available for all to see? What happens when it is shoved into all of our faces? Right there, in black and white, just what the immediate and frequent damage is being done to the brains of men who are entertaining us?

What happens when we have to decide whether or not to allow our sons (and daughters, not a sexist, not me) to play football at the high school or junior high level? What happens when affluent middle class families no longer allow their children to participate in the sport? What happens when it is only poor, uneducated families that breed the warriors that will entertain us? How long can that sport last? Isn't this what really happened to boxing?

Maybe Roger Goodell is to blame. He certainly is not my kind of commish. He flip flops around issues. He overreacts to public pressure in regards very rare and specific events (the fines in 2010 levied on James Harrison and Dante Robinson for hits that were in fact legal at the kickoff of their games shows this to be true). In short, he acts quite like a lawyer trained to react to any potential litigation. A classic legal defense. See X happen. Outlaw X. We are doing everything we can, your honor, you can't hold us accountable.

His reforms to improve player safety are very transparent and shallow. He talks of player safety but his audience isn't the media, the fans nor the players. He is speaking directly to potential jurors everywhere. The NFL clearly fears litigation. Why the league and/or the players union hasn't stepped up and created some kind of lifetime health care plan for at least players with long careers is something that I am confused about. Greed, I suppose. But there are many lawsuits against the league going on right now and many more to come in the future. The sport of football clearly and obviously takes a terrible toll on the human body.

The very fact that these lawsuits are impacting the rules and regulations of the most popular and powerful sporting enterprise that the world has ever seen is the very evidence that society's views on violence in sports is changing. It is hard to imagine the league being sued by former players a few generations ago. The league's current legal status seems eerily similar to Big Tobacco right about 1985. Medical science educated the world about the real dangers of smoking and public sentiment turned, followed by the courts. Big Tobacco paid heavily for killing its loyal customers and the NFL may soon begin paying to settle claims of its formerly loyal employees.

The future may be a very unfriendly place for peddlers of violence in all forms (don't get me started on the morality of the mass slaughter and mistreatment of all of our favorite dinner animals) but the alternative doesn't seem much better. We have all screamed at the screen after Tom Brady's pants get a tiny grass stain and flags fly. "What is this, some f@cking flag football shit?" The league could remove all contact and violence completely and we would probably still watch. I will be a fan until my last days but leagues aren't built on the older generations. Will my kids love it? Will their kids?

Once upon a time, the second sunday of February was the most important day of the sporting world (though the commercials weren't as good as they used to be).