Let the reader beware: in my extended absence from this forum I have become so like a grouchy old man that I am now nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. This piece will therefore be chock-full of crochety, traditional, hidebound looks to the glorious past (when men were men and women were there for the men)...I kid, ladies. I kid.
But only a little.
I'm not sure when exactly it happened, this age thing...but suddenly one recent day I looked in the mirror and saw a person I didn't much recognize. Instead of me staring back there was this guy more than a little curmudgeonly. Some pseudo-AARP more than a little set in his ways, and that more than a little too soon.
I'm not happy about it, but such is life. Ever the opportunist, I intend to synergize what's left of my youthful enthusiasm and open-mindedness with my newly emerging, ever growing cynicism and irascibility. I don't know about any of you readers, but I'm more than a little afraid of what might come of this unlikely pairing -- but damn the torpedoes and full steam ahead, as my generation used to say...
Last warning: DANGER - NARROW-MINDS AHEAD. PROCEED WITH TACTFUL CAUTION. Let no readers who brave this entire piece later claim I did not give sufficient notice. While there may never be much of a rational explanation for these particular peeves of mine, as outlined below -- at least I can admit that much.
It's an exceedingly small victory, but I'll take them where I can get 'em.
Without further ado, here's what has my knickers in a knot. Roughly two-and-a-half weeks ago the NFL held it's annual spring meeting in Dana Point CA. While this particular gathering is less about actual business than it is about creating the preseason groundswell of excitement scant weeks before each season's draft and beyond, there are a couple of pretty significant items on the agenda every year. One of them is the meeting of the league's Rules Committee, which as it's name implies legislates all new rules or addendums to existing rules.
These are the guys who decide when and where the popcorn will fly. That is, they write the rule book; take that a step further and they more than anything else shape the game into not only what it is, but also what it will become. That's key in a sport as venerated and traditional as pro football is. They do this by changing the rules, which subsequently changes the way the game is played.
Change is inevitable; it is, ironically, an unalterable fact of life. No matter who you are or what you do, you will face changes. Furthermore, each time you do, every time you adapt to your fluid circumstances...changes you. There is a saying that it is not the destination in Life but the journey that matters. We all experience that to some degree. Here endeth the cribbed version of Basic Life Philosophy 101, and my point is this: change is a necessary function of life. As such, I accept it because I must -- not necessarily because I want to. At times, when the pressure of mounting change and other factors becomes too heavy, I do what everybody does at some point. I look for an escape -- a brief respite from my daily reality.
That's where sports come in.
One of the many reasons so many sports have always been a big part of my life is that they exist outside of the mundane. From merely watching the Super Bowl to playing in the Saturday afternoon pickup hoops at my local rec center, my favorite sports have almost nothing in common with my 'regular' routine. When major upheavals have threatened to crack the bedrock of my entire values and belief system, sports have remained constant -- a familiar lighthouse beacon glimpsed through the raging storm. And it has always been that way.
But these days that's being threatened. It appears -- you guessed it -- that change is looming on the horizon.
But only a little.
I'm not sure when exactly it happened, this age thing...but suddenly one recent day I looked in the mirror and saw a person I didn't much recognize. Instead of me staring back there was this guy more than a little curmudgeonly. Some pseudo-AARP more than a little set in his ways, and that more than a little too soon.
I'm not happy about it, but such is life. Ever the opportunist, I intend to synergize what's left of my youthful enthusiasm and open-mindedness with my newly emerging, ever growing cynicism and irascibility. I don't know about any of you readers, but I'm more than a little afraid of what might come of this unlikely pairing -- but damn the torpedoes and full steam ahead, as my generation used to say...
Last warning: DANGER - NARROW-MINDS AHEAD. PROCEED WITH TACTFUL CAUTION. Let no readers who brave this entire piece later claim I did not give sufficient notice. While there may never be much of a rational explanation for these particular peeves of mine, as outlined below -- at least I can admit that much.
It's an exceedingly small victory, but I'll take them where I can get 'em.
Without further ado, here's what has my knickers in a knot. Roughly two-and-a-half weeks ago the NFL held it's annual spring meeting in Dana Point CA. While this particular gathering is less about actual business than it is about creating the preseason groundswell of excitement scant weeks before each season's draft and beyond, there are a couple of pretty significant items on the agenda every year. One of them is the meeting of the league's Rules Committee, which as it's name implies legislates all new rules or addendums to existing rules.
These are the guys who decide when and where the popcorn will fly. That is, they write the rule book; take that a step further and they more than anything else shape the game into not only what it is, but also what it will become. That's key in a sport as venerated and traditional as pro football is. They do this by changing the rules, which subsequently changes the way the game is played.
Change is inevitable; it is, ironically, an unalterable fact of life. No matter who you are or what you do, you will face changes. Furthermore, each time you do, every time you adapt to your fluid circumstances...changes you. There is a saying that it is not the destination in Life but the journey that matters. We all experience that to some degree. Here endeth the cribbed version of Basic Life Philosophy 101, and my point is this: change is a necessary function of life. As such, I accept it because I must -- not necessarily because I want to. At times, when the pressure of mounting change and other factors becomes too heavy, I do what everybody does at some point. I look for an escape -- a brief respite from my daily reality.
That's where sports come in.
One of the many reasons so many sports have always been a big part of my life is that they exist outside of the mundane. From merely watching the Super Bowl to playing in the Saturday afternoon pickup hoops at my local rec center, my favorite sports have almost nothing in common with my 'regular' routine. When major upheavals have threatened to crack the bedrock of my entire values and belief system, sports have remained constant -- a familiar lighthouse beacon glimpsed through the raging storm. And it has always been that way.
