Let American Football Die as a Sport

Football features two of the worst aspects of American life, violence and committee meetings.
George F. Will


Pity all the poor owners and players in the National Football League. Why, they just can't seem to come together on an agreement to divvy up all those hundreds of millions of dollars in a way satisfactory for them all. It, it, simply brings a tear to the eye.

Not. Most emphatically not.

So the NFL players association has decertified itself. Big whoop. The owners have instituted a lockout. Double big whoop. So now the players can sue the NFL as individuals against a monopoly. Really big whoop. You mean it wasn't effectively a monopoly anyway? Just like the players union itself was not a monopoly? By all that's right in the world, there ought to have been a Detroit Lions union (okay, so that does invite all kinds of jokes, buy let that be as it may) or a Green Bay Packers union rather than one big union anyway if monopolies weren't involved.

The best thing that can happen now is for the entire 2011 season to be lost; indeed, for modern professional football as a sport to be knocked down a few pegs. The league, the players, and the very game have become far too arrogant and self aggrandizing. Celebrating savage hits as something to marvel upon? Life threatening injuries are interpreted as 'part of the game'? Incessant trash talk and unsportsmanlike conduct on the field (too many actions on the field are nothing more than in your face insults which no true sport ought to tolerate). Why not let's go back to the Roman Colosseum for our blood for sport?

Why, football is such a great game that it can only be played once a week. That's a testament to how big and tough football players are, to be sure. Yessir, we're big and tough, not like you baseball and hockey and basketball weaklings who play several times a week. Real men, we NFLers are.

Let the NFL die, and let its fans watch it decompose. They may find that there are better things in life. Such as getting one.

Nifty Zingers and Notes

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has been sentenced to one to five years in prison for probation violations. It's about time. The man has flaunted the law for years; it is doubtful that a regular joe would have received the consideration he has over the length of this tragedy. Still, it wouldn't be shocking to see him rebound in the years to come. Voters can have surprisingly short memories, and the general disrespect he has shown them in recent years may be nothing more than history in their eyes within a decade.

The National Football League has suffered two blows this week, and one for certain was of its own making.

First, the Supreme Court has ruled that it is 32 individual money making enterprises rather than one large one, thus not granting the league the anti-trust status it sought. Justice John Paul Stevens, paving the way for Elena Kagan to replace him, said so. But to be fair to the retiring leftist jurist, he's probably right on this one. It would be interesting to see, however, whether the Court would find that the NFL Players Union ought to be broken up into 32 smaller entities, for if the teams are to be seen as individual factions, should not the Union be busted down into similar pieces?

The second blow comes by the League's own hand. The 2014 Super Bowl will be played outdoors in New Jersey. The powers that be in the NFL seem to have forgotten that it's cold in the mid-Atlantic in February. Do we really want to see a 3-0 championship game played in blinding snow and bitter cold? Stalwarts will point to the famous Ice Bowl game in Green Bay as an example of great games despite weather, but it fair to ask whether players or fans ought to be subjected to such harsh conditions for the sake of a game. It appears to be, at the least, a risky move.

A man in West Virginia is alleged to have burned down his house simply because his wife didn't have his dinner ready when he got home. There have got be easier and safer ways to grill.