The End of Football Fast Approaches

Rush Limbaugh.com ^ | August 6, 2012 | Rush Limbaugh

[Shadowstrike]

oh Jesus Christ, get off the “elitist” soapbox.

For your information we were all a healthy middle class when we didn’t wear helmets to ride a bike. Kids nowadays are wrapped in swaddling clothes cause they might get a boo-boo.

It taught you to be more careful and not do some of the stupid crap you see on youtube everyday now.

One question tho...How would you know Rush is an elitist? Do you know the man?

[Biblebelter]

One question tho...How would you know Rush is an elitist? Do you know the man?

No, me and Rush are not best buds, but he is best buds with Crazy Annie Coulter and Matt Drudge who has a man crush with Mittens Romney.

Rush seems to favor Rockefeller Republican types such as Daddy Bush who was the head spook in the Rockefeller-Ford Administration and his son who was a bit of a dolt whose first two nominations to the Supreme Court were Benedict Arnold John Roberts and Harriet Mears. Of course, Harriet baby was replaced with a TRUE CONSERVATIVE in Alito because REAL conservatives such as the ones on this forum said NO to Harriet just like they would have said no to the likes of Colin Powell and Condi Rice.

[caver]

That’s awesome!

[Moose4]

I remember walking into a bar outside DC in 1987 and seeing Joe Jacoby and R.C. Thielmann from the Redskins’ “Hogs” sitting there slamming back a few beers...at lunch. Right before training camp.

Anyway...Jacoby was the left tackle and the biggest of the Hogs at 6’6”, 305 pounds. He looked like a monster. His size was one of the big reasons that the Skins’ feared “counter-trey” almost always ran behind him and left guard Russ Grimm. When those two pulled, nobody could stop them.

Jacoby was the only Hog that ever broke 300 pounds. Jeff Bostic was an All-Pro center for years and I’m not sure he ever got much over 260, if even that heavy. Those guys were the most fearsome offensive line in the league for years while averaging around 275 or 280 pounds. Nowadays I think they’d be considered small at the Division I-A college football level, much less in the pros.

Will is right to a point, because these guys are doing things at the limits of the human body’s capabilities and there does seem to be an issue with CTE and football players. Football has always left a lot of broken bodies and broken men in its wake. But government is NOT the answer.

}:-)4

[Moose4]

Aussie and Gaelic rules football teams actually have games against each other sometimes. The rules are close enough that they can come up with a compromise set and play.

I still wish they showed AFL games over here, ESPN used to show highlights at midnight on a weekend many years ago. Any game that combines the endurance needed in soccer with the power and hitting of rugby is OK in my book. And some of the athletic moves those guys make and the hits they take and deliver—with no pads—are amazing. They’ll even keep playing on while trainers are tending to an injured player on the field, unless they need to bring on a stretcher cart.

}:-)4

[Principled]

Now that’s interesting... Gaelic v Aussie rules eh?

I feel so international he he he

[Squawk 8888]

Yep, just got home from a game when I posted. Somewhat facetious about most of it but serious when I say they should crack down on major fouls.

[Theophilus]

I don’t know about the friendly fields of strife but George Will crossed the “partisan divide” a long time ago.

[kevkrom]

I disagree with Rush in that there is a problem in football — Will is right, players are bigger, faster, and stronger, and the human head is not designed to withstand that type of repeated punishment.

But I disagree with Will because it’s a fixable problem. The NFL (and lower leagues) will try behavior modification, as usual, with penalties, fines and suspensions, but it’s going to be technology that fixes the problem, i.e., better helmet design. The problem needs to be approached from the correct mindset — not for protecting players the way the rule book says they should play, but rather as they will actually play.

[gura]

No pads, and switch to a helmet designed like a bicycle helmet - thin shell with polystyrene that crushes and deforms on impact.

[Jonty30]

With that attitude, I can guarentee you that football will eventually be banned. You will lose your precious game.

And you will whine about it.

[samtheman]

It wasn’t a grammar mistake. It was a mistake in logic in which what you are saying is the exact opposite of what you think you are saying.

It’s a common mistake, especially among those with little experience reading English. Just read more and you’ll be ok.

[New Jersey Realist]

Go back to leather helmets and no play if you weigh over 300 pounds.

[shotgun]

I remember playing in HS (75-78) when they first introduced the no spearing rules. They brought in the referees during summer camp and before each game and went over this. The thought was to introduce these rule changes to HS players and then study the effects, then to colleges, and eventually in to the pros. That is how they presented it to us.

So now 35 years later and the one thing they didn’t factor was the evolution of the human body with advanced strength & conditioning training. There where only two of us on my team that were over 200lbs, me at right guard (205) and my right tackle (215) and we were devastating on end sweeps going after the little guys. Remember thinking how big guys were going to college at 230-250! My first college summer training I was introduced to full on strength training and I lost 30 lbs and started camp at 185 at RG but my new found speed was incredible! We had guys that could dunk basketballs after one summer in the gym but we still didn’t have anyone over 260 until they brought in kid from Louisiana who was a fat 300 at DT. We would line up and he couldnt move me and I couldn’t move him but basically it was stalemate and he never got past me to make a play. He was used as some large immovable object in the middle. Next thing you know that was the new norm and every team was trying to find these guys.

