A lot of news has been made recently with the NFL’s “bounty-gate” scandal. Defensive coordinator Greg Williams went from one of the hottest DCs in the league to unemployed, Head Coach Sean Payton received a year-long suspension, star linebacker Jonathan Vilma received a year-long suspension, and numerous other players and coaches were suspended as well. The penalties for this incident are unprecedented for an issue of this nature and it is starting to appear as though Roger Goodell and the NFL are attempting to make an example of the Saints. News broke yesterday that Louisiana lawmakers have gotten involved and, with a 28-1 vote, have asked the NFL to reconsider the penalties that it felt were too harsh.
As concerning as the issue of the bounties is, I worry that the recent issues with player injuries have made the NFL brass feel obligated to publicly flog the Saints. While most rational people would agree that what the Saints’ players and coaches were doing was not in sound judgment or downright immoral, most reasonable people would probably agree that some type of bounty system is in place in most professional football programs. The Saints just got caught.
I’m going on record as agreeing with the Louisiana State Legislature. This is football and it’s not for everyone. In America, we have become complete hypocrites. We glorify the gory brutality of this game and build it up to supplant baseball, basketball, and every other sport as the most widely watched athletic event every year. We pack stadiums in tens of thousands and cheer and celebrate when a player annihilates another player on the field. At the same time, we say that the game is too brutal and force ESPN to take their “Jacked Up” segment out of their sports casts because it “sends the wrong message.”
My question is: What exactly is the message?
The devastating hits are part of the game and one of the most glorified aspects of an individual contest. No one makes it on Sportscenter for form-tackling, and that’s not ESPN’s fault either. The media gives the public what it wants to see, and that’s what we want. A quick youtube search shows that UK fans are no better either. As of this post, over 29,000 people have watched a replay of Taylor Wyndham’s hit that knocked Tim Tebow out of the game. Another 76,000 have watched Dicky Lyons blow up LSU safety Craig Steltz. Over 145,000 have watched the 18 different videos of Florida safety Will Hill taking out a disabled fan on the sideline against Kentucky in 2010. We all love the big hits.
And this all starts way before college or the NFL. I won’t say exactly where, but when I was in high school (not so long ago) we had an award called the Hit Stick. The premise behind this was that, in Saturday film study, the player who had the most crushing blow in the game carried around a large tree limb for the following week while at school. This was to signal to everyone that this individual player blew someone up in the previous week and gave the individual a sense of pride. Whether the player receiving the hit was injured or not made no difference in who received the Hit Stick. It was about the hitter making a big play. I personally won this for a block that took an opposing linebacker that was considerably larger than me off of his feet when I was 16 years old. He was not injured and I actually helped him up after the play. Glorified for this feat, I proudly carried that painted stick with me everywhere I went for the following week.
So now I ask: Do you have a problem with this concept? And on top of that: How different is this than a bounty? Just so you know, this occurred less than ten years ago, and at a major high school right here in Kentucky.
Football is a nasty game and it starts from pee wee leagues on. There are over seven pages of highlights in youtube when you simply search “little league big hit.” I guess I just really don’t understand why bounty-gate is such a big deal. Physical contact, however extreme, is a part of the game. Injuries are a part of the game. While I do not condone intentionally injuring someone, anybody who has played football and been in the bottom of a scrum knows what happens. And despite all of this, the players still suit up and take the field. No one put a gun to my head and forced me to play, and despite a long list of injuries I would have continued to play as long as I was physically able, as do most football players. No one is making Peyton Manning play either.
The game of football is like the old gladiator arenas of roman times. We, as Americans, love the goriness. We love the brutality. We glorify the stars and elevate them to celebrity status, beg for their autographs, buy their jerseys. It’s time to stop being hypocrites and pretending that we don’t love it. Without violence, there is no football and to attempt to remove said violence would kill the sport for forever. You can’t have it both ways, and like it or not, you prefer the brutality. If you don’t like it, go watch tennis, bowling or golf. While the Saints’ coaches and players should be reprimanded for bounties for intentionally injuring opposing players, the penalties are for too harsh. The biggest crime the Saints are guilty of is giving America exactly what we want, even though we try to act like otherwise.