Friday, October 17, 2008

Fine, fine me.

The NFL was doing a good job with fines and suspensions cleaning up the image of the league by getting rid of players not adhering to the personal conduct code. Pacman Jones decided to mess with one of his ghosts and it's game over. But now the fining is ridiculous.

"I think regarding the evolution of football, it's becoming more and more flag football, two-hand touch," Polamalu said. "When you see guys like Dick Butkus, the Ronnie Lotts, the Jack Tatums, these guys really went after people. Now, they couldn't survive in this type of game. They wouldn't have enough money. They'd be paying fines all the time and they'd be suspended for a year after they do it two games in a row. It's kind of ridiculous."


As ESPN NFL analyst Schlereth has stated over and over, there's a mixed message sent by the NFL from the fines. On one hand, you fine players for hard hits, and on the other hand, you have NFL.com selling DVDs on the impact hits. Beyond the hypocracy, I personally don't want the NFL to lighten up on the big hits. I went to a HS JV game and saw big hits that would have been fined in the NFL.

Soccer is known for being a wuss sport because when players get touched they just fall to the ground and hold their knee. Reality is that this is only prominent in La Liga and the FMF. EPL and MLS is pretty manly and very physical. So, in a lot of respects I like the English game more than the other leagues for the physicality. Similarly, I like the NFL because you can bust a big hit on someone and that's just part of the game. I want to see hits like this (0:16, 0:39, 0:48):



This is football. Don't take this away from me.

2 comments:

GRRM Jr. said...

Man, that Saints Vikings game had some insane hits in it..I forgot to mention that in the recap...it was like a game of NFL Blitz come to life..

dook!e said...

I don't mind big hits, but they come from some 195lb defender leaving his feet and projecting himself like a torpedo. The fact that its helmet to helmet or not.. its a bitch way to tackle. Fines won't stop this from happening.

Back in the day, those guys would actually tackle another player..