* The 2014-2015 senior student signature series features area senior class students – and their own “signature” outlooks on a topic of their choice. A new outlook will be posted on Cross-Counties Connect each Friday. The series will begin with point of view comments by seniors from Mountain Lake Public High School. The opinions can be found by clicking on the Family & Faith link on the website’s header, and scrolling down to, and clicking on, Outlook. Their teachers are Brenda Feil and Kim Syverson.
Changing the Rules
Bang! The linemen smash into each other, the quarterback drops back to pass, the receiver sprints to the end zone and catches the pass to win the game!
Wait, there is a flag on the play, ending the excitement and bringing the cheers to an immediate halt.
Over the years “gamemakers” have changed the rules and continued to restrict the way the football players can play. Although the added rules have helped dramatically limit the number of injuries, they have also increased the time of the games and the number of penalties that are called.
When football began, the players did not have helmets, pads, or a set of rules; for this reason, the rules about how a game of football should be played were limited in 1920. Many teams decided the rules before the game because there was not an official rule book or even an official to referee the game. In fact, most of the games were called by the captains of the teams.
Changing the rules every game caused problems, so every couple of years a committee reviewed the injuries of the previous season and added rules that they thought would help prevent those injuries. Through the years a lot of rules have been added that have made the game safer, but some of the added rules have made football more difficult for the players and coaches.
Football players may not agree with all of the new rules, but a lot of those rules were created for their benefit. At least 10 football players died on the field before pads and officials were introduced; however, better equipment cannot prevent all of the injuries that come with 200-pound men ramming into each other at full speed.
In previous years, many of the football players were subject to severe hits to the head by knees, the ground or other players. These continuous hits to the head resulted in brain problems including, but not limited to, Parkinson’s disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), Alzheimers, and dementia. The National Football League (NFL) has created different committees to limit these injuries by creating new rules or strengthening old ones.
Although the rules that have been added are meant to keep games clean and fun, in the NFL’s case, some of the added rules have hindered the players from enjoying the sport. In an NFL game the number of penalties, on average, comes to about 12, according to SportingCharts.com. Most of those penalties do not take a lot of time, but every once in a while the “obvious play” will take more time than it should. For example, while watching a football game one Sunday, I waited for five minutes for the referee to make a call on whether or not the runner was down. I believe that the NFL Board of Commissions is starting to micromanage the games by reviewing games with cameras instead of trusting the referees’ calls and letting the players play. Even though I understand how important reviewing plays is, I feel as if the reviewals take time away from the game and disrupt the flow of the game.
To sum it up, even though the rule changes have limited many devastating injuries, they have also made games more timely and controversial and in turn made football games at the professional level less competitive and more political. Although I enjoy watching Sunday football, I wish that fans and game administrators would let the players play and allow fans to just enjoy watching the wonderful sport of football.