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Football

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Crafty_Dog:
By GERARD BAKER
I'm a traitor. I may as well come straight out and admit it. I've betrayed my family, my friends, and my country. If Dante were around to update his roll-call of infamy, I'd be right down there in the ninth circle, feeling the heat with Brutus, Cassius and Judas.

The occasion of my sin isn't political or religious. It's much more grievous. I've betrayed my cultural heritage, cut the most binding filial ties, abandoned my national loyalties.

The shameful truth is this. I like football better than soccer.

I realized only recently the depth of my treachery when I found myself actually referring to football—the game played over here by the big men in spandex with the little oval ball—as "football." This alone would be considered a kind of verbal treason to my countrymen.

 
Associated Press
 
Tampa Bay Buccaneers tight end Kellen Winslow carries a British flag onto the field before an Oct. 23 game at London's Wembley Stadium.
.Growing up in England, I played football. I went to football games—with other football fans dressed in football attire at crumbling, violence-infested football stadiums that hosted teams with names like Charlton Athletic Football Club. (There was, confusingly, rugby football too, commonly called rugby, but I always hated that.)

"American football" (the term was usually enunciated in a sneering tone that dripped with derision, the way you might say "the Italian military") was something very silly, a far-off pastime of which we knew little and cared less, played by softies who apparently needed helmets and padding to protect their delicate frames.

If we ever thought about "American football" at all, we thought about all that protective gear and considered it a source of some pride that the average English football fan was in more physical danger on his way to the toilets (we called them that) at halftime than a roly-poly lineman in a scrimmage.

But I discovered football when I first came to New York in the late 1980s and my prejudices melted away. It was the era of New York Giants greatness and I was hooked instantly: Lawrence Taylor, Phil Simms, Mark Bavaro, Jeff Hostetler. Yes, I did just say Jeff Hostetler. That should tell you how hooked I was.

I didn't immediately abandon what I slowly came to call soccer. I'd keep in touch with the fortunes of my team, Coventry City (don't ask), every Saturday. But steadily, I lost interest. I'd find myself forgetting some weekends to check out the score on a Saturday in my sweat of anticipation for Sunday. I was drifting apart from family and friends.

There is no more powerful alienation than that of the displaced from his erstwhile peers. Every weekend I call my father back in London. At 91, he's as engaged as ever in events—sporting and otherwise. He wants to know what I think about Liverpool's latest signing. All I want to talk about is the 72-yard touchdown pass Victor Cruz caught from Eli Manning. He thinks Victor Cruz was a 1950s band leader (OK. I thought Victor Cruz was a 1950s band leader till the start of this season).

I'm desperate to find someone among my family or friends to compare notes on the remarkable success of the Houston Texans' third-string quarterback. My uncomprehending friends just shake their heads.

"Why?" they ask. How could you do this to us after all we did for you?

Some might say it's simply, predictably, a man's reaction to his habitat. If you're a sports nut and you move, you'll probably take up whatever's on offer in your new milieu. But that won't do as an explanation.

On that theory, if I moved to Canada I'd like hockey and I can assure you, that's not happening.

It's none of the usual explanations: lots of scoring being better than endless nil-nil draws—I've been to cricket matches in which 1,000 runs were scored and you could hardly call them riveting. It's not the hoopla or the sport-as-family-entertainment thing either which soccer fans accustomed to English hooliganism are supposed to appreciate. (Have you ever been to an Eagles game?)

Baseball fans will have to forgive me here, but the answer, I think, is that football is the quintessential American sport. It's no accident it hasn't really caught on elsewhere (the annual NFL game in London notwithstanding) whereas baseball and basketball have at least a claim to a global following and participation.

In its energy and complexity, football captures the spirit of America better than any other cultural creation on this continent, and I don't mean because it features long breaks in which advertisers get to sell beer and treatments for erectile dysfunction. It sits at the intersection of pioneering aggression and impossibly complex strategic planning. It is a collision of Hobbes and Locke; violent, primal force tempered by the most complex set of rules, regulations, procedures and systems ever conceived in an athletic framework.

Soccer is called the beautiful game. But football is chess, played with real pieces that try to knock each other's brains out. It doesn't get any more beautiful than that

Crafty_Dog:


By FRAN TARKENTON
Football is a tough, physical game. It is violent. But there is a line between being violent and being vicious. Former New Orleans Saints Defensive Coordinator Gregg Williams crossed that line when he established a bounty system that rewarded players—not for tough, clean football plays but for injuring other players.

While coaching the New Orleans defense the last three seasons, Mr. Williams paid bonuses to players for knocking opponents out of the game. The rewards were $1,500 for a knockout, and $1,000 if the player had to be carted off the field. In the playoffs, rewards doubled and tripled.

