See, I Told You So: Football in Trouble

RUSH: Grab audio sound bite number 24. Snerdley, listen to this. This is ABC's This Week. It's the roundtable on Sunday. Jacob Tapper was sitting in for George Stephanopoulos, who's sitting in for -- or no. Stephanopoulos, I guess, is permanent now. And Jake Tapper says to George Will, "George, is football in trouble, or is this just the media making a muck?"

WILL: It's in trouble for two reasons. First of all: The human body is not built for the violence that is inherent in football at the highest level. Second: People are gonna watch football differently from now on because they're gonna feel a little bit like the speculators in the Colosseum in Rome, watching people sacrificed for their entertainment with a kind of violence that is unseemly.

RUSH: Told you. Tooooold you. Folks, this is gonna happen faster than I thought. Maybe not an outright ban of the game, but I guarantee you this is gonna happen faster than I thought. It's funny for me. I read a lot of NFL blogs, and they're mostly written by typical liberal media types -- and these guys don't know what they're doing. As they write about this, they are paving the way for fundamental structural changes in this game that will make it not football, while they think they're doing compassionate stories.

For example, they're asking for federal commissions on concussions, "and we'd better have mandatory counseling for every player who retires otherwise they're all gonna commit suicide. For two reasons: A, all the head trauma; and B, people stop cheering for them, and their lives immediately turn meaningless. Every one of them." It's amazing to read this stuff. And I'm sure these guys all think that they're writing and positing with great compassion.

But they are paving the way for people who want to take the risk out of life to move in on football. There was a story by the author Friday Night Lights, "Buzz" Bissinger. He had a piece over the weekend, I think might have been the Wall Street Journal: "Why College Football Should Be Banned." Ban it! It loses money for most universities. It does not emphasize academics. It's nothing more than an unpaid minor league system for the NFL. Get rid of college football! I'm telling you: This is a groundswell now.

RUSH: Let me tell how this is gonna work, this NFL stuff, and you'll recognize this the minute I remind you of it. It's gonna start this season. With all this attention now to the concussions, the head injuries, the brutality of the game, all the focus on this stuff -- and, you know, with the suicide of Junior Seau and the study of brains. Other players, David Duerson and some others, have committed suicide this year. With so much attention focused on this, the first game of the season...

Which is gonna be a Wednesday night. It's September 5th, I believe. I'm not sure of the day. It's the Wednesday night before Obama accepts the nomination. I wonder how many people will show up at that one? He announced his campaign over the weekend and barely half of a 20,000 seat arena was filled. More on that in due course. Oh, you hear Tom Brokaw says it's time to rethink the White House Correspondents Dinner? It doesn't look good for members of the press to be seen drinking Cristal Champagne on camera. Members of the media are drifting too far away from the audience, from the people they are supposed to be covering the news for. I'll have more on that as the program unfolds.

You remember when the SUV thing first started 1996? The Sierra Club called to ban the SUV. They said it caused global warming. Global warming itself! After a while, every unseasonably warm day at whatever time of year, didn't your first thought go to either, "Wow, global warming. Maybe it's true," or some consciousness on your part that somebody was gonna say that? It's the same with various food warnings. People have said that coffee causes heart attacks.

You see somebody ordering coffee and you say, "No, no, no! Don't drink that." Everybody gets all uptight. It doesn't take much for people to get caught up in this stuff. So the first injury that is seen on national TV in a football game this coming season, you watch: The discussions of the brutality of the game and the potential damage to a father (a player, a father) who, in his retirement, wakes up one day and doesn't know the name of his kids. That will be a story, and it will be because of football, and the consciousness raising will have already taken place, and there will be a groundswell.

George Will is right. People are gonna start watching the game and the casual fan is gonna feel guilty as heck watching the game when there's a serious injury and say, "Why did they let that happen? Why don't they do something about that? Why don't they make that illegal?" I'm telling you, folks, the day's come. The people who make a living off the game are in the process of killing it, and they don't know that yet. They think they're doing a good thing here. Their intentions are honorable, just like Lyndon Johnson's, although I doubt his were.

I really don't. In fact, LBJ said as much. LBJ was like FDR. "I'm locking up the black vote for the Democrat Party for the rest of time with this legislation." FDR said, "I'm locking up the welfare and the poverty vote for the Democrat Party for the rest of time with the New Deal." Everybody wants to praise great, compassion and wonderful intentions, but it's all political. The motives are all political. And it's the same thing here with the sportswriters. They have to show compassion. They have to look like they care. Yet they have to cover the brutality of the game.

They have to support the game. The game is their livelihood, the game is their living. They don't know it, but they are paving the way for its end. And it's gonna happen sooner than I thought. I thought it wouldn't happen in my lifetime. Probably still won't. But you watch the pressure brought to bear this season. It's not conspiratorial. This is just gonna be the result of inertia. It's gonna be a tidal wave. Nobody's gonna be able to stop it. Somebody who tries to talk sense in the middle of this is gonna be shouted down, laughed at, thought to be insensitive or cruel or what have you.

