Monday morning news was reported that NFL owners had approved of the ban of the so-called “hip-drop” tackle as they met in league meetings in Orlando, Florida. From medication, to life experience to just plain apathy, I’ve gotten to a point in my life where I’m really fine not getting fired up over things that don’t affect me on a personal level.
But this really ticks me off.
So much so that it’s hard for my notorious salty mouth to translate into family-friendly text.
What is wrong with these people? It’s not bad enough that the NFL enjoys such a juggernaut status that they can literally televise anything and people will watch it. The league’s draft, which is only a month away, trounces any of the other league’s post-season drama and it’s not close. Every year, television experts release the 50 most-watched broadcasts of the year and routinely 49 of them are football related.
But they are running the risk of alienating fans. How do I know? Because I am one. And I’m alienated by this and the sandbox-dry responses of rules experts chiming in on every third play and telling viewers about the technicalities of why flags are thrown.
I must be getting to be an grumpy old man, because we used to make of guys like this. The ones that would quote rule books when all we want to do is watch our favorite game. In fact, lets get real honest here. We don’t want players to get hurt, but we DO want them to get hit. Hard. The more spectacular the better. Rules like this and the “horse collar” tackle don’t stop anyone from doing it anyway. All it does is increase the number of flags thrown. Have you ever heard a player tell a reporter in the post-game that he didn’t make that tackle from behind to stop the touchdown because he was following the rules and didn’t want to get flagged? Of course not!
This is a new chapter in dumb rules the NFL has implemented. Until someone actually used the phrase “hip-drop” tackle last year, it was just called a tackle. You know, you try and stop someone from running to the end zone and scoring a touchdown and using gravity and your own strength to stop them.
Players get hurt playing football. Not to sound uncaring, but that is the main reason their salary is so high. There is a major risk of physical injury. One of my favorite players, Chase Roullier, who was playing center for Washington, had to retire after six seasons because the last two of those, he suffered devastating leg and knee injuries on the offensive line. Did they change any rules to help the linemen?
The average salary in the NFL is $2.8 per year. The league minimum is $750,000. I’m not saying money fixes everything, or that players don’t have significant health care costs when they are done playing. I’m not saying any of that. But us normals, the people who make the average salary (and under), don’t see that kind of money in a lifetime. And it gets hard to justify spending any of it on a league that keeps doing dumb things.
The cherry on top of this garbage sundae though? The announcement was accompanied by the photo of Cincinnati’s Logan Wilson (and former Wyoming Cowboy and Natrona Mustang) tackling Baltimore Ravens tight end, Mark Andrews. The latter got his feet caught up under Wilson and suffered an injury. You know, those things that happen all the time in football. But now this particular tackle is being paraded around like this will stop all the “dirty” players like Wilson, who we know for a fact, is one of the top human beings in professional sports. I’m all for the league trying to make things safer for players, but this rule will not stop or even slow down major lower body injuries in my opinion. How about doing something that might? Like fixing some of the terrible field footing out there?
