Doctors hold line, earlier knowledge of CTE, what if American football becomes 18+ in late 1960s?

At San Fran, probably with Steve DeBerg as quarterback, I can see him making some deep playoff runs, but maybe not a championship.

Bill Walsh might be remembered much as Don Coryell, as an innovative coach who added much to the game but who didn’t quite make it all the way to the top of the mountain. And then, he just might be remembered less.
Maybe if they get young...if Walsh endure but is possible but yeah, might at best get a ring and be a little more sucessful Don Coryell, maybe Air Coryell is west coast and Walsh offensive have a different name?

So is possible Elway and montana are gone to baseball, who more? Brady?(he wants a pitcher) who else?
 
. . . He [Paul Brown] later grew to think Walsh was too soft — which may have been momentarily confirmed. In Loel Cohen’s book, Rough Magic, he writes of Walsh coming to confront Brown after he chose Tiger Johnson, but Walsh couldn’t summon the right words and started tearing up. Brown blackballed him The whole time he was at Cinncy, and put it into overdrive afterward because he thought Walsh would stay on as OC. However, the staff in San Diego wasn’t especially high on Paul Brown, so they extended him the OC gig.
If Walsh has deep playoff runs but no Superbowl victories, these kind of stories gain more traction. And it's not considered automatically the case that Paul Brown made a huge mistake in failing to offer Walsh the head coaching spot.
 
Early in the 20th century there was a movement to eliminate college football as the injusries being suffered were pretty bad, including fatalities. TR was against doing this, as it would hurt American "manliness". . .
An athlete can play with all the heart and character in the world, but the tau protein doesn't care.

And if this argument stays front and center from the mid-'50s forward, the conversation might play out very differently this go around.
 
. . . maybe Air Coryell is west coast and Walsh offensive have a different name? . . .
And when football is strategically richest is when some teams can win with a run-oriented attack and other teams with a pass-oriented attack, and taking it a step further, the slogan "Defense wins championships" (Here's looking at you, '70s Steelers!!) is discussed and debated and certainly has its strong advocates, but there are plenty of counter-examples and the debate goes.

* A little of this was recaptured when the Dolphins had a lot of success with the "wild cat" offense around (?) 2011. There was a Monday night game in which the Dolphins hosted the Jets, and during a long, game-winning drive late in the 4th when the Dolphins pretty much had to do it, they had three different players take snaps from center during the course of this drive! That's football the way it's meant to be played.
 

SsgtC

Banned
Early in the 20th century there was a movement to eliminate college football as the injusries being suffered were pretty bad, including fatalities. TR was against doing this, as it would hurt American "manliness". Having said that if football is banned for under 18, it will die out - without HS football, colleges won't be able to give scholarships for football and this will dry up the pool for the pro sport. A huge chunk of college players, especially in Division I, would not get in to those schools on the basis of their academic record (not as bad as basketball but...)
Originally, I agreed with this. But now I'm not so sure. Look at the college game vs the NFL. They bear only a passing resemblance to each other anymore. It's something that NFL Head Coaches and Coordinators have been complaining about for years. I've actually seen it said that the College and NFL games are practically two different sports at this point. Yet that doesn't seem to have impacted the NFL all that much. I think without high School football, we'd see rugby come more into prominence with college and the NFL adapting to converting rugby players to football players.
 
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I don't disagree about the differences between the college game and the NFL game. The differences between rugby and American football are much larger. While the equivalent of linemen in rugby are large, they are small compared to the linemen in college let alone the NFL. Skills needed for a successful NFL quarterback, especially the passing game are simply not part of rugby. There are many excellent college football players drafted by the NFL with great expectations who don't pan out, the percentage of failures will inevitably be greater with trying to turn rugby players in to football players, which would mean that the salaries draftees could expect, and even for the first few years in the NFL would be much reduced from OTL. When you combine that with the accepted risks of CTE, going from being a college rugby player to a professional football player becomes much less attractive. It is likely you might then see professional rugby competing with professional football for talent and fans/viewers.
 
. . . It is likely you might then see professional rugby competing with professional football for talent and fans/viewers.
And the NFL does have its entertainment vulnerabilities. For example, all the stoppages of play.

touchdown
[commercial]
extra point
[commercial]
kickoff
[commercial]

And sometimes, it really is that bad!
 
Superior helmets . . .
OTL:
With the hard-shell helmets all through the '90s, 2000s, 2010s, offensive linemen are taught to "put your hat on them" and get three points of contact with the head and two hands, linemen and defensive secondary players use the helmet as a weapon, etc.
 
