Well, it didn’t take long for players to blast the National Football League for cracking down on helmet-to-helmet hits.
One of the three players fined for a particularly violent Sunday of the game last weekend, with concussions galore, went so far as to threaten to retire. That player was Pittsburgh Steelers James Harrison, who complained on Sirius XM Radio that the NFL was “handicapping” him.
“How can I continue to play this game the way that I’ve been taught to play this game since I was 10 years old,” Harrison griped.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/sports/football/21hits.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
Harrison’s threat to walk came the same week that the NFL sent a video to all 32 of its teams, a video that included shots of the three tackles that prompted large fines being imposed on players. One of those depicted was the move that got Harrison’s penalized to the tune of $75,000: His hit of Cleveland Brown’s receiver Mohammed Massaguoi.
On the video, NFL exectuive vice president of operations Ray Anderson read the riot act to players, saying, “Illegal hits to the head of an opponent will not tolerated. A player is accountable for what he hits.”
The argument from the players is essentially that they are big boys, when they signed their contracts they knew football was a violent game, and they are willing to take the risk of being injured, including being “concussed,” as some stories put it.
In one of the most ridiculously sarcastic and stereotypically macho comments I read, Miami Dolphins linebacker Channing Crowder said, “If they’re going to keep making us go more and more and more like a feminine sport, we’re going to wear pink every game, not just on the breast cancer months.”
The NFL’s video didn’t go over too well in the New York Giants’ locker room, either, according to a story in the New York Daily News. It was headlined, “Big Blue Hits Back: Giants Players On Collision Course With NFL Over Rules.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/giants/2010/10/22/2010-10-22_big_blue_hits_back.html
Giants running back Brandon Jacobs called the NFL’s whip-cracking “insane.” Other Giants said it will make players “soft,” and prompt them to miss tackles rather than risk being fined.
For my part, I’d say that players signed up for a violent game expecting broken bones and torn muscles. But they did not know then about the long term, and cumulative, effect of repeated concussions.
Perhaps an attempt to have a conversation with some of the retired NFL players who have developed dementia at an early age would convince make some of these players change their minds about helmet-to-helmet hits.
Maybe, I don’t know. Maybe they’ve already taken too many hits to the head to really understand.
I do know that the NFL is going to have rough going getting players to buy into their crackdown. And that’s a shame.
