Probable, even.
By that standard, the current NFL game is unrecognizable from the same game in the 1970s. The game has changed tremendously, and is more popular now than when it was even less safe. Players died on the field
Those fans you think won’t accept change already have. Especially in the context of losing the sport completely or accepting that change.
also, people should watch the video I posted above, as he does a great job breaking down the major problems with the NFL today. It’s rife with patriarchal racism and it’s hurting primarily Black men from a primarily working class background.
I think you’re largely right. Flag football is fun and fast and all those wonderful things, but it isn’t going to replace traditional football any time soon for all the reasons you mentioned.
The violence is central, not ancillary to what makes football enjoyable for the vast majority of fans (and a lot, if not most, players). That doesn’t make it morally right, but it’s reality.
I’ve started it, and I don’t know if I’m going to finish it. Not because it’s not good. It is. But because it’s infuriating. On so many levels. One frustrating thing is that the “coach” honestly was just doing what rich people do all the time. Making big plans, convincing people to give him money to make those plans happen, and then just half-assing it or not doing it at all and just pocketing the money. And he freely admits that he was just trying to act like how rich people act. And as fucked up as that is, and as bad a person as he is, he’s not even wrong about that. He is completely unremorseful.
It is, but I do think it’s possible to understand what’s happening with this… The second, longer video goes into greater depth about how white supremacy shapes the prospects of young Black boys and men in sports…
Incidentally, one thing I’ve noticed that he does on a regular basis is call the boys boys, rather than men. It strikes me that it’s him pushing back against this narrative about how Black children are seen as much older than they are…
I live a few miles around from the Country Ground in my home city, and, I swear, I can hear the crowds when India are playing Pakistan or Bangladesh in the Test. 
I’m 59, when I was in grade school (I don’t want to do the math how long ago that was) I was on the football team, I sucked.
The one game I was allowed to play in was my last. The other team had the ball and was tackled, the play had ended. The coach yelled at me for not piling on even though the play had ended. I quit on the spot.
When I got to high school sports was never going to be my thing until…
Intramural floor hockey and flag football, finally something us kids that sucked at sports could be part of.
The gym and football field was filled with spectators cheering us on. We even had cheerleaders. Senior year our team was undefeated.
Boys and girls teams, the girl’s flag football was called powderpuff, I know, I know, but we all had fun together.
Is it pro sports? Absolutely not? Does it give parents and a lot more kids something to participate in? Sure does.
It won’t replace college sports but it would be good for a ton of kids and a lot safer.
This is what I mean when I say I don’t know how it’ll get accepted. I grew up in this crowd. I grew up screaming the same things as my family members and friends. The point IS the violence. You see even now bounties on taking players out of the game. When Tua Tagliova got hit and almost didn’t get back up, all people talked about was how good and clean a hit it was, and how that took the starter out of the game, and that was great for the other team.
The goal is to get the ball into the endzone and to stop the other team from doing the same. And the methods that people prefer for the stopping are the kind that mean that the main threats are no longer on the field.
Now, granted, we don’t laud it as much. Segments like “Jacked Up” don’t air anymore after ESPN quietly cancelled it in 2006. (Jacked Up! - Wikipedia) so there aren’t concerted efforts to laud just the direct injuries anymore, but there’s still plenty of lauding in “big hits and defensive stops” on the NFL network and shown every week leading up to college football saturday.
I do hope it changes, but the violence IS the point for a lot of people. They love it. They want it. And secretly, I imagine many of them would be proud of someone on their favorite team killed another player on the field, so long as it was “a clean hit”
Well, football as it is is going to go away. I don’t know how soon, but it’s simply a matter of time before the lawsuits pile up to a bigger number than the NFL can support. And it might not even be their call. Colleges can absorb even less, and those players have had a run of successes in the court system. I don’t think it will be too long before college football goes low-contact and, since the college ranks are the NFL’s minor league, the NFL will be forced to follow suit.
The NFL also won’t wait until they are forced to do it, either. The money’s too good all around the table. They’ll move long before the gravy train is threatened.
Mmmm, Tacos.
Our game with sticks is a bit more rambunctious. Hurling or Camogie.
I didn’t play because I’m from Mayo and we would just get flattened by Galway if we tried
For the uninitiated: Hurley is like a cross between lacrosse and Australian Rules football, played with sharpened field hockey sticks and a cricket ball at head height.
The foremost legendary hero of Irish myth, Cú Chulainn, got his name because he used a hurley stick and ball to kill a dog the size of a horse, when he was six years old.
While (having grown up in England) I never played American football, I did play rugby as a kid, and enjoyed it.
Most notably, since I was big and strong for my age but not particularly fast and definitely not particularly coordinated, the violence was kind of the point, and not in a bloodthirsty way. If we had only played touch rugby then the same small, fast, coordinated kids who were better than me at football would have been better than me at rugby- tackling and scrums meant that this was a game I could do well at. Those small, fast kids were good as backs, but the team also needed forwards.
I sometimes wonder if american football would be better and safer for the players if they didn’t have armor on and also had the head and neck safety rules of Rugby. Including sendoffs for lifting and driving and other such dangerous head tackles.
If a team has to play down a player for the remainder of the game, I’d imagine they’d be a lot more concerned about how they tackle and how they hit, and rugby certainly shows us that they COULD do this much, much safer if they want to in the NFL and still produce a very exciting product.
I read a really interesting discussion of that idea years ago when the concussion litigation was ongoing and the consensus was that it would absolutely reduce the repetitive concussive impacts, but would increase the number head wounds that look terrible and bleed like hell (but aren’t actually as dangerous).
They said the NFL and TV is by far the most risk-averse when it comes to blood and visible gore, and will always prefer the damage to the athletes appear sterile.
Maybe, maybe not. The thing with CTE though is that it’s repeated trauma that causes it. And it’s not only head hits, in fact they seem to be a lesser cause of concussion/CTE than the repeated trauma of contact in many sports. This means that other sports that allow shoulder hits such as Australian rules, ice hockey, or GAA football, and even a lot of the contact that soccer allows, will still contribute to CTE.
US football used to allow a lot more head hits a century ago and they just outright killed people regularly on the field. The huge increases in size, athleticism, and speed of the huge people is more what leads to CTE from non-illegal contact.
I don’t know if sports recognisable as US football, rugby, Australian football, Ice hockey etc. have a future in a world where we care about brain trauma and the long term impact on our “gladiators”.
Unless we have a Rollerball future…
To be fair that also looks likely.
See, that’s also an important question, because we kind of also forget about the “failed” gladiators. The people that get injured one or two games in or don’t even make it through a full three seasons. In the NFL, to get post retirement healthcare, you must be in for three seasons on an active roster. Otherwise, you don’t get healthcare. Obamacare should have solved this, but the premiums for people who have played in the NFL (I know this because, oddly, I bought a cellphone at an AT&T store a decade ago from a former NFL player who owned a franchise, he played for one year) amounts to around $3,000 to $5,000 a month. I’d love to see someone do a study on what happens to those people, because the quick looks I did a few years ago showed of a sample size of 30, 15 had committed suicide, 10 had died by age 50, and the others just seemingly were okay.
