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Good Read on NFL Violence


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From Whitlock over at Fox

 

Let’s not make James Harrison the bad guy, the face of what’s wrong with football.

 

Harrison is 6 feet tall, 240 pounds, small by NFL standards. He’s one of 14 children, born to working-class parents. He walked on at Kent State. No NFL team drafted him. Combined, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens cut him four times. He toiled for several seasons as a special-teams daredevil. Harrison struggled academically in high school and college. He’s not a sophisticate.

 

James Harrison is a football player, a meathead, a self-made millionaire and star solely because he embraced every aspect of the NFL’s violent culture.

 

He’s not Randy Moss or Peyton Manning, players who excel at the game primarily because they were blessed with physical gifts that made their dominance virtually inevitable.

 

Harrison earned the 2008 defensive player of the year award and a $50 million contract because he hurt opposing players. For as long as I can remember, hurting — not injuring — the opposition has always been embraced and celebrated in football.

 

Coaches implore players to knock a man’s (private part) in the dirt. Billionaires hand out $50 million contracts to players skilled at the art form.

 

James Harrison is the bad guy? The league fined him $75,000 for doing what he was asked to do by Mike Tomlin and the Rooney family. Harrison is the focus of the NFL’s helmet-to-helmet controversy?

 

This is a joke.

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It's a good read. It's an interesting POV. I don't necessarily agree with it 100% but I see the merits.

 

Everyone involved is (assuming they are acting in good faith) contributing what they can towards the success of the football team. The problem with the POV presented is that only one person in the equation can perform the physical act being discussed.

 

I have a problem with the way these fines were levied because they were unprecedented and given without warning. IMO a rule should be established before it's applied, and then I'm all for talking about how players and organizations could be held accountable, players for individual actions and organizations (and their members) for some accounting of those actions as a product over time.

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