MORE THOUGHTS ON THE STATE OF COLLEGE AND PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL

In my last post I talked about the safety measures that have been put in place which have sought to transform football from the brutal sport which I played as a young man into something that is safer. With the exponential growth in the size and weight of today’s players, it is open to question whether these safety measures are as successful as they should be.

I’d like to talk about another change in football which possibly increases safety, but which gives players carte blanche to cheat—the legalization of blockers touching the “blockees” with their hands. When I played on the line, I was taught that if you put your hands on the person you were blocking, you would be flagged for holding and garner a 15 yard penalty. What you were supposed to do was hit the “blockee” with your shoulder and drive him back from the line of scrimmage. You were also taught to put your head between the “blockee” and the hole that the ball carrier was going to hit. This made it more difficult for the “blockee” to slide along the line toward the ball carrier to make the tackle. On defense, the linemen were taught to “read” the blocker’s head. Look and see which side of your body the head was going to be placed on, and slide in that direction to keep from being cut off from pursuing the ball carrier.

Old time defensive linemen defended against a shoulder block with a maneuver called variously a “forearm shiver” or a “flipper.” You hit the blocker with your forearm as hard as you could in order to fight off the block. Some blockers would also hit with the forearm rather than the shoulder. I got my facemask busted and my chin split open from a huge offensive tackle who smashed his forearm into my face. The worst part of it was that the blow caused me to swallow my cud of chewing tobacco. Aiming for the head with a flipper was a good tactic on either side of the line. As a defensive lineman, I aimed my flippers for the head of the offensive lineman. On offense I aimed my flipper at the chest of the opposing lineman. We used to wear flipper pads to prevent injury to the forearms, but my junior and senior years in high school flipper pads were outlawed because some cheaters were “loading” their pads. Consequently, during the course of a game I would beat my forearms bloody from hitting faceguards and chinstrap buckles.

Nowadays I don’t see the linemen throwing flippers. Why? They’ve been outlawed. NFL rule 12, Article 3, Section 1(a) defines unsportsmanlike conduct, among other things, as: "Throwing a punch, or a forearm, or kicking at an opponent even though no contact is made."

Shoulder blocking is why the old-time football linemen had such bulky shoulder pads—to cushion the shoulder against the impact of hitting the “blockee.” Today the offensive lineman’s first move is not to hit with his shoulder, but to put his hands on the defensive lineman and push. Being denied the use of the flipper, the defensive lineman can do nothing but push back.

The push block is less traumatic than the shoulder/flipper block, but that is not why blockers are now allowed to use their hands. They can use their hands because it is “too hard” for referees to police holding. I remember reading about the rule change when it was made, and the justification was that it made the policing of holding easier. It also made holding much easier. If you grab a defender by the front of his jersey, holding is almost invisible. It’s only when the blocker hugs the defender or obviously grabs the defender by the shoulder pads or side of the jersey that holding will be called. This makes pass rushing very difficult. Pass rushers had several tactics for evading the shoulder block of an offensive lineman in a passing situation, and these tactics are not nearly as successful when the blocker has hold of the front of the jersey. One pass rush tactic that would be outlawed today was the head-butt rush. As a pass rusher, your first move was to butt the blocker's face mask with the crown of your helmet. Can we say, "Targeting?"

Because of these rule changes, passers get much more time to get off their passes. So how does the modern game compensate for this great advantage? By legalizing all but the most egregious forms of pass interference. Being able to put your hands on or wrap your arm around a receiver who is trying to catch a pass is an open invitation to do a little grabbing and shaking the receiver to make him drop the pass. This grabbing is hard for referees to detect in the heat of combat, and that is why you constantly hear announcers saying, “Well, the defender got away with interfering on that play.”

Back before they legalized pass interference, the defender’s best way to defend a pass was to time the tackle to arrive at the moment the ball arrived and jar the receiver enough to make him drop the ball. Probably the greatest practitioner of this type of pass defense was Fred “The Hammer” Williamson. Williamson would time his tackles perfectly and deliver a stunning blow to the receiver’s head with his forearm. This blow would usually knock the ball loose from the receiver’s grasp. He also frequently knocked receivers out, and he boasted that he was going to knock the Packers’ top two receiver out in Super Bowl I. It didn’t quite work out as Williamson planned. He instead was the player who got knocked out.

