Is the NFL Ruining Football?

I've recently started paying close attention to the NFL. I've always enjoyed watching the sport, but it wasn't until the last two seasons or so that I become actively involved and I've noticed a few things.

Football is an extremely physical game. If you set foot onto the field, you can expect to get hit and get hit hard. I've seen an increasingly large number of penalties dished out for players hitting quarterbacks and kickers. I understand that teams pay top dollar for these players and they want to protect their investments from injury, but at some point you have to understand that there is a risk taken by simply walking out onto the field. If a player is already in the motion of making a tackle, that player isn't going to stop moving until he a) hits the ground, b) hits his target, or c) has a few steps to stop his momentum. If your quarterback gets hit, maybe you should talk to your offensive line about how important it is that your 10 million dollar a year invest not be on the receiving end of a freight train instead of whining that the defensive lineman that hit him hit him.
Do we need regulations to protect the well being of these people? Of course we do. But we have to draw the line somewhere. At some point we're going to make the players too afraid to hit anyone out of fear of being penalized or even fined.


Speaking of penalties, lets talk about my least favorite call of them all: Pass Interference. This is a regulation that I personally love to loath. I'm sure when this rule was first put into place it made plenty of sense. You can't have players tackling each other just because the ball left the quarterback's hand. That would make for a rather dull game. But when two players are clearly reaching for the ball, calling pass interference just because they touched each other is a little over the top. It's getting to where all the defense can do is wait for the ball to fall into the receiver's hands and then let him have it. In many cases, the receiver can be the one who initiated the contact, but because they touched, the defensive player gets a flag thrown on him. And to top it off, the ball is then placed on the spot of the field that the supposed penalty occurred. This is like assuming that the receiver would have caught the ball if not for the interference, even if the receiver is no where near where the ball landed. Isn't the point of playing a defensive game to interfere with the offense of the opposing team's ability to score? This regulation is as silly as goal tending in basketball. Don't you dare do your job and defend the goal or we'll slap you with a penalty! Give me a break, people.

My next complaint is about the business side of the NFL and not really with the game of football itself. Electronic Arts has held a exclusive license with the NFL for a number of years. What this means is that Midway's Blitz and 2KSports' All-Pro Football games have come with generic players and generic teams. Now, sometimes exclusive are a good thing, but that's another topic of discussion all together. The problem that has arisen is that other football franchises are hindered by the lack of licensed content. On Metacritic, The last All-Pro Football game to be released by EA Sports rival, 2K Games, scored almost as well as EA's yearly release Madden '08. Breaking down the Metacritic score by individual scores, you'll see that All-Pro Football was scored higher than Madden 08 by a lot of respectable review magazines. All-Pro Football has tanked in sales numbers because it lacks an NFL license. This exclusive license that EA holds allows EA to release lazy football games. Ultimately, the end user is the one who suffers. But the NFL continues to choose EA's fat licensing deal over the quality of games that competition would create.

Lastly, put an end to the drama. This isn't a soap opera, it's football. When a player says he's retiring, hold him to it. Don't let him retire, then unretire, then retire again, then unretire agian. It's a mess. Even worse than that, some players seem to think that just because they don't like the team they're playing for that that means they can under perform and still get paid. Unfortunately, that player is correct. This point probably has more to do with a discussion on the validity of unions in today's business world, but it still rings true in this discussion. Last time I checked, if I decide one day that I don't want to work, Local TV LLC can and will fire me and I'll stop getting a pay check and benefits.
These players only want a camera pointed at them so they can have their spotlight time. The media should start ignoring them, and the NFL should shut them up. Tell Brett Favre that he's done and tell Randy Moss he can play his best or he can find himself unemployed.

The Forum is open, people.