In my day we would beat each other with bats… and we liked it!
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Old? Yeah. Grumpy? Just calling it like I see it.LOL
The move to calumniate, deprecate or disparage the sport of football is just a marginal aspect of the woke, cancel culture and other movements designed to emasculate America.
Playing or coaching football teaches young men the commitment, disciple and sacrifice that success in life demands.
Young men committed to the sport must physically prepare their bodies. That is hardly a pointless pursuit in this era of fast foods, video games and pampered transportation.
Young men must practice in preparation for formal competition. Youngsters don’t want to play because they don’t like to practice? Then they will challenged to be successful lawyers where cases are won or lost depending on how diligently you attended your preparation.
Young men shouldn’t play football because of the risk of injury? So is the risk of playing rugby, basketball, boxing and gymnastics. The developement of equipment and rules to minimize injury in America’s game has been a continuing process over the last century.
Football teaches how to compete and win.Many professions are competitive. Even those viewed as not competitive (such as medicine, accounting or teaching) still require discipline, hard work and sacrifice. The same qualities that drive success on the football field leads to the development of a solid work ethic, a quality that many see being lost in our younger generation today.
Finally, to those who see some utopian world coming, free of physical conflict and war, I can only say that such ideal is not only unlikely but rather given the state of mankind unachievable. As a country we must always depend on our young men and women to defend our country. That will take preparation, discipline and courage qualities as noted by presidents such as Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Kennedy to be uniquely developed by the game of football.
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One of mine is the same age but I do try to maintain grace and perspective. Yes, that generation was way too coddled, but at the same time they have also been the most psychologically abused generation in some time by the fake “meta” reality that has been put in their hand and in front of their eyes since before they were even teenagers or even the ability to make a choice.
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There are some real issues that should not be over looked for this trend. Lifelong injuries to body and brain, which has been part of the sport from it’s inception with the risk of it, being banned at the turn of the century, because of the public’s view that life and limb were being put at risk literally due to on the playing field deaths. Took a President Teddy Roosevelt to step into save the sport. Parents are voting to protect their children from this and I don’t blame them. Get a few years of glory but a lifetime of pain is just not worth it too many. The sport is trying to develop to mitigate these risk, but it can’t be done away totally, due to the nature of the game and the increased size and strength and athleticism of players. You have extraordinary large human beings 300 plus pounds in some cases who can run as fast as some running backs and collide with them. The law of physics just takes over. Mass times velocity equals OUCH!!!
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I don’t think we’re getting more peak old man in the thread than this post right here.
I mean by the end you’re channeling your inner Von Moltke the Elder. But for football, which I get sometimes people like to compare football to war, they’re wrong but people do it
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Agree 100%
With the expanded playoffs in the future , IMO CFB will be bigger than NFL. Some of the HC are already getting paid as much , why move to the NFL ?
I’m pretty he did hes said so numerous times lol
Less kids are playing football
Discipline is taught in many ways.
A competitive mindset can be fostered without strapping on a helmet.
I’m sure long ago some lamented how moving from leather helmets to the wimpy padded ones would make us all soft…
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I always took the football to war comparison as only metaphorical
This guy is presenting a bit of research he did online and then presents conclusions that do not follow from his “evidence”. In rhetoric, it’s called “non sequitur”.
Example:
“However, some reasons behind the trends are more certain than others. Most notably, there can be little doubt that Junior Seau’s suicide in 2012, Will Smith in Concussion in 2015 and the emerging science of repetitive brain impacts and long-term neurological damage have cast a dark shadow over the sport.”
Where is the research of 1,000 randomly selected football fans whose reaction lead to this conclusion? If such research exists, he doesn’t cite it so I stopped reading at that point.
In retrospect, were they wrong?
There are thousands of things that can teach commitment, discipline, sacrifice, toughness, etc. If football didn’t exist, our country would be the exact same. Too much drama.
38 million people watched a mediocre NFL game with tons of undisciplined play (276 penalty yards) yesterday. Feel like football will be fine even if there are fewer high school players.
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Does the NFL still play?
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As affluence increases participation in violent sports decreases.
This trend will continue. Yet note that every single college team is able to fill its roster, At every level of classification.
Our Nation continues to generate enough high school football talent to make the sport viable.
It is the quintessential boomer take, for sure. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t truth in it.
The ideals are good, I believe, but one can’t ignore the elephant in the room of what has been allowed to fester without even a second guess by the same crowd espousing said ideals.
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With age comes wisdom. You will get there some day.
While participation numbers have been down, the game definitely isn’t going away anytime soon. Too much money involved.
Also my nephews are in the 5th grade and have already been talking about playing here in Katy. So theres still interest in the next generation.
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Not in that post, there is wisdom in age there’s also just complaining about the times changing that’s what that was.
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