As a public service to my dear readers I am stating at the beginning of this Foolishness...Or Is It ... This Is About Football.
If you have no interest in anything that bounces, especially a football, stop reading immediately and go do something really useful like sending out a tweet about that peanut butter and jelly sandwich you are about to eat.
We are a society driven by trends and happenings. A single instance of something can result in massive Regulations and Restrictions and the imposition of fines for violation of the Regulations and Restrictions. Once established, fines go on forever.
Forever is a long time. Many times we even forget what it was that caused the Regulations and Restrictions to be imposed in the first place.
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Hysteria Surrounding Football Injuries
I admit upfront that I do not know how to prevent serious injury in the sport of football. Injury and football go together. If you were to look up “collision” in the dictionary, you will see a little picture of a football right next to it. (Don’t waste your time looking up “collision” in your dictionary. I made this silliness up but, if the little picture were there, it would be there.)
Here is a list of the fines I saw reported in a recent weekend of this current NFL Season...
- Four Helmet To Helmet Contacts Fines.
- A Striking in the Head or Neck Fine.
- A Kicking Fine...
>Must be for kicking something other than the football. I am almost certain that it is still OK to kick the football...Or is It?
>“Houston DE Antonio Smith says he was been fined $21,000 for kicking guard Ricjie Incognito, (a member of the Anonymous Family) who was not disciplined.”
>This shows how all encompassing the NFL’s mania about fining has become. Someone felt obligated to make sure we knew that the person who was kicked was not fined. Are they really considering fining the kickee? - A Horse Collar Fine.
- A Roughing Fine…
>Silly me. I thought being kind of rough on the opponent was part of football. - Two Unnecessary Roughness Fines...
>Now I am really confused. The fine in the bullet point above was for Roughness. This fine is for Unnecessary Roughness. Does it not seem to you that, if you were rough enough to get a fine for roughness, then it must have been “Unnecessary”?
The Bottom Line is there were $139,125 total fines to 10 players.
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I Feel I must Say More about Helmet To Helmet Contacts...
- Defensive players are fined if they make contact with their helmet on an offensive player’s helmet.
- Players are running, jumping, squirming, dodging, faking, weaving and flying through the air at each other.
- After the defender leaves the ground, the person about to be hit often moves.
- As a result of that movement he just might place his helmet in the flying-through-the-air-path of defensive player’s flying helmet.
- Hey Mr. Commissioner, have you noticed that the offensive player is not stationary?
- Come on, man, he is trying to get away!
- Should he not be fined for trying to get away?
- Should he not be fined for placing his helmet in the path of the defensive player’s helmet?
At an absolute minimum the commissioner should require the running, jumping, squirming, dodging, faking and/or weaving offensive player to stand still so that the defensive player can take proper aim.
If we used to be able to put a man on the moon, we ought to be able to get a football player to stand still...Or ought we?
Would I kid u?
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Lagniappe: If Full Contact Football is replaced by Flag Football, don’t be surprised if the Regulators get to work quickly on changing the game. I can see the first regulation already...
If any player, after having successfully removed the flag from an opponent’s waistband, drops it on the playing field there will be a $95 fine imposed by the Commissioner for Littering.
