NFL Rule Change: the Beginning of the End for Football as We Know It.

While it hasn’t received much attention, this week the NFL took a giant step down a slippery slope that will inevitably lead to the most successful professional sport in American history being virtually unrecognizable to its legions of loyal fans.

The new kickoff rules appear at first glance to be a benign nod to the increasing awareness of player safety. However, they are actually a Trojan horse through which the very same brand of “wussification” that has overtaken so much of our culture will enter the NFL. The manliest game in America is starting down the path to gradual castration.

Crazy talk, you say? After all, the changes seem to be so minor that only the most zealous of spectators will even notice. Kickoffs will now commence from the 35-yard line (five yards closer to the goal line), and members of the kicking team will only be able to get a five-yard head start before the ball is kicked.  

But this new rule (which should be referred to as the “Full Employment for Long Kickers Act,” or FELKA) will undoubtedly significantly change the game for little or no gain, all while setting an extremely dangerous and unnecessary precedent.

There is no doubt that, should there be an NFL season this year, there will be far fewer kickoff returns than there were this past season, when 16 percent of kicks ended in the least exciting play in football. No one knows what the percentage of sleep-inducing touchbacks will rise to, but my guess is close to half and—in the case of dome stadiums—maybe more. After all, it will only take a free kick of 65-70 yards for most return men to take a knee.

So, the number of times we will see the most exciting play in football will be greatly reduced, as should scoring in general because offenses will, on average, start with worse field position.

And for what purpose has this change been made? Allegedly, to cut down on injuries, but no one has provided any reliable statistics to substantiate that kickoffs cause more major injuries than any other type of play in the NFL. 

While obviously decreasing the number of contact plays should—at least nominally—also reduce the amount of serious injuries, it is hard to understand how, even in theory, the second provision of the new rule will have any such impact.

Any person who has ever taken a basic science class can tell you that reducing the running start to five yards will have no impact on the speed the tacklers are traveling when they make contact with players from the return team.

While the five-yard rule may mean that it will take fractions of a second longer for cover team members to reach the 20-25 yard line (where contact normally ensues), since top athletes can reach their “terminal velocity” after running just 15-20 yards they will still be generating the exact same force once they get there. This rule makes no sense, but at least it appears rather harmless.

So, in the name of player safety (or is it political correctness combined with a negotiating ploy in the lockout talks?), a significant portion of the game is going to be eliminated—even though there is no actual evidence that this part of the sport was creating disproportional problems, especially for the star players.

I can almost hear the chorus of softies out there crying, “But if you can prevent even just one concussion or spinal cord injury, then the new rule is worth it.” 

This kind of “logic” has always baffled me and seemed to be the height of hypocrisy. How many of these same people (liberals) would be in favor of reducing the highway speed limit to 10 miles per hour even though doing so would immediately save thousands of lives per year? Probably even fewer realize there is anything inconsistent about being pro-choice but against the death penalty.

Of course, the only way to completely prevent injuries in football is to stop playing football. Unfortunately, that is the direction the sport is heading at all levels.

The NFL has already confused the daylights out of defensive players and is close to ending special teams play all together. In the college game, offensives have completely taken over as defenses start to resemble the French army in the 20th century. In high school, the fear of concussions is taking over day-to-day operations of many teams, and players are using the invisible injury whenever they want to bail out on difficult situations.

On this last point, I am something of an expert. I coached high school football in 1989 in New Jersey. I wrote a book (don’t worry, know one else heard of it either) about spending a year with an Ohio high school powerhouse in 1994. In addition, I coached again this past season in California. All three teams were, despite my involvement, extremely successful.  

These experiences have given me a unique perspective on how dramatically things in the sport have changed in the past generation. Even if I factor in that California has always been softer than Ohio or New Jersey, there is no doubt that today’s young football players resemble the Pillsbury Doughboy in comparison to their fathers (or, to put it in more contemporary terms, they are competing in the new “nobody gets criticized” version of “American Idol” as opposed to the “Simon” edition).

Good tackling is virtually nonexistent; feeling any pain at all means that you are “injured,” and don’t need to play if you don’t want to. Coaches have almost no power with which to enforce discipline or get players to push themselves beyond the minimum effort necessary.

This is why I take the NFL rule change so much more seriously than most observers. I can see the future, and it is bleak for the variety of football that Americans born before the Carter administration have known and loved. Now that kickoffs have effectively been eliminated, what is to stop punt plays from being next? Heck, the quarterback sack already resembles something out of a high-contact flag football. Before we know it, regular season games will start to look like the glorified two-hand touch contest that the Pro Bowl has become over time.

History shows us that whenever you start making irrational concessions to political correctness there is no going back. Make no mistake, this is what the NFL has just done and its watered down future is now virtually assured. Enjoy.