Once they started hitting the weight room the size and speed of the game changed to what it is today.

[T-Bird45]

I’ve read every reply to this point and I don’t think I’ve seen a comment on something that seems obvious to me. Isn’t this the same George Bowtie Will that waxes poetic every late-winter about the onset of spring baseball practice? Hasn’t he long lamented that football has surpassed baseball as the national pastime? Am I the only one that perceives a patent conflict of interest here?

[rurgan]

Why don’t you government loving liberals/Democrats like Obama and Bloomberg just ban everything including ban life (as life is so dangerous that no one gets out of life alive) /s

[ohioman]

I think these people need to shut the F up and leave the sport alone or they will kill it.

[don-o]

I think these people need to shut the F up

How does shutting the F up differ from shutting up?

[hoosierham]

It may be possible to do both,but it isn’t common.

“Analysts “ talk about the games and players before and after,entire sections of newspapers are devoted to pro sports, and the American people know more about most pro athletes than they know about the man occupying the White House.

[Jonty30]

People who think football can only be fun to watch when there are crippling injuries sound like those kids, that play fighting video games, who say that seeing blood on screen makes the game more enjoyable.

[rurgan]

So you want the government to ban football, video games, what else?

Here’s news for you , life is inherently dangerous as no one gets out of life alive.

[rdb3]

Yep. That's what happens to my Browns all the dang time.

[Jonty30]

Right. adjustments = banishment.

It won’t be me making these decisions, it will be the lawyers and the eventual settlement for unsafe work conditions could be in the billions.

Enjoy your game, while it lasts.

[rurgan]

How about we the people ban your government including nanny bloomberg and nanny Obama.

[Jonty30]

It likely won’t be the government banning anything. American Football will either adjust to new societal expectations or it will eventually die a natural death anyway.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/02/12/espn-speculates-about-the-death-of-football/

[rdb3]

As long as the risks and rewards are known to the best of the ability of the players and fans, then I say "Play ball!"

Football is a contact sport. All such sports carry inherent risk of injury.

I agree with you here except for this: football isn't a contact sport, it's a collision sport.

Players know that going in, right?

[Ransomed]

“Now, there are a lot of other sports that feature concussions. Boxing. You know one of the fastest growing sports out there is the cage stuff, UFC, Ultimate Fighting Championship. That stuff’s growing by leaps and bounds. I even hear the Southern Poverty Law Center likes that sport. Rugby has concussions. Baseball has concussions. There are injuries in every sport. But I’m telling you it’s open season on football.”

Compairing regular, sustained brain impact trauma in baseball and football...I dunno, Rush. Same thing with compairing UFC and boxing—in one you get hit in the head over and over, round after round. Doesn’t mean UFC isn’t brutal or that you can’t have a massive injury.

Freegards

[epow]

I didn't go out for football in high school until I was a senior and my jaw was broken in pre-season practice, so I never played in an intra-school game. However, even waaaay back then in the mid-'50s we players all knew that football was a ruffntuff game and that injuries and pain were routine and to be expected. I doubt that HS players even today are at serious risk of incurring life threatening head injuries, but as the game goes up the scale of roughness (for lack of a better word) from HS, to college, to the pros, it becomes progressively rougher by magnitudes and the risk of players incurring life shortening injuries or even death on the field goes up with it. AFAIK no pro player has expired on the field or in a dressing room yet, but if the increase in "roughness" sufficient to cause life threatening injury is growing by leaps and bounds as the two Georges claim, and to which Rush appears to agree, it may not be too awfully long before football at every level from Pop Warner to the pros is emasculated by the clucking-hen nanny state that so many Americans seem quite willing to accept these days with little or no protest.

I don't want the pro game nor the college game to go soft and cuddly by any significant degree, but I wouldn't stop watching and take up knitting on Saturday and Sunday afternoons if a reasonable boundary on obviously deliberate life threatening "roughness" were to be placed on the pro game by the managers or the owners themselves. Just keep the nanny state government agencies as far away as possible and I think the that the most life-endangering aspects of the game could be eliminated or at least significantly reduced without destroying the game or Rush's enjoyment of it.

Just my off-the-cuff thoughts, may be revised after further contemplation.

[reagandemocrat]

Bingo!

He even wrote an entire book about baseball many moons asgo.

Huge conflict of interest.

(I’m a big fan of both sports, but I love football..and rugby)

[Nowhere Man]

There was a short story in Playboy, back in the 70’s, about “the last Superbowl” ... probably set in the 90’s, I’d guess. Football had been superseded by electronic simulations, which captured the public allegiance. So this last game was played in the rain with a heroic goal line stand and everything.

Interesting, I would love to read it sometime. BTW, I remember one Sports Illustrated did an article on football in the year 2000 back in 1979/80 where they were predicting power assisted suits to make you run faster, HUD's in the helmets, radios in the helmets, etc.

[Nowhere Man]

Will is right to a point, because these guys are doing things at the limits of the human body’s capabilities and there does seem to be an issue with CTE and football players. Football has always left a lot of broken bodies and broken men in its wake. But government is NOT the answer.

Well, I certainly would not want the government to regulate this, just to be clear but if there is to be such, then it is up to the NFL itself.