"Ray Anderson, the NFL's executive vice president of football operations, said Monday that harsher fines and possibly suspensions for helmet-to-helmet hits could be coming immediately, even for first-time offenders."
According to the league, these type of hits create a negative externality in the production of their product, which is professional football. The impact on the long term health aspects and the short term ability to play full careers apparently outweighs the cost of removing exciting physical plays from the game. A major part of the popularity of the game is the physicality and brutality unseen in any other sport. Will removing these types of hit ultimately hurt the game's popularity and turn the game into a quasi-physical game of soccer with pads? Would a better solution to this externality to produce a public good for the players such as more advanced helmets rather than attempting to regulate the game further?
Regulation such as this will create a "rent" that one group will try and capture. What exactly is the rent of this new rule and who stands to gain? Could it be that the rent is an opening for less physical players to excel in the league? Could it be kickers all along who have lobbied for this regulation in order to finally take over the game of football?
1 comment:
(Not for Grade)
Just putting this out there, but I blame a lot of this issue on advanced technology itself, so I'm not sure that's really the solution. Advancement after advancement came around to protect players carrying the ball came with an unintended consequence. It allows those tackling to turn themselves into human missiles. Put the players back in leather helmets, they won't be able to fly around with such reckless abandon. Form tackling will be the only option, and if you try to act like a train it's going to hurt you just as badly as you wished to hurt someone else. Obviously this will never happen, so maybe fines are the only option, but advancements in technology aren't going to do much.
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