I’m not suggesting that football go back to the old days of shoulder blocking and throwing flippers—those tactics produce a lot more trauma that is inflicted in today’s game, but there ought to be some way to tighten up on the grabbing of jerseys. Only the Umpire is specifically charged with the duty of looking for holding on the line of scrimmage. The Head Linesman and the Line Judge don’t appear to be assigned the task of looking for holding, and they are stationed on either side of the line of scrimmage. If they are not specifically required to look for holding on the line, they should have that task added to their duties. Maybe an off-the-field referee should be added who could monitor the line on a video screen and call in any holdings which are not detected by on-the-field referees. As far as grabbing by the pass defenders is concerned, maybe coaches should be given a limited number of challenges for no-calls in the event of the officials missing egregious pass interference. This right could be limited to interference in the end zone, the red zone, and on passes in excess of twenty yards. Maybe someday the players will wear “smart” jerseys that can signal when they’re being grabbed by opposing players.

THOUGHTS ON THE STATE OF COLLEGE AND PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL

 I’ve watched more football this past year than I have in many a moon, and the more I’ve watched, the more convinced I am that the game being played today is not the one I played in the 1960’s. Many of the maneuvers that we would have called “good hits” back then will now get you a 15 yard penalty. Targeting? We thought you were a wimp if you didn’t have skid marks all over your helmet from butting heads on the line and leading with your head making tackles. Back in the day, if you got knocked out, you could go right back into play when you woke up. We called getting knocked out "getting a phone call" or "getting your bell rung." We were smaller back then, which meant that head-on collisions at full speed were not quite as awful as getting run over by one of the 325-pound behemoths who stalk the modern football field.

All the changes I have discussed are designed to, and do, reduce the probability and severity of injuries. Probably the best thing that could be done would be to do away with the two-platoon system. If you’ve got eleven guys who run onto the football field for the kickoff and stay there until the final whistle, those guys aren’t going to be carrying a lot of extra weight. Look at the men who play rugby and Australian rules football. There’s not a 300 pounder in sight. Another way to reduce injuries is to restrict the weight of football players. I’m not a mathematician, so these figures might be off, but I’m going to take a shot at calculating the force of a 325-pound (147.7 kilogram) tackle targeting a 220-pound (100 kilogram) quarterback who is in the pocket looking for a receiver. Using the equation F=ma, and taking 8 miles per hour (12.8 kilometers per hour) as the speed of an average human being, we get an equation of F=147.7*12.8. Force equals 527 Newtons. A Newton is the force necessary to accelerate one kilogram a distance of 1 meter. The quarterback is hit in the head with a force of 527 Newtons. That is sufficient to knock his head off if it isn’t screwed down tight, and that is why targeting gets a 15 yard penalty.

Now let’s reduce the size of the defensive lineman to 250 pounds (113.6 kilograms). Our equation becomes F=113.6*12.6. Force equals 404 Newtons. The 250-pound tackle hits the quarterback with only 77% of the force of the 325-pound tackle.

You can make all the rules you want against targeting, and players are still going to do it. And quarterbacks are going to suffer massive trauma to the head. Rules against targeting won’t eliminate head trauma, but a weight restriction will reduce it significantly.

My modest suggestion for player safety in football is: (1) Eliminate two platooning; and (2) put a weight limit of 250 pounds on linemen.

But what about all those 300-pound behemoths? What sport can they play? To paraphrase Marie Antoinette, let them play Sumo. [That’s a joke]. I suspect most of them could eliminate body fat and excess muscle mass, and they would be under 250. When I was in college we had a defensive tackle who stood 6’6” and weighed 245 pounds. He looked like a beanpole. A muscular beanpole. That same player today could pack on weight up to 300+ pounds and carry it easily. But he wouldn't be as healthy.

I've got some other ideas for rule changes to football, but I'll save them for another post.

