NFL Needs To Do More For Player Safety Or Risk Losing Stars To Early Retirement
By Jerry Landry
@jerry2landry
Andrew Weber-USA TODAY Sports
The serious threat of litigation is what’s truly spearheading the NFL’s relatively recent movement to increase awareness on player safety. The National Football League is a business, it’s run by business owners and the owner’s interests are served by commissioner Roger Goodell. The NFL players have a union, but their collective bargaining skills lack the savvy and experience of even the league’s least competent owner.
To propagate unpopular opinion, I’d like to give props to Goodell and his initial strides toward enhancing employee safety. But I have just one question for the NFL commish: If you’re so concerned about the safety of your players, Mr. Goodell, then why do we still have Thursday night football?
Nearly every week during the regular season, just two days after what’s a regularly scheduled off day, Goodell asks 106 players from two NFL teams to get back out on the gridiron and knock their heads together. As the football carnivores we truly are as fans, we watch, and we watch in droves. Even if the Tennessee Titans are taking on the Jacksonville Jaguars, we still push the ratings well above what’s drawn by MLB’s World Series.
How can you argue that Thursday night football is even somewhat in line with the initiatives to enhance player safety? Even if every game was free of physical infraction and every player played perfectly within the rules, extended rest is still needed between games, and should be mandatory for this inherently brutal sport.
This is where the NFL players’ outcry must fall on influential ears. Their boss can’t dole out discipline with one hand while covering his eyes with the other. Solutions must come proactively from the top, and must be agreed upon immediately. NFL players are tough human beings, but they are not gladiators.
They have families, obligations, and responsibilities regardless the sum of their salary. As more time passes and as more players leave the game, fans become more aware of the toll that repeated violent contact takes on former stars. As fans have seen recently from those who have chosen to leave the game “early,” it’s a toll so devastating that even the promise millions of dollars can’t pay.
Jerry Landry is a writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow Jerry on Twitter at @Jerry2Landry, “Like” him on Facebook or add him on Google.
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