How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.
—Benjamin Disraeli
Readers may come away from this book with the reasonable objection that it’s long on questions and complaints and short on solutions. It was so designed. My intention was to inveigle readers—fans and non-fans alike—into a state of distress and contemplation. Best to understand the illness before we seek the cure.
That being said, there are practical steps that can and should be taken to address the most glaring moral hazards football presents. The following list represents not a blueprint so much as an effort to instigate discussion. If you agree with any of these measures, make your voice heard by those with the power to propose and legislate.
• Revoke the NFL’s non-profit status
Should have been done forty years ago.
• Require that allocation of public funds for sports facilities be approved by public referendum
In 1997, Pittsburghers voted down a referendum that would have imposed a sales tax to build the Steelers a new stadium. Despite public uproar, the city came up with a “Plan B”—widely known as Scam B—by which the taxpayers ponied up more than $200 million while team ownership chipped in $76 million. The Heinz Company promptly paid the owners $57 million for naming rights.
The will of the voters should never be subverted by backroom deals.
Likewise, city and county officials should pass measures that require sports franchises to share the profits derived from the facilities where they play, based on the percentage of public funding.
• Institute a parental discretion warning before football games
Films are rated based, in part, on acts of simulated violence. Football games contain hundreds of acts of real violence, the most extreme replayed ad nauseam. Why not force parents to confront this upfront?
• Enforce a weight limit on players and/or teams
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that 56 percent of all pro players who suited up during the 2003 season had a body mass index doctors would consider overweight. Players gorge themselves to put on pounds, especially in light of the NFL’s crackdown on steroids. Retired lineman Brad Culpepper explains: “Now you have to be 300 to move people.” Players at every position have gotten bigger, making collisions more damaging, and increasing the risks of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, etc.
A weight limit at the pro level—either for individual positions, or for a team in toto—would compel players to slim down rather than bulk up, an incentive that would slim down the college and high school game as well.
• Create a helmet that records every sub-concussive hit
Most medical experts agree that there is no way around the basic physics of football: players colliding at high speeds cause brain traumas. No magic helmet is going to change that.
However, as researchers at the University of North Carolina and Purdue have shown, the technology does exist to measure the overall impact absorbed by a particular player. So why not monitor impact and mandate benching players who amass too many Gs? This would create an incentive for coaches and players to avoid the style of play (“Lead with your head, son!”) that results in brain injuries.
My own “solution” to college football would be to eliminate it in favor of a non-profit developmental league—overseen by a public trust—for players from eighteen to twenty-two years old.
But the above suggestion, one of several derived from Gregg Easterbrook’s excellent book The King of Sports, would at least begin to reform the college game, by forcing coaches to make sure players (most of whom will not go pro) earn a diploma. Easterbrook also recommends that the NCAA suspend any head coach for one year if his team graduation rate dips below that of the general student population at his school.
• Prohibit tackle football for high schoolers younger than sixteen
My hope is that lawsuits will eventually induce high schools to drop football altogether. Until then, at least make students wait a couple of years before they play Russian roulette with their brain function. Junior varsity squads can play flag football. Practice time, for all students, should be limited. And no spring football.
• Require a 3.0 GPA to play varsity football
As at the college level, this is the only way to make sure players (and coaches) get serious about academics, and would have the added benefit of influencing coaches at the youth level.
Would this be hard on some players? Yes. But ignoring their intellectual development is a far greater injustice.
• Remember who’s in charge
It’s easy to forget this, but fans are the ones who have given football the awesome power it holds. We can, and should, use that power to reshape the game in ways that make it less destructive to the bodies of the players, to the economic fate of our cities, and to the national soul.
If you agree that the time has come to reclaim this power, please help keep the conversation going. Offer a suggestion of your own, or an anecdote, or simply make your voice heard at www.againstfootball.org.