Should Football Fans Feel Guilty for Enjoying Bone-Crunching Tackles?

With each passing week, I hear from football fans saying that it's getting harder to like the game they love. They've spent years reveling in the intense competition and violent collisions so central to the sport, but this is the first time these NFL diehards feel conscious about what happens to players when they become unconscious.

This season a typical NFL game is starting to look like a triage center. On concussions alone, a reader at deadspin.com compiled the following list of players who have borne the brunt of a brain bruise in 2010:

PRESEASON: Ryan Grant, Hunter Hillenmeyer, Joseph Addai, Mark Clayton, Nick Sorensen, Aaron Curry, DJ Ware, Louis Murphy, Scott Sicko, Mike Furrey, Darnell Bing, Freddy Keiaho

WEEK 1: Kevin Kolb, Stewart Bradley, Matt Moore, Kevin Boss, Charly Martin

WEEK 2: Clifton Ryan, Jason Witten, Randall Gay, Craig Dahl, Zack Follett, Evan Moore

WEEK 3: Anthony Bryant, Cory Redding, Jason Trusnik

WEEK 4: Jordan Shipley, Willis McGahee, Jay Cutler, Asante Samuel, Riley Cooper, Sherrod Martin

WEEK 5: Aaron Rodgers, Darcy Johnson, Jacob Bell, Landon Johnson, Demaryius Thomas, Rocky McIntosh

WEEK 6: Josh Cribbs, Desean Jackson, Mohamed Massaquoi, Zack Follett, Chris Cooley

 

In assessing the list, the most striking aspect is its randomness. There is a mix of star quarterbacks, shifty running backs, burly tight ends and anonymous linemen. All play different roles in the game, and all wear different kinds of equipment.

Sports Illustrated writer Peter King, after a weekend where he says he saw "six or eight shots where you wondered, ‘Is that guy getting up?' " proposed some solutions: "It's time to start ejecting and suspending players for flagrant hits…. Don't tell me this is the culture we want. It might be the culture kids are used to in video games, but the NFL has to draw a line in the sand right here, right now, and insist that the forearm shivers and leading with the helmet and launching into unprotected receivers will be dealt with severely. Six-figure fines. Suspensions. Ejections.

King's suggestions are not unlike those who told 1950s children to hide under their desks case of nuclear attack. The hits that cause concussions aren't just the kind of helmet-to-helmet collisions that make King shudder but often come from routine tackles. Frequently, brain bruises aren't even diagnosed until the game has ended. In other words the most devastating hits are often the most pedestrian. This was seen in utterly tragic fashion during Saturday's college contest between Rutgers University and Army. Rutgers linebacker Eric LeGrand was paralyzed from the waste down on a play described as a "violent collision." But if you look at the replay, the only thing "violent" about the play is its horrific outcome.

It's also not, as King writes, "the culture" that celebrates this violence. It's the NFL itself. The video games that the NFL promotes and sponsors deliriously dramatize brutal tackles. Highlight shows on the NFL Network relish the moments when players get "jacked up." Anyone who saw HBO's Hard Knocks, their behind-the-scenes look at the New York Jets preseason, heard it loud and clear. Whenever a player would "jack-up" the opposition, Coach Rex Ryan would whoop and yell, "That's a guy who wants to make this team!"