Banning College Football

Banning college football would also be banning the NFL, probably high school as well.

 

Not sure if banning college football is a good idea. Reforming NCAA Football is definitely what needs to happen

 

College football is definitely going to get banned at some point barring really significant changes in the way football is played. The lawsuits will be a big part of the issue at some point but the fact that the faculties and board of trustees won't be able to look away from the physics of the game is going to be more important.

Football is an outlier in American sports at this point. It's the only team sport where the attempt to inflict bodily pain and damage is part of the strategy of the sport. Hockey comes closest after football and physical contact in hockey is about a twentieth of the amount in football.

It's going to take awhile but football as we know it is on the way out. The game will either adapt, in Arena Football ways, or it is going to become extinct.

 

There is too much money in football for it to get shut down. At worst, it would just become a variation of flag football. But even that is likely decades off. Just my opinion.

 

LOL aint no fuckin way. The south would secede again over football. You go try to break up the SEC and see what they do to you. It's an issue not up for debate, if people want to not play they can have fun from the stands.

 

It's not a question of like or dislike it's a question of the ethics of having a large number of young men in an organized activity that is very bad for their long-term health.

The issue hasn't been raised until recently, but it's going to be like putting the genie back into the bottle trying to get rid of it. The President and Board of Trustees of Alabama, for example, are going to be liable if they condone the activity once the effects of that activity are beyond doubt. That's where we're headed now, to the beyond doubt phase of the issue.

It will take years to get there and maybe even a couple of decades but we'll get there eventually.

That's just in the diehard places like the South and Southwest. I expect that organizations like the Ivy League are going to arrive there much faster as the data rolls in and their arrival at the conclusion is going to hasten the process elsewhere.

Why did the Roman Gladitorial Games system collapse? It was still wildly lucrative and the masses loved it. It fell because early Christianity changed the mores of the time and made the wanton shedding of blood for sport and profit outside of the pale for society.

 

Football-playing robots... its the future! But first they will probably just invent better helmets to reduce concussions.

 

I suspect the answer will be to make football more of a game and less of a contact sport. Robots is boring because once you turn something into a machine-driven process you remove human error, intuition and near prefection from the process.

When was the last time the World Chess Championship was worth anything? Before the machines proved they could dominate the field.

I think there are many possibilities for how to make football more of a game and less of a contact sport. There's the Survivor challenge concept where two teams of athletes compete on a set field to perform related tasks on offense and defense determining field position. You can have them in contact with each other with set rules that remove all but the most unlikely accidents.

Then there's the flag football/arena football mode where the game is virtually the same as it was before but with much less contact and more emphasis on positioning speed and agility.

Baseball in the 1910's was all flashing spikes, beanballs, rough tags in the face to make people think twice about spiking you, etc. Then Ray Chapman was killed by a pitch and a few really important figures, like Babe Ruth, emerged who needed to be protected from an early injury retirement and the game became much less bloody, much less of a conflict.

There was a roundtable two years ago with a bunch of the great QB's sitting in, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, etc. When they were asked what the most important issue facing the NFL was they said it was the speed of the game, the size of the players and the injuries that were occurring as a result of that. They agreed that somebody was likely to die on the football field in the next 5 years.

That was the blinking red light on the problem.

 

I'll say it again.

Remove face masks and nobody is leading with their heads.

Cut roster sizes drastically so you have to have guys fit enough (ie much smaller) to be on the field a lot more.

Outlaw the unitary shoulder pad harness get up.

Basically, rugby-ize football.

 

All good ideas but you also need to get rid of the helmet as it is currently constructed. Get a biker's/hockey helmet type thing and do not allow any contact with the head. No hands up high, no clubs, no elbows, etc.

 

As a former Rugby player, let me just say that Rugby is way more fucking brutal than football, and anyone who supports getting rid of football is a pussy.

 

The players are too big and too fast for the game to stay the way it has been. If football is going to remain a high contact sport the players are going to have to become smaller again.

There are limits to the physical stress the human body can absorb and modern training methods and pharmaceuticals are pushing players well past that limit.

 

Bullshit. They are all playing to try to make it to the NFL, where millions of dollars will help their ailments. If they can't manage their money enough to afford a catastrophic policy if not health coverage, its on them. You make a decision to play any game, it's not the gladiatorial games which were manned by SLAVES.

Those who don't make it, if injured during their career, are taken care of by the school. Maybe its appropriate to get rid of D3 or small schools that can't afford medical trainers, but the SEC is here to stay. No new york liberal is going to take away our league.

 

In a generation there won't be a responsible parent in America who would encourage their child to endure the abuse of playing organized football at that level in exchange for the infintesimal odds of turning pro and lasting long enough to earn the kind of money that would offset the physical damage.

When you have Troy Aikman basically saying he won't let his kids play football, that pretty much tells you which way the wind is blowing.

 

Slavery was abolished too.


The south will never rise again!

 

Of course he would tell his kids that. He has how many herniated discs? Those don't just happen from playing ball, there's genetics in there too.

There will still be college football in 2050.

 

100% correct! I too am a former Rugby Union player and the game is brutal BUT you don't get the stupid hits with helmets because you aren't wearing one.

Rugby Union is going from strength to strength, with more countries playing the sport all around the world. The demand is there for rough, physical sports and football is in the american blood. If it wasn't there people would find or invent something else just as brutal.
:beer:

 

Damn right. There are protections in the game that can't be denied, such as no laying out someone before their feet touch the ground. Without the helmet you're much less likely to throw your head in the mix too. However, head injuries still occur, even if it's as simple as Props tugging at eachothers' ears in the scrum. I bet when the American helmets were similar to the head gear legal in Rugby Union the head injuries were a lot less frequent because people didn't feel confident in a piece of cloth between them and the next guy. These head injuries are a direct result of the false security placed in the helmets, IMO.

And exactly, the whole world wants a brutal game. It's in our desire as human beings, not just American/English blood. :beer:

 

The goal of college is to prepare people for their careers is it not? This is precisely what the colleges are doing with these athletes. They are preparing them for the NFL. Players all know the risks involved and players are well compensated for this risk. They don't HAVE to play football, it's a choice, and few are capable of performing at an NFL level. You can't just get rid of a sport nationwide, simply because you don't agree with physical nature of the sport. If that's how you feel, then don't watch it, it won't change your life.

And as a result, baseball is the most boring sport to watch by far.

They have already taken lots of precautions in the past couple years to prevent injuries. Overall the game has been getting safer, and I don't know why people are still fighting them over it. You can't just change football to a non contact sport, and expect it to not ruin the sport as a whole.

Risk of injury is part of every sport. Hell, driving your car to work every day, you risk death. I don't think a single NFL player since its inception has ever died on the field, and this goes back to where people were allowed to do way more than they are today. Someone will die in the next 5 years? How exactly do they predict something like that when it's never happened and the game is slowly getting safer? Sounds like those QBs are just pussies that don't enjoy facing tough physical defenses.

Talking about the Roman gladiators is a fallacy, because they were slaves and were forced to compete to the death. That isn't even close to what football is about.

The key is the equipment. Maybe college equipment should be a bit more safe than NFL equipment?