I know this thread is a bit moldy, but I just found this article that I’d saved somewhere on my hard drive. I think fits into the current discussion…
About LA not wanting the NFL: Drew Griffin (of L.A.'s CBS station, though I don’t know if he’s there anymore) wrote this column about a year ago, regarding the NFL in LA. I will just put up a few excerpts of it, not the entire article:
I think Griffin explained it better than I ever could. This is why no one in LA cares much that there is no NFL in their city!
Playing tag should be banned. It’s modelled on an army group hunting down and killing a lone enemy.
Hide-and-seek should be banned. It’s nothing more than playing a Vietnam War baby-killing soldier who goes from home to home tossing grenades in to try and root out hidden dissidents.
Urinals should be banned. They encourage young boys to practice “aiming”, which prepares them to become sharpshooters and, thus, snipers.
Heck, let’s just ban human beings. They’re all gonna turn into violence-crazed soldiers killing everything in sight anyway. It’s in their genes.
Well, I think there is a valid point to be raised against NFL-style football, in that it is more violent and dangerous than other sports. It is allowed in the rules to rush into someone and throw them to the ground, in fact it’s an essential part of the game.
If you look at other major sports like soccer, basketball, baseball, etc… striking another player is forbidden.
I have to take a slight exception to this sentence Arnold, or more accurately, the inclusion of basketball.
In football, contact is almost constant, but most of it is ordained due to the nature of the game. The really bad stuff is penalized.
In basketball, it is the same. There is an unbelievable amount of contact, especially for a post player. Only when contact is overly aggressive is a foul called.
Granted the violence levels of the contact differ, but that is likely due to the different goals of the game, and the levels of protection players have.
We went right out there and refused to do accoustical versions of the electrical songs that we had refused to record in the first place.
I guess you’re right, Mullinator, I don’t know exactly what contact is allowed in basketball and what isn’t. But if you run into someone hard enough to knock them to the ground, wouldn’t that be a foul? Or if someone is dribbling towards the basket and I deliberately step in her way, isn’t that a foul?
Depends Arnold, but for the most part the answer is yes (the NBA being an exception, since beheading is apparently needed for the whistle to blow.)
As I said, the acceptable levels of contact are different between football and basketball, but possibly similar when you consider the protection allowed.
And, the contact inside is heavy. I have delivered many a charley horse or a bruise by knowing how to set a pick. Lots of grabbing of lots of body parts occurs, especially if you know the ref is blocked from view. Heck, I suffered 2 broken noses playing and neither was called a foul.
That’s my point really, that much of the physical contact that you’re describing is forbidden by the rules of basketball, isn’t it? Whereas it is allowed by the rules of football. Which is an important difference.