Word: nfl
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...Football Restoring safety and sanity to the gridiron can't simply be left to the NFL's overlords. The pressures on players to perform may be too great, and the financial stakes too high, to expect the league's teams to back dramatic changes. Should others step in? High-level government intervention to quell violence in football would not be without precedent. A story in the Oct. 10, 1905, New York Times reads, "Having ended the war in the Far East, grappled with the railroad rate question and made his position clear, [and] prepared for his tour of the South...
...goal whose gravity and significance pale in comparison with the goal of reducing the number of brain injuries occurring at all levels of football. Congress has rarely hesitated to assert its right to police professional sports, from pressuring baseball to enforce tougher steroid penalties to threatening to end the NFL's antitrust exemption. Hearings that shed further light on football's concussion crisis would be a more productive use of the power of the congressional subpoena. (See pictures of eccentric college mascots...
...Change the rules. The NFL's competition committee seems ready to move on player-safety fixes. "You start with the premise that nothing is off the table," says Atlanta Falcons president Rich McKay, a co-chairman of the committee. This is crucial, as NFL changes will not only protect athletes who suit up on Sunday; they will also trickle down to football's lower levels, reducing injury risk for all. (See pictures of eighth-graders being recruited for college basketball...
...backs as well. Too often, they make a conscious decision to lower their head into a defender, hoping the forward lean will give them an extra yard. That defender's natural reaction? Go head-on as well. What if running backs weren't allowed to intentionally lead headfirst? The NFL is at least considering such a rule. "What concerns me is the runners," says McKay. "A lot of those hits are voluntary, where a player ducks his head and is in a position to deliver a blow ... that's something we have to look at. Because you see it more...
Hall of Fame coach and legendary broadcaster John Madden, whom NFL commissioner Roger Goodell appointed to help solve the concussion problem, has spent his first year out of the booth developing smart reforms. He points out that today's players wear less padding than they did in the past, either to increase their speed or for fashion appeal. "So the helmet becomes the only protected part of your body," he argues. Madden suggests that if players were required to wear more padding, they'd be less likely to consider their helmet a safe weapon. (See pictures of John Madden...