Fans Of Denial

An odd thing happened in one of the NFL playoff games today.  The San Francisco 49'ers managed to sack Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton.  The 49'ers were then flagged for Roughing The Passer.  The commentators expressed surprise, since it had looked like a fairly ordinary sack.  But on seeing the play again from a different angle, the reason for the flag became obvious: the defender had hit Newton helmet-to-helmet, which is a no-no in the modern NFL.

What was odd was that I seemed to be the only person who noticed that.  The commentators continued to rant about how that was a terrible call.  Wondering if I had missed something, I checked the tweets on the game.  But they were just the same generic comments about how that was the Worst Call Ever.

Obviously, the crackdown on head-shots is not popular with everyone, so I don't expect it to be a popular call.  But no one was saying, "I hate that rule." rather, they seemed oblivious to the rule.  And no one seemed to remember that this has been illegal for several years now.  I was starting to wonder if I was the one suffering the head injuries.

The incident brings up an issue I've been meaning to mention for a while:  The accusations that the NFL has not been doing enough to protect players from head injuries.  Particularly, the accusations have come from the recent book, League of Denial, which claims the league has been ignoring the science on concussions for years now.  I don't know much about the evidence that the NFL has covered up the sport's dangers in the past, so I can't really comment on that. 

But many people extend the criticism to the present, and claim that the league is continuing to drag it's heels on the issue.  That, I do have to disagree with.  I see incidents like the one above as evidence that the NFL is willing to anger its fan base in the course of fixing the sport.  It's relates back to what I was saying earlier this week about how all sports have fans that want to push the sport towards more violence and physicality. It's hard for a league to turn its back on such a large constituency, and it's tempting to compromise with them, or roll-back changes when the complaints start.  I'm impressed that the NFL has remained steadfast through the howls of protest.