It looks like overreacting, doing it in the middle of the season.

MITCH BLATT

I wrote a few days ago about why I thought the NFL was right to take a hard-line against helmet-to-helmet hits. However, while the NFL may have taken the right policy, they did it at the completely wrong time.

Why wait until the middle of the season to make such big changes? The problem of concussions has been receiving a lot of attention for many years recently. Its as if Roger Goodell didn’t find out about concussions until the past weekend with the highly publicized big hits.

That there was a relatively high amount of dirty hits last weekend doesn’t change the extent of the problem. There are ebbs and flows from week-to-week, and we know the media likes to take an alleged trend and make a bogus fuss about it all the time–similar to how ESPN and the NFL reacted last weekend–but reacting after one disproportionate event tends to result in disproportionate reactions that don’t address the problem, if there is one.

As for the NFL (and, potentially, lower levels of football), helmet-to-helmet contacts are a problem that should be addressed. They should have addressed it before this season started or before last season started. But seeing as they didn’t do anything different going into the season, they should have stuck with the rules that were on the books. Now we have players getting fined $75,000 for something that used to be a fine of $5,000, the players never having been told about this change, and James Harrison threatening to retire. It’s like an ex-post facto law.

The players went into the season knowing the rules, then Commissioner Crazy (with his plans to bring the NFL to Europe, pondering about playing the Super Bowl in Europe, and thinking about increasing the span of the season) makes these brash decisions to fine players tens of thousands and potentially suspend them. Great idea, but wait till the season is over to change the rules, buddy.

Of course there are probably some wishy-washy humanitarians on ESPN talking about why these is an urgent issue that needs action now. (Really? What happened last week that hasn’t been happening every week in the league for the past few decades?) If the NFL could have waited this long, they could have waited 8 more weeks. A number of ESPN commentators have been regaling us with stories of players who might die if something doesn’t change–even though a few players have died, not from concussions, but from summer practices. Nope, if the league just waited till the end of the season, players would have continued to get concussions, as they still will, maybe at a little bit lower of a rate, someone might get paralyzed every now and then, as a Rutgers player recently was, which also played into the fake hype about last weekend, and everyone going into the game still would have known the risks of football, the risks of motorcycling, the risks of driving, and the risks of everything else.

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