NFL Has Gone Nuts; Bureaucrats Controlling Game, Turning It Into Flag Football

TND Guest Contributor:  Jack Swift | Caveman Rant |

The NFL has gone nuts. The bureaucrats controlling the league and writing the rules are destroying the game. They are turning it into flag football – a game characterized and controlled by the referees’ flags. Have you ever seen a season with so many ridiculous flags in every game?

Let it be admitted and proclaimed. I am a sports bigot. I do not do roundball. I don’t watch roundball. I don’t follow roundball. I don’t even know who is in the world series. On the other hand, I love football. Sandlot, highschool, college, professional. Whatever. I love it.

Somewhat in the mold of Woody Hayes, I see football as a sixty minute war. As Woody said, it is a war against the competition but it is also a war against chaos. Can discipline, training, and preparation overcome the inherent unpredictability of the bounce of the pigskin?

The unreasonable is part of the game. Is it to be expected that USC would twice in one season be defeated on the last play of the game? It happens. That is football. It isn’t fair when the weird happens. But the game is still fair because the unfair events have a habit of evening out.

Unfortunately, the League controllers are a bunch of bureaucrats. They are hell bent on imposing control upon that which is inherently uncontrollable. As always, they try to do that by doing the only thing they know how to do. They write rules and more rules and more rules. They are to the point of writing rules on how to apply the rules.

They decide they would like to see more passing in the game. So they write a bunch of rules “protecting” receivers and quarterbacks. Darryl Royal (patriarch of the 3 yards and a cloud of dust football) used to say that only three things can happen on a pass play and two of them are bad. Wow. Has that changed. Ever notice that the reason for a bureaucrat’s rule is always the need to protect something or someone? They decide that they need to protect against concussions so they write a bunch of rules about how a player can tackle. The result of all these rules is the same as always happens with out of control bureaucracies. No one can do anything. They have turned football into “flag” football. In many games, there are almost more plays with flags than there are without. And this isn’t the fault of the teams. The old Oakland raiders used to get a bunch of flags. Those were aggression flags. The Seattle Seahawks get a bunch of flags. Their’s are mental mistakes that come from poor disciple – a coaching failure.

Today’s plethora of flags afflict all teams and the only ones to benefit are the bureaucrats and their lawyers. Together they are turning football into a courtroom contest. Plays and ref’s calls on the plays have become subject to review. The game is stopped for a slo-motion analysis to determine if the refs got it right. Coaches that don’t like a call, can appeal it. The refs’ review of their own call is in turn subject to appeal and review in league headquarters. All the while, the game is halted while everyone waits for the lawyers to do their thing. Pundits opine and commercials roll. Momentum is lost. Where does twiddling one’s thumbs fit into the game?

Bad calls are a part of the game – the same as bad bounces of the ball. The issue is that they will tend to even out over the course of a game – assuming unbiased refs.
Live with it. Play reviews and call reviews need to go away. They are obstructive and frustrating to all.

A host of these new “protective” rules need to go away. The touching of receivers rules need to go away. Granted safety has become a problem with the appearance of 6’8″, 340 pound behemoths but the boxing league handled that same problem with weight classifications.

If these bureaucrats and their lawyers are not reined in, they will destroy football.