President Barack Obama not sure he'd allow a son to play football - ESPNK

This is going to surprise some, but I think he's got a valid point here. It is a really, really tough call here.

Sure, this all sounded like so much crazy talk when I was saying it (OK, me and maybe Terry Bradshaw). Now when the chorus echoes around the Oval Office and the Super Bowl media sound bytes, the talk might get some of the respect that it's due. Think it through though chief, you kill youth football, HS football and college football and what kind of NFL are you going to have? Bernard Pollard thinks it's bad now...


from ESPN:
President Barack Obama not sure he'd allow a son to play football - ESPN:

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama says he's a football fan but that if he had a son, considering the impact the game has on its players, he would think long and hard before allowing his son to play.

Obama tells The New Republic that football fans are going to have to wrestle with the fact that the game will probably change over time to try to reduce the violence.

 Obama says he worries more about college players than those in the NFL because the pros have a union, are well-paid and are grown men.

 "They can make some of these decisions on their own, and most of them are well-compensated for the violence they do to their bodies," Obama said of NFL players. "You read some of these stories about college players who undergo some of these same problems with concussions and so forth and then have nothing to fall back on. That's something that I'd like to see the NCAA think about."

'via Blog this'

from ESPN:
http://espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs/2012/story/_/id/8889447/bernard-pollard-baltimore-ravens-nfl-not-exist-30-years

The hard-hitting Baltimore Ravens safety toldCBSSports.com recently that he doesn't believe the league will be in existence in 30 years because of rules changes instituted in an effort to make the game safer, and the chance a player might die on the field as players continue to get stronger and faster.

"Thirty years from now, I don't think it will be in existence. I could be wrong. It's just my opinion, but I think with the direction things are going -- where [NFL rules makers] want to lighten up, and they're throwing flags and everything else -- there's going to come a point where fans are going to get fed up with it," he told the website.

"Guys are getting fined, and they're talking about, 'Let's take away the strike zone' and 'Take the pads off' or 'Take the helmets off.' It's going to be a thing where fans aren't going to want to watch it anymore."

You're welcome, boys.

I could go into how this is all a European, socialist plot to elevate what we call soccer and what the rest of the world erroneously calls football, but quite frankly, people are so thin-skinned and hyper-sensitive about anything that smacks of political speech, that I'm just not going to do it.

And you can't make me.

Starting to get serious now. Once the concussion lawsuits start hitting the below college levels, it's going to be 'Katy bar the door'.