Head games

Sometime in the un-glimpsed future, they will find a way to make professional football a sport that doesn't use up its chief resource -- blood-pumping humans -- like disposable tissues. They will make it chess.

No one ever incurred traumatic brain injury moving a rook from queen's level three to queen's level four, after all. Although Bobby Fischer's tragic spiral into mental illness might make you suspect otherwise.

At any rate, until then, the powers-that-be in the National Football League will continue to chase unicorns, because no matter what rule changes it institutes or how unrealistically it expects the game to be played, the physics of it are inexorable. As long as players keep getting bigger and faster and stronger, the amount of foot-pounds of force with which they collide in a collision sport will continue to increase exponentially. As will the injuries inflicted by those collisions.

No rule change can stop that from happening. No rule change ever will.

And so to the Shield's latest attempt to hold back the tide: A new rule that will ban lowering the head to initiate contact.  The penalty will be 15 yards and potential ejection, and it will apply to ballcarriers, tacklers and even linemen. Bottom line, contact with the helmet on any part of the body could potentially be penalized if judged to be initiative.

The Blob has been more than vocal about the necessity of protecting the players from head injury. But I honestly do not know how the league expects football to be played without cranial contact.

I'm not a football player, nor ever were, but this rule seems both draconian and unrealistic, if not counterproductive. A ballcarrier in particular, for instance, lowers his head as much to protect himself when he runs inside the tackles or, in short yardage, runs at the goal line. How do you determine if that's why he lowered his head, or if he did it to initiate contact? And if the only way to avoid a potential penalty is to run at the goal line with his head up, how does he do that and still get low enough to protect himself (and gain the necessary leverage)?

Linemen are supposed to keep their heads up, anyway, if they're playing the position correctly, so this might not be as much an issue for them. But if you're a defensive back or linebacker, how you are supposed to be effective in a position that relies so much on split-second instinct if you're having to constantly monitor the position of your head?

And in any event, how do you decide what constitutes lowering the head to initiate contact?

Pro football is a game played these days at blinding speed, and so expect the consequence of this new rule to be more replay stoppages, because the potential for gray area here is immense. Did Player Y's head incline enough on contact for a penalty to be assessed? What if the impact itself caused Player X's head to lower?  And what if Player Z initiates contact using textbook tackling form and his helmet still makes contact with Player Y? Is that 15 yards?

Let's go under the hood and check out the replay!

Oh, goody. I can't wait.

But while I do, maybe I'll check out rugby. No one ever bumps his head in that game.