[Nowhere Man]

Another factor is that the players have bulked up so much in recent years. Years ago, 300 pound players were rare. Now there are huge numbers of such players.

Yeah, I remember in the 1970's and up to about 1990 or so, 300 pound players were a novelty. IIRC, William, The Refrigerator, Perry was like 300/325 and he was all the talk back in the day. I remember when they mentioned the then rare 300 pounder, Mom and I stared at each other with open mouths.

A little OT, I remember a 1979 article on Sports Illustrated about football in the year 2000 where they said players would have suits with power assists, radios in the helmets and I think a HUD in the helmet too. It was wild.

[Nowhere Man]

It's like one of my friends joked, "get rid of all pro sports and go virtual reality all the way. Just get 22 Playstations, tie them into a mainframe, get 11 video game geeks for each side and tie the whole mess into network TV and run virtual football seasons." Madden 2K13 anyone? B-)

Or we could go the Jetson's route below with robot football players



Even so, with the control the coaches had in the games, it does resemble Madden 2K13 in a weird way.

Seriously, we need to check and treat injuries to the head with more scrutiny and if the doc says, "hang it up," then you retire.