Recognizing The Culture Of Violence In The NFL

The Red Queen

In evolutionary biology, there’s a concept called the Red Queen Hypothesis. Simply put, it states that groups in a system have to evolve just to keep up with the other components of the system. If not, they irrevocably fall behind. Taken from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, one of the Red Queen’s speeches mentions “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”

The NFL finds itself in a similar evolutionary situation: players are getting bigger, faster, and stronger at a blistering pace, while rules, player mentalities, and equipment all lag, in some cases, decades behind. All the while, players continue to take injuries which are career and life-threatening that often go untreated and undiagnosed simply because of the culture that exists in the NFL. With an incontrovertible pile of evidence mounting — from decreased NFL player lifespan to irreversible head injuries — will we see the NFL as a tragically barbaric testament to disregard for player safety in the pursuit of profit?

Size Matters

According to Time, the average weight of the professional NFL player has increased by 10% since 1985. This is not an accident. The monumental teams of years past were fueled by cigarettes, whiskey, and mountains of food. Not anymore. Teams now hire gobs of doctors and nutritionists to ensure their players are performing at peak ability, gaining the right kind of weight and building muscle.

The game is faster, too. Walter Payton, perhaps the greatest running back of all time ran a 40-yard-dash in 4.4 seconds in the early 1970s. Comparatively, at the 2010 NFL Combine, six players matched or beat a 4.4, with an additional thirty players running it faster than 4.6 seconds. Furthermore, not only are the individual plays faster, but there are more plays per game than ever. In 2007, the average length of a game was 3:02’59’’, with an average of 153.1 plays per game. Compare this to a season like 1985, with an average of 131 plays per game, or 1960, just a hair over 120 plays per game.

Finally, the players are stronger than ever. That 10% increase in body mass isn’t due to NFL players just getting chunky. Again, we look to the Combine for some interesting statistics. There, bench press is measured by how many reps an athlete can do of 225 pounds. In 2010, offensive and defensive linemen consistently put up more than 30 reps, and Mitch Petrus and Jeff Owens put up 45 and 44 reps, respectively. Let’s make it extremely clear: I can’t do 45 reps of walking from my refrigerator to my couch without stopping for a break, much less lifting my bodyweight over me that many times.

Oh, James

So players are bigger, faster, and stronger, which are all independent issues when taking into account the relative lack of progress in safety equipment. When players are playing within the rules, though, the threat to player safety is generally mitigated. Catastrophic accidents notwithstanding, the rules the NFL has in place do a good job of protecting the players. When individuals try to skirt the rules, though, is what magnifies and multiplies the danger inherent to what is at the most base level, a violent sport. Speaking of James Harrison…

This is, of course, James Harrison. The same James Harrison who can be attributed to quotes like: “I thought Cribbs was asleep. A hit like that geeks you up, especially when you find out the guy is not really hurt, he’s just sleeping. He’s knocked out but he’s going to be OK.” And, in reference to a later hit on Mohamed Massaquoi, a wide receiver on the Browns: “That was a good, clean, legal hit. I put my head across the bow. To be honest, I laid off him a little bit. I could have put a lot more into him”.

The hits on Cribbs and Massaquoi happened in the same game. Both players were diagnosed with concussions, which in spite of the NFL’s “rub some dirt on it and get back out there” mantra, are dangerous in the short-term. Further, recent research has shown that even one concussion is proven to have a long-term detrimental effect on not only the athlete’s ability to play, but on the rest of their life. Harrison was fined $75,000 for the hit on Massaquoi, and in a display that epitomized his petulant tendencies, Harrison threatened to retire because he claimed he was no longer able to play the way he was taught. What this actually meant was he was no longer allowed to use his helmet as a weapon during head-to-head collisions.

Now, lets not make the mistake of turning football into two-hand touch. Contact is a part of the game, and you can hit a player very hard, cleanly. However, the idea that is burrowed into players’ heads from pop warner to the pros is that when you tackle, you start low, head looking up and forward, lead with your chest, wrap around the hips, and push through. This is a safe tackle. You’ll note that in the hit on Massaquoi, Harrison has his head straight down, makes no attempt to wrap up, leaves his feet, and leads with his helmet. There is no intent to “tackle” as defined in the rules – there is only intent to hit…

Harrison may simply be a vocal bad egg, but the general tendency to hype up big hits regardless of concern for player safety is an ominous indicator. Think of all the “Jacked UP!” segments on Monday Night Football and SportsCenter Top 10s that highlight what is at the base of football: a culture of violence. Sweeping changes of how players are expected to act on the field needs to be implemented along with an evaluation of player safety regulations.