But these days that's being threatened. It appears -- you guessed it -- that change is looming on the horizon.
And this one's particularly unwelcome if you ask me.
On March 25th, with the announcement of it's four new 'safety rules' that go into effect in 2009, the NFL Rules Committee reminded me that no sport is ever safe or completely free of change. Football apparently abhors a vacuum as much as Life in General does. To that end it alters itself from time to time, whether we as fans like it...or not. Some modifications are minor and cosmetic more than anything, and fairly easy to assimilate.
Then there are those other ones.
Some changes are big dogs; a handful for even the most progressive-minded individual. Like the ones we're looking at now.
Some of the most basic, fundamental aspects of the greatest game ever invented are being re-constituted by men who very likely do not share my reverence for them. What's worse is that this hasn't just begun. The NFLRC has actually been making some fairly radical changes to the game for some years now -- but they've done so in small increments which have probably flown under more than just my radar for this long.
Not anymore.
Their latest overprotective attempts to remake the game have at last pinged on my screen. Conn, sonar, contact bearing break with all tradition; recommend designate contact "who cares so long as we make big bucks?"
Sonar, conn aye.
While I know I could not have done aught but watch no matter when I realized what was happening, in this case the comprehension is much better late than not at all. Finally seeing what the owners plan to do to this game I love, what they will do in their own sweet time without any opposition, has helped me sharpen my memories of the game the way it should be played.
The way it once was played.
For those who have just moved out of their Tibetan cave back to the bright lights of the big city and may not have heard, the four new rules, along with one addition to an existing rule, are as follows:
* The initial force of a blindside block cannot be delivered by a helmet, forearm or shoulder to an opponents neck. (big toes, ring fingers and funny bones, however, can actually be used to beat on an opponents helmet like it was a set of drums...)
* Initial contact to the head of a 'defenseless' receiver will be unsportsmanlike, and also 15 yards.(at present it is unclear whether defenseless refers to someone like TO and his off-field antics, OR a pass-catcher whose body position leaves him vulnerable on a given play...)
* On kickoffs, no blocking wedge of more than two players (!?!) will be allowed.(3 or more will be considered within the rules but only if the additional 'wedgies' tap their two teammates on the shoulder and properly cut-in beforehand...)
* Also on kickoffs, no kicking team can have more than five players bunched together pursuing an onside kick. Either it scares the ball way too much or the NFL is concerned about increased loitering amongst its players...)
* Lastly, any defender knocked to the ground may not lunge into the QB from that low position: in short order this will be known simply as The Brady Rule. Again, it is presently unclear whether such players must sit in 'time-out' until the play ends, thinking about what they had done, or if it will be legal for them to crab-walk their scurrilous way off the field...)
Apparently -- judging by their 'safety' measures -- NFL owners believe that football would be an Even Better Sport without all that hitting and contact between players. Once that's gone this game will be perfect. Well, at the very least their profit margins will be perfect; without contact there's virtually no chance of injuries to their star players...meaning they fill ALL the seats, ALL the time. Brilliant!
Little did I realize over fourteen years as a football player that I was in effect reinforcing a very bad and wrong habit every single time I hit an opponent during a play. It's no wonder in my case sports built no character -- when you're playing the wrong way, how could it be otherwise?
Give me a break. Figuratively or literally, I don't care. Any break will do -- the more violent the better. Has this game, the most exciting, the best sport there is, really come to this? They were a little ahead of my time, but I remember reading about players with names like Night Train Lane and the Mad Stork. Players who thrived on units named the Doomsday Defense, or the Purple People Eaters, or the Fearsome Foursome. Players who used to LIVE for Sundays in the fall when they could line up and literally knock the snot and anything else that was loose clean out of the guy across the line of scrimmage from them.
Possibly more than anything else that violence, that controlled warfare and aggression, hooked me line and sinker as both a player and a fan who idolized those talented enough to do what I would have given anything to be able to do -- which was play on Sundays. I was instantly smitten and have never looked back or thought twice about it. Quite frankly, I should have no reason to. No reason outside a bunch of bean-counting rich brats and their incessant tinkering anyway. The sport is nearly perfect in every way; even the uniforms -- with the possible exception of hockey the most extensive in all of sport -- seem, I dunno, natural. I kid you not, if I could go to work wearing a helmet with a bitchin', menacing facemask obscuring part or all of my face...you bet I would. In a hot second. You put that sucker on and you're ready for anything, which not coincidentally [paging all NFL owners] could and sometimes did happen on a gridiron.
It's a crazy, unpredictable game, and sometimes people get hurt. On a few (thankfully rare) occasions people have even died. That's the way it is. It's part of the mythology of the game, and goes a long way toward explaining it's spellbinding hold on millions of us out there who are as addicted to it as drug addicts are to methamphetamine. Why would anyone in their right mind want to dick with that? I'm not 100% sure, but I can make an educated GUE$$-
It seems nothing is sacred, unless it be the Almighty Dollar. Call me old and addled; a worn out dog who can't be taught new tricks -- but that's the message I'm hearing with every new, supposedly 'safe' change to this game.
How about you? What do you think of this kinder, gentler NFL? Most importantly, do you believe these rules are in place to protect the players, or those who have a substantial investment in them?
For me, the answers to those questions are as obvious as a yellow, popcorn-filled hankie thrown onto the field.
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