What I am going to do is this: I will make a bold proclamation that I know, for a fact, a ton of people won't agree with. I'm going to say something that would make a lot of people sad, and will take joy away from millions upon millions. Because what I'm going to tell you is this: there will be no NFL within many of our lifetimes. And by the year 2032 it will all be very real.
It seems impossible to believe at this point, in a world where the NFL is by far the most powerful sports league in the world. The worst NFL teams are valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. The TV deals the NFL pulls down are measured in the billions. And it captivates all of the United States in a complete way that Major League Baseball, "America's Pastime," never accomplished. The NFL pervades everything; even casual fans are permeated with NFL 365 days a year. Free Agency, the Draft, the Pre Season, Fantasy Football, pick pools, video games ... all of that, and we aren't even talking about the actual games being played. The NFL is King.
Of course, once upon a time, so was cotton. Kingdoms come crashing down in capitalist economies. Ford and GM seemed impenetrable for decades, then seemed as good as dead. The NFL seems unfathomably strong right now, but if you look at it right now you can easily see the crack in the foundation.
Dave Duerson, only 50 years old at the time he took his life, shot himself in the chest. This is not a common way to suicide, but Duerson did so with a purpose: he wanted his brain studied. Duerson was smart; he went to Notre Dame and was a good businessman. But his mind went away far too early, and Duerson knew there was a connection. So even as he couldn't take it anymore, because he was no longer himself, he had the wherewithal to attempt to make it something bigger than himself. Duerson was the first time that I started thinking this, and started struggling with the issues at hand.
The problem is that no matter how many times we've seen professional football players, college football players, and, yes, even high school football players take their own lives or die before their times, the compelling part of the sport is the big hits. I've been outspoken in my opposition to the suspension lengths the NFL put on the New Orleans Saints for the "bounty-gate" saga. My issue is pretty simple: this stuff happens in every locker room, has always happened in every locker room, and the NFL has always thrived on it. As Peter King pointed out, the NFL condemned the Saints, then ran a documentary on its own network about the most fearsome hitters in league history. If that wasn't bad enough, one of the interviews had the individual being profiled talking about bounties being put on him.
My problem with the NFL's penalties is that the NFL, and especially the holier-than-thou commissioner, Mr. Goodell, are taking way too narrow a view. If they really cared about anything other than their liability in current and future lawsuits they would have done something much earlier. But make no mistake, it is the mounting pressure from the more than 1,200 NFL veterans suing the NFL at the present time that is leading to this sudden bout of consciousness on behalf of the Commissioners office.
And it is those lawsuits that will, eventually, lead to the end of the NFL as we know it. It might exist in some distorted form, but by 2032 the landscape will look vastly different. This will happen for a number of reasons. First, the various high schools around the nation will begin to eliminate their football teams as the liability of the lawsuits (which can and will be brought on the schools for injuries stemming to high school games and practices) begins to outweigh the profits for the schools. This will happen rather rapidly, and I wouldn't be surprised if it begins to happen in the next five years. As news of these lawsuits begin to hit closer to home, the compounding effect will be parents refusing to let their children play football. From the pee-wee level up through high school the "talent pool" will dry up.
Colleges will follow suit. Division III schools and Division II schools, garnering less profit from the sport than the major conferences as it is, will be the first to go. Again, liability will lead the way. Eventually you'll still have a few major Division I conferences left; the talent pool won't allow for anything else, and only the Notre Dames and Alabama's of the world will be able to draw enough profit to make it worthwhile. But as the news continues to come in, even the talent pools of those schools won't be able to continue to sustain the team.
The rules will also change, due to liability, to the point where the game isn't even recognizable. Already we see a sport where the quarterback can barely be touched. In ten years you'll have no kickoffs period, no punt returns, no hitting of the quarterback without wrapping him up entirely first (therefore giving him a chance to completely prepare), no down linemen, no pre-snap defensive movement, and no blitzing. All the things which makes the game compelling will go away, and the magnitude of the lawsuits will eventually lead to a zero-sum situation where there is no longer any way to insure a player, nor to gain a profit from the game.
In the end, even the Alabama's of the world will stop recruiting, because there will be no interest. Eventually the NFL will have the reach of the Arena Football League now; a secondary option at 1am if you have a 200 channel sports package. And in its final incarnation the NFL will become what boxing has become: a last ditch effort only for the poor or foreign players willing to do it. Boxing used to get the top athletes; now, LeBron James plays basketball. The NFL will fade the way boxing has, and by 2052 my kids kids will have no clear understanding of what the NFL once was, the same way my generation has no idea what boxing meant and how big Ali was.
Of course, all of this comes to mind today with the news that Junior Seau, only 43 and two years removed from playing in the NFL, took his own life via a gunshot wound to the chest. Seau apparently didn't leave a note, and the answers his family and friends are craving will never be known. They never are in situations like this. But Seau's death will be infinitely more visible that Duerson's, and the next will be more visible than Seau's. The ball is rolling, and as it goes downhill it will pick up more momentum with each instance. My heart is saddened, and my head is spinning. But I have seen the future, and the future doesn't bode well for the NFL. It's hard to believe that even ten years ago, when we talked about the drawbacks of playing football for a career people pointed to Joe Montana and the struggles he has moving around from place to place. If only we knew that losing the ability to walk was the easy part. Losing the ability to think and to function mentally at such a young age... that's not only a tragedy, but it will also be the end of the NFL.
No comments:
Post a Comment