Flagging Their Play: Liberalism and the Ruination of American Football

JW,

Every now and then, the American northeast provides such a fine illustration of liberalism's idiocies that it must be brought to light. Today's example involves Graydon Pool, a 2.6-acre, naturally-occurring swimming hole in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Established as a community park in 1929, Graydon Pool has in recent years been transformed into a battlefield for political armies. On the right, traditionalists hold fast to the park of their childhood and see the battle for Graydon as a battle for the town's heritage. On the left, younger residents propose replacing the swimming hole with "a more familiar symbol of summer, a blue concrete pool." Driven by liberalism's twin obsessions--sterility and (the perception of) safety--these citizens "want a thoroughly disinfected pool with clear waters so they can always see their youngsters," the Times reports. While the outcomes of various legal filings remain in doubt, it's hard to imagine the park surviving another generation in its current form. The pressures to "fix" it will likely be too great.

Similarly, fans of American football as it now exists would be well-advised to begin mobilizing in its support, as anyone who watched college games over the weekend can attest. Time and again, hits were penalized simply because they looked bad (as game analysts suggested), or because a ball-carrier seemed not to have expected the contact. Even those tackles whose illegalities have been officially codified speak directly to the creeping feminization of the sport: Driving a quarterback into the ground is now forbidden, as is hitting a "defenseless" receiver or pulling a player down from behind. Opposing players have already begun to game the system, of course, and drawing a penalty is now considered a successful offensive play. It doesn't have its own page in the playbook yet (that we know of), but that day is probably coming.

The end result of this change is that hits that once disuaded reckless play-calling (such as too-high, over-the-middle tosses to receivers) will slowly become the norm. Furthermore, a sport already slowed by its endless official reviews will continue to slog through the mud of three-and-a-half and even four hour games as penalty flags become even more pervasive. Just as very little has hurt this country more than the leftist belief in the achievability of "perfect" safety, "perfect" equality, and "perfect" justice, so the pursuit of pain- and injury-free football will inevitably ruin it. Just as the urge to tinker endlessly with policies promising salvation has led to such inane questions as "What if no one were poor?", so that urge will lead the guardians of the game to one day ban contact altogether.

Tackling, I think it's safe to say, is a regressive art.

-GM

GM,

There was a time when the most penalized teams were the most successful teams. Occasional lost yardage was the small price of psychologically dominating your opponents and getting away with penalties half the time anyway. In high school, you can still get really creative with it. I've seen undersized offensive lines resort to such tactics as groin-grabbing and trying to rip the defensive end's helmet off by the facemask. I suppose you could argue that the players essentially monitor each other when the refs don't have a clue, but I don't think this is the league we should aim for.

Now, however, the powers that be have gone too far the other way. If you're running full-speed at another guy who's running full-speed, and he takes one step out of bounds a tenth of a second before you hit him, flag. If you deck a receiver hoping to make him drop a ball--but he's already dropped it and is therefore "defenseless"--flag. If you so much as touch an NFL quarterback's helmet, flag. If you tackle the quarterback with full body weight (!), flag. And if you lead with your helmet, may God have mercy on your soul. All this hypersensitivity just means that every close game is decided by the officials, by penalties called and uncalled. "We lost by a point to BYU," says the Oklahoma fan, "but that hit on Bradford came a full three-tenths of a second after he released the ball! That's bull s--t! We should have had first-and-goal!"

...and now we're full circle back to your point.

Liberals, fans who don't understand the game, and (amazingly) the game's officials want to trade personal accountability for ambiguous culpability. My failure = somebody else's fault. The "window play" will soon be a staple of every offense. On third-and-impossible, the quarterback will just wait to throw the ball until a charging defender is in that increasingly open window of "I'm committed to making this tackle" and "It might be an automatic-first-down penalty."

"Window, on two, break!"

-JW