MEDIA COVERAGE OF FISTFIGHTS AT FOOTBALL PRACTICE

I understand completely why the news media would want to report on the Treon Harris case; he is accused of an awful crime. But the attention given the Skyler Mornhinweg/Gerald Willis fistfight is a bit much. I don’t blame the police for responding to the call for assistance, but I’ve got to wonder what the person who called them was thinking. The media is another matter. Don’t they have anything better to do? Football, in case nobody noticed, is a game of violent physical contact played by young men inured to such violence. Players fired up by physical contact at football practice can become involved in on-field fistfights. So long as that’s all there is to it, an at-practice fistfight is a matter of team discipline, not a police matter, and certainly not anything the media should be concerned about. The players, after all, are wearing armor designed to protect them from violent blows. The main thing that a player needs to remember in such a situation is to keep his helmet on. 

I remember a long ago fight on the practice field at UF which was handled, I think, appropriately. We’ll call the combatants Moe and Larry. It happened like this: Moe, a redshirt offensive player, was woolgathering on the sideline while the defense scrimmaged against the freshman team offense. (I said it was a long time ago). Having nothing better to do, Moe decided to walk over to the field where the offense was scrimmaging the freshman defense. (The two fields were side by side with a distance of about five yards between them). Moe engaged Larry, a redshirt defensive player, in a conversation which soon became heated. The next thing you know, they were squared off like boxers throwing punches at each other. Since neither one of them really knew how to box, and neither one of them was going to back up, most of the punches landed. I saw no body shots, only head shots. Moe wasn’t wearing a helmet, but Larry was. The fight was short-lived, with the coaches quickly intervening and separating the combatants. When I say the coaches intervened, I don’t mean that they physically got between the two—they didn’t have to. Snarling “break it up” at the combatants was enough to separate them. Then came the tongue lashing.

Aside from bruised knuckles, Larry was none the worse for wear. Moe hadn’t fared so well. His face was a bloody mess, and his knuckles were cut and bleeding from contact with Larry’s nose guard and chinstrap buckle. They sent Moe to the infirmary for medical attention and practice continued. The police weren’t called and the media weren’t notified. Aside from the tongue lashing they got on the practice field, I don’t know if Moe and Larry received any other discipline. I think the worst repercussion Moe suffered was the ribbing he got from his teammates for getting into a fight with his helmet off.

WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN? A SEMINOLE TRIVIA CHALLENGE

Last night, while sorting through old papers deciding what to keep and what to throw away, I came upon a treasure trove of very bad poetry that I'm sure I wrote over 30 years ago. Some of it I can remember writing while in college, some of it when I was a public defender, and then there is some that I haven't a clue when I wrote. I decided not to throw it away. Perhaps someday my grandchildren can have a laugh about what an abominable poet their granddad was.

I did write at least one poem that I’m not embarrassed to share. It’s a poem about a football game between the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the Florida State University Seminoles. Perhaps someone can enlighten me as to when the poem was written and who the FSU coach was at the time of the game. I think I know the identity of the coach, but I could be wrong. Anyway, here’s the poem:

The Noles went to Nebraska, And they really went to play.

They fought them to a standstill on that chilly autumn day.

The Huskers were the first to strike, they rolled up fourteen points.

The Noles weren’t beat ‘cause they were just unlimbering their joints.

The Noles came back and scored fifteen. They did just what they oughter.

The Huskers found themselves behind beginning the fourth quarter.

The Noles got three, they did so well, the score was now eighteen.

Nebraska took the ball and ran it down the field so green.

They started on their twenty, and they drove down to the three.

They pushed and fought and scrapped and tried to win the victory.

The Seminoles they bowed their backs and shut the Huskers down,

And they were winners tall and proud when they left Husker town.

The poem makes it painfully obvious that I am no Grantland Rice, but I enjoyed re-reading this piece of doggerel that I penned so long ago. I thought maybe a Seminole fan might get some enjoyment from it, too. Somebody please let me know when this game was played and who coached the FSU team to victory.