Following his coach's lead, linebacker Jonathan Vilma offered a $10,000 bounty to any Saints player who could knock Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre out of the NFC Championship Game during the Saints Super Bowl run in the 2009 season.

Former players from Mr. Williams's previous career stops in Washington and Buffalo have come forward to describe similar schemes he ran for those teams, as well.

These bounty systems are despicable.

I played football professionally for 18 years. I played against some of the toughest men imaginable. Mean Joe Greene. Deacon Jones. Bob Lilly. Ray Nitschke. Dick Butkus. Jack Youngblood. And I risked getting hit more than any other quarterback of my day. No one ran more than I did—forwards, backwards, and side-to-side.

Enlarge Image

CloseAssociated Press
 
Saints Defensive Coordinator Gregg Williams
.But in those 18 years, I only missed five games due to injury. My opponents wanted to beat me, and they certainly wanted to hit me to achieve that goal—but no one wanted to hurt another player deliberately. For all our competitive fire, and despite that strong desire to destroy our opposition, as professional NFL players we were part of a brotherhood. There was no joy in seeing someone injured on the field of play, even if it gave our team a better chance to win. After all, we wanted to prove that we were the best; and to be the best, you have to beat the best—not beat the JV.

But with the bounty system run by Mr. Williams, football as a fierce but honorable competition is dropped on its head.

Over the past few days, there have been many current players and NFL analysts saying that this story is no big deal. Every team does this, they say.

That is ridiculous. Bounties are not part of the game in any way.

Since news of this story broke last week, I have talked to dozens of former teammates and opponents. On my Sirius XM radio show Monday night, I talked to the toughest of them all, Hall of Famer Chuck Bednarik—who played every snap on both sides of the ball for the Philadelphia Eagles. The response was unanimous. They did not put bounties on other players, and those who do so are not tough—they are cowards.

Peyton Manning's neck injuries, which kept him out all of last season, may have something to do with a vicious hit during a game against the Washington Redskins when Mr. Williams was coaching there. It was one of the worst hits I have ever seen, as one player tackles him low from the side, before another hits him high head-on, bending him backwards and ripping his helmet off in the process.

During the Saints' Super Bowl run, opposing quarterbacks Kurt Warner and Brett Favre were hit repeatedly. Mr. Warner went flying through the air and was briefly knocked out of the game after one particularly vicious hit. Mr. Favre was hit on almost every play, including many inexcusable late hits coming well after throwing the ball or even handing it off to a running back. That was the last game Mr. Warner ever played.

This is a particularly nightmarish scenario for the NFL in light of the league's concussion problem. For years, the league denied that football hits and concussions had a connection to health problems in former players, but now studies have shown that there are devastating long-term consequences from head trauma.

Football is a violent, dangerous game that leads to terrible injuries even when the players are not deliberately trying to knock one another out of the game. Players, like all people, respond to incentives. When you incentivize them to get opponents carried off the field on a stretcher, they are going to attempt to cause serious injuries.

This opens the NFL up to serious legal consequences and risks a fan backlash. Audiences love hard competition. They do not want to see gang warfare on a football field.

The NFL has to come down hard on this scandal because every team, coach and player needs to get the message that this is not ok. Gregg Williams should never be seen in the NFL again. Others in the Saints organization who knew about the bounties and did not stop them, including General Manager Mickey Loomis and Head Coach Sean Payton, both of whom I like and respect, must also be severely punished. Players who participated should face consequences, and the Saints 2009 Super Bowl championship will be forever tarnished.

These are harsh punishments, but the game of football must purge itself of this heinous blight.

Mr. Tarkenton, an NFL quarterback from 1961-1978, is the chairman and founder of OneMoreCustomer.com.

bigdog:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/13/v-fullstory/3179926/dan-le-batard-jason-taylors-pain.html

But he wanted to play. He always wanted to play. So he went to a private room inside the football stadium.

“Like a dungeon,” he says now. “One light bulb swaying back and forth. There was a damp, musty smell. It was like the basement in Pulp Fiction.”

The doctors handed him a towel. For his mouth. To keep him from biting his tongue. And to muffle his screaming.

 “It is the worst ever,” he says. “By far. All the nerve endings in your feet.”

 That wasn’t the ailment. No, that was the cure. A needle has to go in that foot, and there aren’t a lot of soft, friendly places for a big needle in a foot. That foot pain is there for a reason, of course. It is your body screaming to your brain for help. A warning. The needle mutes the screaming and the warning.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/13/v-fullstory/3179926/dan-le-batard-jason-taylors-pain.html#storylink=cpy

Crafty_Dog:
Hat tip to Jared Wihongi for this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Rq2Xb3BQZyY

Crafty_Dog:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm2hgqa-2ws

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