Football, RIP 1869 - 2020?

American football as we know it is in deep trouble. It's at the crossroads and the irony is, it's also at it's zenith as far as popularity and revenues are concerned.  How is this sport so popular and also deathly sick at the same time? It's basically in this predicament because of safety and health concerns and rightfully so. One of my favorite football players, Junior Seau, passed away last week and it's suspected to be a suicide. It was a sad day made worse by the images of his mom crying in front of the camera. Why can't the media at least leave the family alone for a few days? Lets save that topic for another day and time. But, we still don't know if his suicide was due to a concussion induced brain damage. Football players dying young is a sad reality thats getting a lot more attention these days. The shocking suicide of Dave Duerson last year and his text message asking for his brain to be researched for football related damage were chilling reminders of what happens to these athletes post-football.

The NFL, just over the last 9 months, has gone through a big cultural change both on and off the field right in front of our eyes. The rules have evolved over the last few years where safety and security have become a primary concern - especially with hits on the QBs and the receivers. People have been complaining for over 10 years now about how you can't even touch the QBs anymore. These safer rules have also slowly expanded to cover helpless receivers coming over the middle. We have heard many arguments over "dirty hits", "the new flag football" and suspensions, but the cumulative effect of all these rule changes showed up glaringly on the field during the 2011 season. Dan Marino's single season record of 5084 passing yards stood for 27 long years, but was broken by 2 QBs this year. Marino was the only QB until 2007 to have ever thrown over 5000 yards in a season and there have been 4 such seasons since then. Both Brees and Brady beat his record in 2011 and Stafford was the third QB to go for more than 5000 yards. Eli Manning and Aaron Rodgers were not too far behind and even a rookie QB, Cam Newton, threw for over 4000 yards. All this in a lockout affected season where the offenses were expected to take longer to come together. If this does not tell you that the game has changed on the field, nothing will. The new rules have made the pass offense way too easy.

Then came the "bountygate" during this off-season. Many NFL players will tell you that bounties are and were common in the NFL. But this controversy is another proof that the game has to and is changing. After all the suspensions and the commissioner's non-stop rhetoric for years about player safety, they just could not keep quiet when the news came out that the coaches put bounty on player's heads. So the Commish did come hard on everybody involved as expected. With a bunch of court cases already lined up against the NFL for concussions, this is not something they could ignore. It was about protecting themselves from more lawsuits more than anything else, though I am not sure if they accomplished that. Can you imagine Brett Favre or Kurt Warner suing the league over the "bounty" hits? The NFL has always been facing lawsuits concerning health and also facing criticisms about it's pension and insurance support for retired players, but the recent spate of concussion and head-trauma related lawsuits are far more serious. Over 1500 players claim that the NFL hid the dangers of concussion from them. This includes several prominent retired players like Jamal Anderson and it's sad to hear their stories. Jamal Lewis and Dorsey Levens retired fairly recently and they say they suffer from a lot of bad side-effects already. 

We live in a different world today. The knowledge and the research around health and our body is way more sophisticated now than it was even 15 years ago. The strides the health sciences have made during that time is pretty impressive and football as a sport may just not be a good fit for the new world. We can even think of this as a part of our evolution. A brutal and violent sport like football may become untenable soon as we reach new levels of awareness and consciousness. That is why football as we know and love today may be dead soon. It is already a different game than it was 15 years back, but is going to look a LOT different soon. All it takes is for the NFL to lose one or two of these multi-million dollar concussion lawsuits and it will be a full-on crisis for the league office. They have to get creative and make the sport a lot safer while still keeping it interesting for the fans. The sport is incredibly popular right now, but the abuse it subjects it's athletes to cannot be justified for long. This is why talk shows and ESPN are spending hours this week talking about this issue. Popular topics include asking parents if they will let their sons play football. 

In fact,we will start seeing changes at the grassroots level soon. Some high-school might discontinue their football program due to safety concerns and soon, it will be 10's of high-schools and who knows where the momentum takes us from there. Nobody wants to see young men suffer traumatic head injuries knowingly. NFL athletes are dying young at an alarming rate. They are getting bigger and stronger by the day and the heavier athletes are more likely to die before 50. It's not all about the head injury, but NFL has a bunch of issues that seem to kill it's millionaire men long before their time. NFL's popularity is at an all-time high and is making multiple billions of dollars. They will try not to kill the goose that keeps laying the golden eggs, but sooner or later, they have to re-invent this sport. I will personally put the over-under on football's demise at year 2020. We will still have a game that resembles football, but it will look a lot different. We will miss the current version of football, but we will be glad to see young athletes walk away with most of their faculties in tact.  I know I will be OK with it.