NFL is almost here, but NBA is coming!

Summer is winding down and that means only one thing. NFL is round the corner. We are in the NFL pre-season, also knows as the "rip the season ticket holder of their cash" season. It's good to have the nation's most popular sport back. Summer's reality will give way to fall's fantasy football soon and we will all be sucked in. It will be big business as usual and we will be craving more football every day. With all that said, there is something different every summer these days as we get ready for the national football league. The dark cloud and negativity around the league is only growing. Players are continuing to punch their wives and girlfriends and thats not a good look for any league. The Kaepernick controversy and the rumored black-balling of him is not endearing by any means. Moving 3 teams out of their home markets in less than 2 years shows you NFL doesn't spell either Greed or Goodell without a capital G. NFLPA's executive director DeMaurice Smith tore into the league for their greed and for lying to the players and is threatening a lockout next time around during the CBA negotiations. None of this is great off-season marketing programs for a league and every off-season lately seems to follow the same script.

But the 10000-pound elephant in the room continues to be concussions, brain damage, and the sport's impact on athlete's health. There is no way around it and the sport just can't sustain this way for long. The recent news that 110 of the 111 brain donations of dead NFL players showed signs of CTE was another shocking reminder of how dangerous this sport is. Granted, the science on this is not exact and most donations probably came from players and families who had a reason to suspect CTE, but thats still a sobering number. And then to hear former Raiders QB and legend Jim Plunkett say "his life sucks" because he is in so much pain breaks your heart. Guys have been pummeled to the ground repeatedly for decades and given the knowledge at our disposal today, the sport seems like a flat out horrible idea! As a fan, I can't help but feel complicit in this unintentional crime against these athletes. And given what we know today, is it even unintentional anymore? We know exactly what football is doing to these athletes on the field and it's not pretty. Many fans are walking away from the sport. It's not a financial crisis for the league yet, but it might get there eventually. There is a pall of gloom descending over the sport of football for sure and I don't see how it can survive this way long-term.

The sport has morphed a lot over the last decade, but it has to change drastically still. It almost can't look like football to be safe enough for kids and adults who play it. The biggest challenge for the league is to get there and continue to look like football and retain the fans along the way as this massive transformation happens. Knowing this greedy league, they will continue to move slow until their pocketbooks are hit hard. May be we as fans should force that and they may start to look at the safety aspects of the sport with more diligence and sincerity. Their behavior over the last 10 years on the issue has been pretty shady to say the least. Football is already on it's way to losing the pipeline of future athletes as most parents are not allowing their kids to play the sport. It is going to be the next boxing in the sense that only the desperate and the poor will take to it. Not the best way for a sport to attract top athletes. The sad part is, the real painful stories are probably with the ex-college and ex-high school athletes who never get covered in the media. At least in the NFL, guys make decent money, get some media attention, and have good pension, health care etc. I can't even imagine what current day players in the NFL are thinking and whats going through their head when they take the field. It should be a torture for them everytime their head hits the ground or they get a headache or whatever. To know what they know now and continue to play the sport at this violent level is something I will never comprehend. No wonder some players are retiring very young.

The NFL athletes are also rightfully asking for guaranteed contracts and may fight for it during the next CBA. They see the sky-rocketing salaries in the NBA and the mass celebration and hysteria around free agency every summer and it should feel like an alternate universe for them in the NFL, though they are playing the more popular sport. As for the NBA, they have been enjoying a great renaissance behind transcendental stars like LeBron and Curry, historic teams like the Warriors, and an enchanting style of play. NBA has been dominating the summer for a few years with very interesting off-season chatter. NBA draft, free agency, and trades are almost as popular as their regular season now. Thanks to LeBron's stupid "Decision" in 2010, every NBA summer is now the best reality show on TV. NBA has also learned a few things from the NFL and are slowly mastering the art of becoming a 24X7, 365-day league. They are coming for the throne. NBA's popularity is clearly on the rise and you can just feel it from the chatter in the summer. It will take a while for the NBA to pass NFL in the popularity charts, but the NFL is helping the NBA with every stupid mistake it makes. NBA's momentum is real and many folks are talking about it in the media. One of the reasons for it is also the issues in the NFL.

Even today in mid- August, there is tremendous interest in the Kyrie Irving trade rumors. Speaking of which, the Suns are very much in the chase. They don't want to give up Josh Jackson for Kyrie. Not sure if it's smart or dumb to treat JJ as an untouchable asset when he has not played a single minute in the NBA. But I am OK with it. I trust the Suns front office when it comes to evaluating their young talent and prospects. I expect and trust them to do the right thing here. Also, I am not a big Kyrie fan. He is a phenomenal offensive player. But he is a horrible defender and the rest of the Suns are not great defenders either to compensate for him. Plus, his tantrums and attitude off the field is a little concerning too. I get the feeling the trade will still happen. Suns are negotiating wth the Cavs and will get him one way or the other - with or without JJ. It's a sobering thought that the Suns are expected to finish last in the West even with all the excitement around their young stars. Of course, they are all still too young and will take another year or two to mature. In the meantime, the Western conference is only getting better and better. Kyrie will give the Suns instant credibility in the West, if not more wins and the team will be fun to watch. I say I am fine with those results for 2017-18.

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.