A MODEST PROPOSAL

Despite the advanced protective equipment, the super-scientific training methods, and the revision of the rules to make football safer, it seems that horrific acute injuries are occurring more and more, and that long-term, chronic injuries are rendering once-strong men into invalids. Physical injury has been a part of football since the first game was played. Thousands of players each year knowingly and eagerly assume such risks. When I first went out for football back in the early 1960’s, I realized that I ran the risk of injury but my desire to play trumped any fear of injury. When my remarkably unspectacular football career ended in 1970, I had never suffered a major injury. One thing I remember looking back on my career was how injuries increased as the years passed. In junior high, serious injuries were relatively rare. By high school they were becoming more common, and in college they became all-too-common. I vividly remember one spring practice when they carted so many players off the field with serious injuries that the coach severely limited contact drills at practice.

The rules were different back then, and hits which would today garner 15 yard penalties, game ejections, and massive fines were then applauded as good hits. It is a good thing that such hits are now illegal, but I don’t think vicious hits are the sole cause of injuries. They may not even be the major cause of injuries. We made those same kinds of hits in high school and junior high with much less devastating results; there had to be other factors at work. I think I know what those factors were, and I don’t believe the game as it is now played at the highest levels can do anything to neutralize those factors without making football something other than football—unless. . . . But we’ll talk about my idea for a sweeping rule change which would keep football recognizable as football after we talk about the other significant factors causing injuries.

The major differences between my junior high teammates and my college teammates were size and athleticism. A head-on collision between two Volkswagens is not going to do as much damage as a head-on collision between two Mack trucks, and no amount of padding is going to reduce the shock of that second collision to a safe level. Not only were the college athletes bigger, they were stronger, they were more talented, and they delivered their blows with much greater skill. I can well-remember the day I got the scar on my chin. The biggest offensive lineman on the team flattened me with a forearm blow, broke my facemask, split my chin, and made me swallow my chewing tobacco. I think he weighed 250 pounds. He certainly didn’t go over 275. And I was playing on (more accurately, practicing with) a Division 1, major college football team. There are running backs that size today, and modern linemen are considered small unless they weigh over 300 pounds.

I would say that modern college football players exceed my college teammates in size, strength, and athleticism by about the same magnitude that my college teammates exceeded my junior high teammates. When players that size collide, catastrophic injury is not just possible, it’s inevitable, and no amount of padding or softening of the rules will make any difference. It may well be that superior padding contributes to blunt force trauma rather than protecting against it. When encased in armor, players feel much safer and are much more willing to turn their bodies into projectiles. I remember one venerable coach instructing me and my fellow linemen that our shiny new cage facemasks were not intended for protection, they were to be used as weapons. I think that every lineman from that team carries a scar across the bridge of his nose which was caused by using our cages as battering rams when making hits.

What to do? They’ve made the equipment much safer, they’ve outlawed all manner of hits, and we still have injuries such as the one suffered by Marcus Lattimore this past Saturday.  They can’t decrease the athleticism of the players, they can’t decrease the increased strength of the players, they can’t decrease the size of the players. Or can they? I believe the size of the players can be decreased, and I believe that is the best avenue to go down if they’re really looking for a significant reduction of injuries. I also believe I know a simple way to accomplish this end without coercion.

Look at professional rugby players or professional Australian rules football players. They’re good sized men, they’re strong and athletic, but they aren’t the behemoths that you encounter on a football team. And they don’t appear to get injured as often or as horrifically as football players. Well now, they don’t wear pads and consequently don’t launch their bodies like hellfire missiles to make hits, and that makes a huge difference, but there is another factor at work which I believe is even more significant. They don’t two platoon. They don’t have an offense and a defense, they have a team. If we played football like they played rugby or Australian rules football, a player could expect to run out on the field for the opening kickoff and stay there until the final whistle. The best conditioned modern football lineman couldn’t possibly make it from kickoff to final whistle because he would be too big. His body would overheat, he would become exhausted hauling his huge frame up and down the field, and he would probably collapse by halftime.

Confronted with such a prospect, the lineman would do what any sane person would do. He’d either take up Sumo wrestling or lose weight. Even the backs would be smaller. Injuries would plummet. They would never go away because that is the nature of the sport and everyone who plays football knows and accepts that. We would not, however, be subject to such a steady stream of serious injury as we are today. As the title of this piece says, it’s just a modest proposal. I’m relatively sure it will never gain the assent of the football establishment.