Effing Helmets, How Do They Work?

Technology will sort all of this out though, right? New super-helmets are going to eliminate the chance of a concussion by wrapping players’ noggins in a cushion of air and fairy dust! Well, sort of.

So far, the steps forward in safety technology are baby steps, not giant leaps forward. The standard football helmet has undergone only a few major revisions since the dawn of football: from no head covering to leather, leather to plastic, and most recently, a design with the specific goal of reducing concussions and other head injuries. Helmet manufacturers are reluctant to change designs without a mountain of data indicating an improvement in safety, and players are reluctant to change their equipment. For example, mouthguards are one of the most efficient ways of eliminating traumatic shock to the brain as a result of blows to the jaw. The NFL, however, does not mandate the use of mouthguards and players simply elect to not wear them.

That said, Riddell’s Revolution helmet is the latest iteration in helmet technology Designed in conjunction with a bio-kinetics firm, it helps minimize the damage of helmet-to-helmet collisions and is now the most commonly used helmet in the NFL today. Other manufacturers are producing their own helmets with concussion-prevention technology, and safety technology will continue to incrementally improve, but there isn’t currently, and may never be, a truly concussion-proof helmet.

Going Forward

Ultimately, the issue with player safety isn’t directly recognizable now but is soon coming on the horizon. John Elway suffered multiple concussions through his career. Steve Young totaled seven concussions during his NFL tenure. Troy Aikman took ten concussions in his career, including two in a two-week span. This is simply the tip of the iceberg — the early ramifications of the bigger-faster-stronger era in the modern NFL. A recent article points to a 500% increase in dementia-related conditions in retired NFL players compared to the national average. In another 10-15 years, as players like Ben Roethlisberger and Jay Cutler begin to retire, we’ll begin to see the consequences of what happens when our culture and technology lag behind the evolution of sports. What happens is terrifying, because we already know the result:

It’s called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, which roughly translates to “repeatedly getting clocked in the head.” Fundamentally, when you take a shot to the head, a little bit of your brain turns to mush. If you consistently have that happen through repeated incidents of head trauma, more parts of your brain turn to mush. This isn’t a coincidence, or just a lack of data. This happens to athletes across the board, but particularly affects football players. Detailed by the Seattle PI and Sports Illustrated, NFL players can expect to lose “two to three years off his life expectancy for every season played.”

Additionally, the New York Times discusses long-term effects of concussions with two important observations. First, researchers from the University of North Carolina and the University of Michigan have found “heightened rates of dementia and other cognitive decline” in retired NFL players. Second, and more concerning, is the policy of the NFL, as late as the beginning of 2010, to not claim responsibility. A quote from Greg Aiello, an NFL spokesman: “There are thousands of retired players who do not have memory problems.”

As the NFL looks to reduce preseason games and expand the regular season in the pursuit of higher revenues, fans can expect to see more repercussions of what is essentially a violent game, which begs the question: how do we work to limit these repercussions? Fines on dirty hits help, but fines are useless unless a culture exists that rewards clean play as much as punishes dirty play. Players like James Harrison, who genuinely believe their position on the field is to injure other players, need to be removed from play until they realize that their actions can cause permanent, irreversible damage to themselves and those they hit. Additionally, the NFL needs to – and has, in small steps – take immediate action on players that have received head injuries until all signs of decreased neural activity have been eliminated.

Players aren’t going to get smaller, and the game isn’t going to slow down. Those ships sailed long ago. We can wait for iterative advances in safety technology to come to fruition, or hope that incremental rule modifications are enough, but the fundamental element that needs to change is the culture. A culture that rewards big hits and simply dismisses dirty play produces an environment that is untenable for high-level football. Players, too, should keep in mind that no mega-contract, no highlight reel, and no championship game is worth their long-term health.

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Matt Emeterio is a sometimes-writer, sometimes-computer jock born and raised in Southern California. When he’s not updating one of his myriad fantasy sports leagues, he can be found near a mirror practicing his Norv Turner impression.

See Also: Intel and Riddel Team Up to Make Safer Football Helmets, Did He Really Just Say That?, Stanford cardiologists to screen former NFL players for heart disease, Laws Aim to Protect Student Athletes With Concussions, but Money Is Lagging, NFL Concussion Economics, and Neurologists Take A Stand Against Concussions.