As published in The County Times (http://countytimes.somd.com) in Nov 2010
By Ronald N. Guy Jr.
There is little doubt that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell
was paying close attention as Major League Baseball’s star players and
executives were paraded before Congress during the great performance enhancing
drug detoxification. The lesson for all
other major sports was this: unless you want the U.S. Congress in your shorts
and “assisting” in the cleansing process…and you most certainly do not…you
better remain vigilant in policing your cul-de-sac in the sporting community,
particularly those with significance beyond the professional ranks.
And so, as head injuries have become the hot issue in the
increasingly violent profession of pro football, the NFL has attempted to stay
on the leading edge (at least in perception if not reality) in the diagnosis,
treatment and prevention of concussions.
Concussed players are now immediately removed from games and a
neurological testing protocol has been established to determine a player’s
return to game action. As far as
equipment goes, flip on any NFL game and you’ll observe various generations of
helmet technology, the newest of which have contours and vents that seem to
have been modeled after exotic sports cars.
The noteworthy evolution in the handling of concussions and
of protective equipment has been broadly supported. It seems no one – even the most blood thirsty fans and staunchest
supports of “old school” football – is so detached from the reality and
seriousness of concussions as to have issues with better treatment and
improvements in protective gear for the Sunday gladiator. However, addressing concussions at their
source – violent hits – has been about as popular as (since it’s election week)
Al Gore crashing a Big Oil rally or George W. Bush speaking at Cal
Berkeley.
The NFL has been flirting with controlling the big hits that
cause concussions and head injuries for years.
There are existing rules that ban shots to the head of quarterbacks,
laying out defenseless receivers and defenders launching themselves head first
into opposing players. The enforcement
of the rules has been inconsistent and the penance for an offender has been no
more than an in-game penalty and a token fine; nothing that would fundamentally
change how the game is played. And realistically,
why would the NFL be proactive? Like
the long ball in baseball, big hits help sell the product. Investigating why record amounts of homeruns
were being hit or objectively researching the implications of head trauma from
football isn’t good for business.
After a particularly gory recent Sunday, one filled with an
alarming amount of unconscious players, the NFL apparently either had had
enough or it realized that the tolerance of such images by a certain elected
body in Washington, DC might be waning.
Regardless, the NFL acted quickly, announcing that players guilty of a
flagrant shot to an opposing player’s head would be subject to a
suspension. That may sound reasonable
to the average fan, but many current and former players were appalled, arguing
that you couldn’t suddenly ask players to change how they play and that
removing the high and tight hit from a defenders arsenal would erode the
game.
With all due respect to this opinion, it is an emotional,
testosterone-fueled overreaction. If
you’ve studied organizational change, or just lived through the inevitable
surprises of life, you know that dealing with change is a process beginning
generally with denial or an initial shock and eventually transitioning to
acceptance (or at least tolerance). The
reality is the NFL has been legislating collisions and contact between players
for years. Yet somehow the league has thrived despite outlawing clotheslines,
head slaps, horse-collar tackles and hits to the legs of quarterbacks. This list of misfit plays now has another
entry: malicious, head hunting hits.
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