ATL:
With football being phased out in the late '60s and '70s at the high school and college level, there's no "Monday Night Football" or it doesn't develop as much of an audience and fails. And fewer cities finance stadium deals, even for baseball and basketball.
 
A better helmet is really not the answer. The problem is that a certain amount of force is transferred to the helmet. The helmet will distribute the force over a larger surface area, and via the padding and the suspension system will absorb a percentage of the force. HOWEVER think of the shock absorber on your auto. If you hit a pothole the shock absorber/suspension system does just that, absorb some of the shock and smooths some out preventing as sharp and high a peak of force transmission. In spite of all that you will feel quite a jolt when you hit the pothole, just not the same as if there was no such system and the axle snaps. A fair amount of force will be transmitted to the head of the victim and thence to the brain. With a "better" helmet than what we have now, less force. Nice, but the reality is that CTE is a cumulative condition, its not just a few hits that cause this although if hard enough that can be the case. Let us, to make up a number, that 250 hits under "normal" circumstances and current helmets puts you on the road to CTE. If a "better" helmet is 3x as effective as the current ones, this simply raises the bar to 750 hits. Will there be some sort of counter on the helmet, and a mandatory retirement when you get to 500-600 hits just to be safe?
 
. . the Heidi Game . .
Yes, more colorful and amateur hour! :p

For those who don’t know, the “Heidi Game” was a game in the late ‘60s between the Raiders and Jets in the old AFL. With a couple of minutes left in the game, the network simply switched to the children’s movie Heidi. Now, nothing wrong with the movie, but it is a rather different audience!

And I think there was not one, but two scores, in the time the game was off the air.
 
Yes, more colorful and amateur hour! :p

For those who don’t know, the “Heidi Game” was a game in the late ‘60s between the Raiders and Jets in the old AFL. With a couple of minutes left in the game, the network simply switched to the children’s movie Heidi. Now, nothing wrong with the movie, but it is a rather different audience!

And I think there was not one, but two scores, in the time the game was off the air.

All this because the game ran over the time allotted to it by the network (the game aired on NBC, iirc). When people found out that they missed what turned out to be a very exciting finish, they were very upset.

The Heidi Game actually changed the way sports are broadcast on TV. Ever since, no network will ever cut away from an live, in-progress sporting event for regularly scheduled programming should the game run over - they let the game finish, then any programming is aired afterward. (Much to my mom's annoyance during football season, she loves watching 60 Minutes on CBS and the NFL games on Sunday almost always causes it to air later than scheduled. But I'm going off on a tangent. :p)

IMO I think there will be a "Heidi Game" equivalent eventually, maybe just for another sport. The most likely candidate would be a baseball game - it was, until fairly recently, the (at worst) second most-popular sport in America. (Basketball wasn't very popular until the 1980s - thank Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan for that - and hockey has always been the most "niche" of the major North American sports) All you need for a baseball "Heidi Game" is for the game to go into extra innings, and the network deciding the Movie of the Week or whatever hit primetime show they have to air can't possibly wait for the game to end.
 
I know little about American football, let alone in a specific era, but I immediately thought of OJ. A check on Wikipedia shows this to be an era of integration and of course Civil Rights. Does the medical threat scare African-American players into different sports or are the financial incentives enough to die for Caesar?
 
Assuming potential football players are playing rugby, there is good news and bad news. The good news, in addition to lower overall injury levels even at a teenage level (some of which can be pretty devastating excluding things like a broken neck), is that compared to the equipment required to play football, that for rugby is pretty minimal which means the sport is more accessible for all socioeconomic groups. The bad news is that rosters for rugby teams are generally smaller than those from football teams at all levels. You'll probably see more tiered teams (varsity, JV1, JV2 etc) but college coaches are going to be looking at varsity level players only. With smaller rosters needed for college teams, there will be fewer scholarships and players who might make the varsity in a sport like football with a larger roster won't make it here and therefore not be visible for a college scholarship.

Since football will only be played at the post college level, and recruiting/training up ex-college rugby players, it is inevitable that fewer African-Americans will be getting on the path that could lead them to pro football. In a way this is bad. OTOH (this is an editorial opinion) given that many scholarship athletes in football and some other sports could not get in to the schools they attend on academic merit, and a large number leave without a degree, perhaps more lower socioeconomic HS graduates who don't go because in spite of academic ability they can't throw a football will get a scholarship. (end editorial)
 
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