Amardo Rodriguez is professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at
By Amardo Rodriguez
A new football season will soon be upon us. However, the mounting medical evidence showing the enormous debilitative toll that comes with playing football will inevitably soon force principals and chancellors to make unpopular decisions about the future of the sport. It will also most likely lead to a massive lawsuit against the NCAA from past players, as much more football is played at the college level than at the NFL level.
Yet the adage that within every problem resides an opportunity could not be more true in this case. We can do much more than save football. We can make the game better. We can now finally emancipate the game's beauty and potential, and, in the process, significantly lessen the human carnage. This we can do by making just a few changes.
1. Remove all pads and helmets.
Persons who administer the sport would do well to understand the notion of negative feedback loops. An example of a negative feedback loop is solitary confinement. U.S. prisons have long used solitary confinement to lessen and control deviant and dysfunctional behavior. However, rather than helping prisons achieve these goals, nearly all the research shows that solitary confinement actually promotes deviant and dysfunctional behavior, and consequently makes prisons more, rather than less, dangerous. However, rather than ending or lessening solitary confinement, prisons have responded by employing more solitary confinement to deal with the rising deviancy and dysfunctionality, which of course is only making prisons much more dangerous. Conceptually, what is happening in football is no different.
The NFL and NCAA remain determined to make the game safer by employing safer pads and helmets. We are to assume that the game will be saved through safer and better equipment. However, the use of supposedly safer helmets and pads is only making the game much more debilitative and destructive. The problem is that the NFL and NCAA are mistaking the origin of the problem, and thus mistaking the solution to the problem. Helmets and pads create the illusion of safety, and helmets and pads that are promoted as being better and safer only heighten this illusion. This illusion inevitably makes the playing of the game much more careless and reckless. Both can be seen in how spinal cord injuries occur in football where too often players are leading with their heads. In order to make the game safer, the focus should be on making the players much more cautious. The only way to achieve this heighten sense of caution is by making the players physically vulnerable, which in this case means removing all the pads and helmets. Bike messengers who weave in and out of the dangerous streets of New York City at high speeds on bikes with no brakes know this truth well--vulnerability promotes safety by heightening our senses.
Moreover, besides making the game safer, removing the helmets and pads will organically revert the game to being about speed and strength rather than speed and size. In addition to the head trauma and spinal cord injuries, the game also exacts an enormous toll on the largest players on the field. As much as we now properly understand the debilitative impact of size on the health and well-being on players, the size of the players at all levels continues to increase significantly as the current configuration of the game continues to encourage and reward size. However, without helmets and pads, the game will naturally become faster and quicker, organically downgrading the value of size and ending all the debilitative effects that come with size. In becoming quicker and faster, the game will also become more beautiful and much more gender inclusive.
2. End hitting.
There is simply no compelling argument that can be made to defend the value of hitting in football. This practice will always produce carnage as no human being is biologically designed to regularly withstand this practice without injury. Currently, helmets and pads mask the stupidity of this practice by creating the illusion that all the hitting is exacting no serious toll on the players. But just from the standpoint of physics, hitting in football is just dumb. But, most of all, this practice adds nothing to the value of the game. That is, what exactly does the game achieve from having persons slam into each other? The game will be much better served by allowing players to push, grab, block and even hold. Further, making the game safer is ultimately about protecting the heads and necks of those who play the game. Simply disallowing any kind of contact (even pushing, grabbing and holding) above the shoulder will help achieve this goal.
Any system must either evolve or perish. This reality is now bearing down on football. Although football remains popular and lucrative in the U.S., and the NFL continues to promote the game abroad, there is no evidence that the game is growing abroad and achieving even remotely the kind of success that basketball and baseball have achieved. It is also difficult to imagine that many nations will encourage the sport after learning of the debilitative toll that the game exacts. Then again how much of the world can afford all the helmets, pads and technology that now come with the game? In other words, how many school systems throughout the developing world can financially afford to establish vibrant football leagues that can potentially produce the kind of players that contribute to soccer, baseball and basketball being truly global sports? In this regard, football's growth prospects are bleak.
If football is to evolve and become the sport that it is capable of becoming, fundamental change is necessary. However, as much as most persons profess to like change, achieving change, especially when dealing with such a popular and lucrative sport, is often another matter entirely. But there is simply no way that football is to going flourish without significant change.