Also… there is the exploitation, especially of young Black boys and men…
I’m gonna give this a watch soon, but have not gotten around to it yet…
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Like religion, it’s about tribal identity.
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Unlike in the US, a lot of people are paying attention to the research and definitely the people who can make a difference. Heading is banned for all under 12s in the UK now, and there are ex-footballers who want futher restrictions (Alan Shearer and Chris Sutton being two of the most prominent advocates).
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Though it doesn’t have to have this particular risk to do serve that purpose. The high risk of CTE compared to other activities is very simply solved by switching to flag football instead of tackle football. Flag football is frankly way more exciting and fast-moving than tackle football.
They are one or two multi-billion $ player lawsuits away from being forced to switch to non-collision rules.
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Our cricket version. Man, I loved to play It as a kid.
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I love the crossing sticks while they run. I don’t know if it’s the rules or you just couldn’t help yourself as a kid!
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… but that complexity is the mystery that protects the industry from criticism — from complaints that participants and fans are just morons, or sadists who love violence, like in, say, boxing, which no sane person wants anything to do with anymore
A game which was simple enough for outsiders to understand would be a game that was simple enough for outsiders to critique
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Ah, It is part of the game. Each time we cross the “tacos”, we count a point.
When I was a kid, the most expensive sport gear we used was the rubber ball. The rest of the materials were salvaged from empty lots and we even used our flip-flop sandals to play all afternoon long.
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And that’s a key detail too. Football (the real game primarily involving feet and the ball) can change. It can take heading out of the game completely if it wants to. It can work up to the HIA (head injury assessment) levels rugby has and can offer alternate concussion subs. It can remove or mitigate head injuries while still retaining the core concept of the game and not changing it too dramatically.
American football / gridiron cannot ever be made safe without changing the game to a point that it’s unrecognizable. Positions are too weight and body type based, there’s too many individual start and stop collisions, players wear armor that likely causes as many injuries as it prevents, and the intensity of the hits and injuries is lauded by american sports fans. Gridiron is a bloodsport and cannot really ever not be one.
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You’d think that’s the case but the NFL is great at being litigious. Back many years ago when I was briefly intertwined with Wikileaks I went into detail about how Sony was scared shitless of the league and forced many edits to “Concussion”. Media picked up on my finds months later, very little lasting impact came from it except how it made Will Smith and Chris Rock hate each other’s guts and well, everyone saw how that came to a head.
They’d would use still legal actions to try to hold off the inevitable. If something much more horrific would come out to the public’s attention, don’t doubt for a second they would try something.
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To this day I have a suspicion they spike stories that involve the suicide / shortened life span rate of former players.
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The other football, “Communist Kickball”, may be the answer…
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Like many if not most aspects of human existence, it’s about tribal identity.
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I personally don’t think it’s that difficult of a sport to understand at its root. The real confusing stuff that comes up is when it gets to penalties like ‘pass-interference’. There seems to be too many edge cases for various situations and video play reviews make it even more complicated.
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Flag football is still recognizably football.
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There is absolutely no way the college football fanbase of the nation would ever accept non-contact flag football the way they do contact football. It never will happen.
EDIT: Also have you ever played flag football? Entirely different rules on lining up, when you can pass/run, what constitutes a fair “grab”, etc. Different rules of kickoff and possession changes, sometimes different scoring rules. It’s a related sport but it’s not ever going to be accepted as “real football.”
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FTFY. Nothing changes until it does.
I’ve played a lot of flag football. I played flag football in middle school and high school as part of the formal football program. Apparently, it was similar enough for the coaches to consider it valuable practice for the contact football with less risk of injury.
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Okay, fair enough, but modern flag football disallows diving, it disallows fumbling, it disallows the kickoff, it disallows leaving your feet or coming into contact in any way but the flag, it disallows the lineman position from making contact of any type, and it’s played 8v8. I’ve reffed this sport. I’m not knocking it. I enjoy it. I think it’s the only way the game will survive. I’m saying that for all the reasons people love gridiron football they will dislike flag.
Maybe I’m wrong. Entirely possible. But I also have family in the south, and as long as they’re perfectly happy throwing more into the mill for their game, I don’t see how it changes.
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You have four chances to make it ten yards. If you do, you get four more chances to go ten more yards. Do that all the way down the field and you score a touchdown, don’t do it and you have to kick it to the other team. Get close to the end of the field, but not close enough for a touchdown and you can attempt to kick it through the goalposts for 3 points. The confusing part is the…
And not even the refs understand those rules.
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