This guy, "Buzz" Bissinger: "Why College Football Should Be Banned." Ban it? And his reasons are numerous. The last reasons he mentions in his piece happens to be the physical dangers. His primary reason is the game's a fraud. There aren't any student athletes. There's too much time required to play football. These guys don't go to class. Everybody knows that. And then most of these programs don't make money for the schools. The only reason football's a big deal is because the quality of the school is determined by the quality of the team.

I mean, who would care about Oklahoma if it weren't for the football team, this guy's point is, and the boosters and so forth. So the move is all over the place to get rid of the game. And in large part the people behind getting rid of game, whether they know it or not... Some of it is activist libs. I think it's libs behind this. They are behind most things like this. But it's people who want to take the risk out of everything, take the danger out of everything. "It's just not right. Civilized people should not be engaging in this kind of brutal behavior! It's the Roman Colosseum. Those days are in the past. We shouldn't be doing this kind of thing!"

RUSH: From the Chicago Tribune, quote: "The Bone-Shattering Truth: US Football is Doomed." From the Kansas City Star: "How Many More Deaths Can NFL Fans Take?" I kid you not. You didn't believe me. You thought, just like when I warned you people they were coming after SUVs, "Ah, here goes Rush! Football is one of his personal passions and he's scared about it. But, eh, they'll never ban it! Too much money." Look at the groundswell already. Chicago Tribune: "The Bone-Shattering Truth: US Football is Doomed." George Will (paraphrased): "Hey, it's no different than Roman Colosseum days. It's barbaric. We don't have this anymore in America."

It's spiraling out of control much, much faster than even I, El Rushbo, thought that it would. And now it has an inertia and a momentum all its own.

RUSH: Some people think I'm wrong on this football stuff when I say that it is spinning out of control. "No, Rush, it's not spinning 'out of' control. It is being spun 'into' control," and that might be true. I still maintain to you there are people who are engineering what could well be disaster for the sport. Well, for the industry, the National Football League, who don't know they're doing it. Then there are others who do know they are doing it.

Don't misunderstand. There are basically two or three kinds of people involved here. You got the wusses, you got the people who have played the game, and then you've got innocent bystanders -- and the wusses want to get rid of it. The people who have played the game want to hold onto it and the innocent bystanders are the ones that are gonna be swayed by the wusses. And I do mean that. And then you've got these well-intentioned liberal sports writers, as I say.

It's the last time I'm gonna say it, but it's important enough to say. They don't know it. I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt because I don't think they want to write themselves out of work. I don't think they want to write themselves out of jobs, but they are paving the way for this game to be done away with, fundamentally changed, what have you. Because they're liberals. They don't know any better. They think they're taking the compassionate, well-reasoned, well-thought-out side and all this.

I haven’t watched or participated in a football game since roughly 1968, but even I know this is not a good thing.

Helmets are required for amateur boxing, including the Olympics. My guess is that the only reason that they aren’t required for professional boxing is that there are too many governing bodies.

But Floyd Mayweather or Roy Jones? There is plenty of competition, but people aren’t interested.

Anyway, look: I have been a football fan, but these issues have left me with a less than favorable impression of the game. I dont have an interest in supporting a game that causes permanent, long-lasting injuries, particularly when damage can be done at high school and collegiate levels, where players may not have an appropriate understanding of the risks.

Agreed. Knowing what we know now, my kids won?t play football. And when you have people like Kurt Warner saying that his kids won?t play football, there is a problem for football.

My parents didn't allow me and two of my brothers play football while we were growing up. And that was before we knew all about long term effects of concussions on our brains.

This is a serious issue for football. It has to figure out a way to eliminate concussions or it will be marginalized as a sport.

I read an interesting article on a "economics of sports" blog. The failure of the NFL will begin with parents not allowing their kids to play peewee. The NFL needs to jump on this, if it intends to continue as a viable franchise.

Every time James Harrison gets fined for a clean hit, I get a concussion! Football is killin me, I think it’s Indirect PTSD.

I’m with you almost 100%. If someone gave me free
Superbowl tickets I WOULD walk across the street to scalp them for an obscene amount of cash.

Football is not for Wussies and that obviously includes you! Getting rid of concussions is like an idiot politician saying we will reduce armed roberied to zero. I played football and several in my family received football scholarships. It would do it again if I could - concussions in all.

Football is not for Wussies and that obviously includes you! Getting rid of concussions is like an idiot politician saying we will reduce armed roberied to zero. I and my kids played football and several in my family received football scholarships. I would do it again if I could - concussions in all. Jesus Christ man, it is suppose to be a violent sport.

“Minorities hit hardest.”

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Are we talking cause or effect here?

Conservatives will still get blamed.

Race will be the issue.

Conservatives are destroying football because 70% of the players are Black.

Re: Suicide Rate

In the USA, the suicide rate for healthy males over age 25 is roughly 1 per 12,000.

“Healthy” means the absence of serious physical disease.

You would expect to see 2 or 3 suicides per year among retired NFL players.

The top three precursors of suicide among healthy men are mental illness (including head injuries), drug or alcohol addiction, and family history of suicide.

Do we know for a fact Seau’s suicide had anything to do with concussions?

Not yet.

We will, as soon as the Drs. come up with a "consensus".

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