Ring My Bell

I’m sure there’s plenty of whacky political news to harp on about this week.  Like Alaska Republican senatorial hopeful Joe Miller having a reporter handcuffed and arrested by private security at a political rally for attempting to ask him some questions.  Or Kentucky Democratic senatorial hopeful Jack Conway insinuating that only Christians are fit to hold public office.  Or maybe Delaware Republican senatorial hopeful Christine O’Donnell apparently being unaware that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution explicitly prohibits Congress from making any laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof - in precisely those words.  Or even the circus of absurdity that is the New York gubernatorial race.  (We might actually touch on that one later.)  But I don’t want to talk about any of those.  Instead, I want to talk about football.  I don’t want to talk about scores or which teams are good and which would be better off playing in the CFL (I’m looking at you, Cowboys.)  I want to talk about America’s pastime, in terms of life and death.

This past weekend was a bad weekend to be a brain.  On Saturday afternoon, Rutgers defensive lineman Eric LeGrand was attempting a tackle on a kickoff return when his head impacted another player at an awkward angle.  LeGrand tumbled to the ground, awkward and stiff, his neck broken.  The latest word is that he is paralyzed from the neck down.  On Sunday, Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison twice, in the span of about ten minutes, slammed head first into the helmet of the ball carrier, resulting in both offensive players being removed from the game with concussions.  Minutes later at the other end of Pennsylvania, Atlanta Falcons cornerback Dunta Robinson speared Eagles receiver DeSean Jackson in the chin with his helmet, resulting in concussions for both men.  Jackson’s was so severe he will not be able to return to the field this coming Sunday.  Later on in Foxborough, Massachusetts, Patriots safety Brandon Merriweather left his feet and fired the top of his helmet into Ravens’ tight end Todd Heap’s face, knocking him out of the game.  And in the night game between the Colts and Redskins, Washington tight end Chris Cooley left the game after another helmet to helmet collision.  Penalties were only called on two of those hits.

I know people assume that football is a violent sport, and that things like this happen all the time..  And to a certain extent that is true.  But even in a sport were violent collisions are routine, last Sunday was particularly gruesome.  Even former Patriots safety turned NBC analyst Rodney Harrison, voted “dirtiest player in the game” by his peers during his playing days, went on air during halftime Sunday night and called for the league to start suspending players for the type of hits that had been dished out all day long.  If Rodney Harrison thinks you’ve gone too far, it’s time to pay attention.

We are a violent nation.  We live for conflict and we love to fight.  We were born of war, we came of age in war, and we couldn’t survive barely more than a decade of the 20th century without engaging in one - hot or cold.  We glorify battle and lionize soldiers, irrespective of their conduct, choosing to believe that whatever actions they take on the battlefield must be justified because they because they are risking their lives so the rest of us don’t have to.  We prefer to have a select group of people fight our wars for us, and agree it would be a nice bonus if none of our guys were killed in the process.  

Sports are war games for civilized people.  Two opposing sides, risking their health and safety in combat until one defeats the other.  And no American sport is more analogous to combat than football.  Even the terminology is barbaric.  The offensive and defensive lines are said to “battle in the trenches,” quarterbacks are “gunslingers,” throwing “bombs” from “shotgun” formations.  Defensive players patrol the field like “heat-seeing missiles,” “blowing up” receivers who venture into their territory.  And it is this mentality that has lead to the current situation.

I typically avoid qualifying my statements, but in this case I feel I have to.  I love NFL football.  I own six jerseys, primarily of defensive players.  I have two fantasy football teams, one chock full of defensive players.  I pay a ridiculous amount of money for NFL Sunday Ticket so I can spend ten solid hours every Sunday watching every single game played between September and February.  I accept that it is a violent game, that it is inherently dangerous, and that sometimes really bad things happen to the people who play it.  But this business of hitting people in the head to knock them out of games has got to stop.  And if the players aren’t interested in stopping it, the league has to step in and do it for them.

Defensive players are going to complain - they’ve already started.  Steelers assassin James Harrison - guilty of knocking out two Cleveland Browns last Sunday - admitted in an interview Monday morning that he is indeed “out to hurt people.”  In reference to the hit that briefly knocked Joshua Cribbs unconscious, Harrison said, “I thought Cribbs was asleep... he’s knocked out, but he’s going to be okay.”  He has already announced - through his agent - that he plans to appeal the $75,000 fine levied against him, claiming he is now “confused about how to play football.”

James Harrison is not the sharpest pencil in the box.  This is the genius whom, when invited to the White House two years ago as part of the Super Bowl winning Pittsburgh Steelers (as every president invites the winners of every major sports championship to visit every year), refused to attend because, “if the President wanted to meet the Pittsburgh Steelers, he should have invited us before we won the Super Bowl.”  Perhaps he doesn’t understand that people who are knocked unconscious are not just “asleep,” that an impact hard enough to bounce the brain off the side of the skull is infinitely more hazardous to one’s health than the act of taking a nap.  Perhaps he doesn’t know that science now confirms that repeated blows to the head can lead to loss of motor function, dementia, Alzheimer's or worse, and do so much more quickly that previously thought.  Perhaps he doesn’t care.  Perhaps he’s not interested in being able to remember the name of his wife, or where his kids go to school, or how to put on his socks before tying his shoes.

But I do.  I care.  I think that even the remains of James Harrison’s questionable intellect deserve to be protected from idiots like him.  People watch football games to see incredible athletes do incredible things; a sixty-yard tackle-breaking touchdown run, a forty-yard toe-tapping sideline reception in double coverage, an interception returned for a touchdown against Peyton Manning in the Super Bowl.  But incredible players can’t do incredible things sitting on the bench for weeks on end after being hit in the head by some jackass trying to make an ESPN highlight reel.  This nonsense has got to stop.  The head is not a battering ram, and the helmet is not a weapon.

I’m not sure what the solution is.  The league has decided that effective immediately, helmet-to-helmet hits will result in suspensions - for multiple games if necessary.  That’s probably a good place to start.  Obviously fines weren’t working.  What’s five or ten thousand dollars to guy making ten million a years?  But taking them off the field for a game or two, that means something.  If you are a great player, and you have to sit because you cracked someone in the head with your helmet, you’ve not only forfeited your game check, you’ve let your teammates down by not being there for them when they need you.  In the culture of football, that means more than a couple grand.  And if that doesn’t work, maybe we go back to playing the game without helmets altogether.  I guarantee that the first time a linebacker leaves his feet and slams his skull into the head of an opposing running back will also be the last time.

And now for something completely different.  Where the primary season gave us gems like Basil Marceaux Dot Com, the general election has gifted us Jimmy McMillan, of The Rent Is Too Damn High Party, candidate for governor of the great state of New York.  Where Basil Marceaux Dot Com’s platform was, let’s say, complicated, and loosely federated (“ending the slavery of traffic stops”, planting “vegetation on vacant land and selling it for gas”, investigating “why democracy invaded the U.S State on July 16, 1866, and so on), Jimmy McMillan’s message is plain and simple.  Yup, you guessed it.  The rent is too damn high.

A roof over your head, food on the table and money in your pocket.  The rest will take care of itself.  You gotta love an honest politician.  The manicured mutton chops don’t hurt either.