The New Orleans Saints ran a bounty system that paid defensive players for the game ending injuries they inflicted on their opponents.
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Pro Football Bounties for Injuring Players
- Thread starter madanthonywayne
- Start date
The Problem, As I See It
This was inevitable. I'm nearly certain this has been going on for a long time. These guys are just the ones that got caught.
It is at once reprehensible and understandable.
We're a football family; my father was a high school and college coach, once upon a time. We also have what we call "Paul Stories", named after an old associate of my dad's. Paul was what you might call an archetypal old-school football player. He looked the part, with neanderthal brow and broad frame. And he was the object of many a hilarious story, like the time he got arrested for indecent exposure because some woman believed he had a four-foot schlong. Or the ferry story, but we'll set that one aside for now.
I understand the public horror as people learn more and more about the world of football; I very much understand that people might find the whole bounty idea outrageous. There are all manner of questions about American football that must seem soul-chilling to many. But it doesn't really move me. I guess it's like any number of football scandals: That's football.
And no, it's not a justification in the sense that boys will be boys, and all that. But football is, ultimately, a gladiator sport. And it is influential. What football has that MMA doesn't is society's long, devoted attention. Football has anthropological significance in American culture. It's not alone in sports, as such—baseball, too, is of such gravity—but these guys have been thrilling us for generations, now, by killing themselves. Slowly, quickly, hit by bone-jarring hit, self-inflicted gunshot wound. Brain cancer. Alzheimer's.
Much like other subcultures, the football subculture has been slow to recognize the full range of implications about increased access. I recall, some years ago, a scandal erupting when a videotape of a college head coach's pre-game speech emerged. It's a hazy sort of scandal, but I think small animals were killed to whip the team into a frenzy. And while everybody else was outraged, it seems that within football culture people said, "Well, yeah, the bloodshed was probably over the line, but what a dick—don't let people videotape it!"
Simultaneously, though, the broader society goes through periodic convulsions over some shocking detail about the football subculture. People repeatedly overlook the proposition that this is what happens when you dress up two teams of operant-conditioned, testosterone-charged, athletes in body armor and send them out to rearrange one another's skeletal structures. Football is, ultimately, a war game. Don't shoot 'til you see the whites of their eyes. Line up, knock 'em down, line up again. Over and over.
So to the one, society is in some kind of ego defense about the psychoanalytical meaning of football in American history. To the other, the football subculture has itself been so insulated against outside critique from the outset that these people don't recognize the idea that cash bounties for game-ending injuries just sounds bad. A game-ending injury can also be a career-ending injury.
There is a right and a wrong way to injure someone in a football game. If you can jar someone out of the game with proper tackling form, that's what you're supposed to do; it's a war game. A gladiator sport.
But from the top down—that is, from the NFL down through the colleges and even into the high schools—those who are willing to break form and take chances are the standouts. With something like basketball, you can be an excellent shooter even if you have your own divergent shooting form. But in football, you become dangerous when you're out of form. It's the juxtaposition—success and danger—that the subculture doesn't want to discuss, because it has no good answer, and the broader society would rather avoid because, well, it has no good answers and, furthermore, does not wish to admit the entire range of implications.
It is quite easy to see how people are horrified. It is also quite easy to see why they are horrified. But this is nothing new; this is just the point where people become aware of it and someone else is expected to do something about it.
I just don't know what they can possibly do about it. This facet of the subculture is nearly sublime. That is, somebody will always buy you a drink for a good hit. Everybody will want to buy you a drink if you put a superstar down cleanly. But that juxtaposition of success and danger is what defines the idea of what is clean.
Football has long been getting more dangerous. And we, the public, have enjoyed the hell out of it for doing so.
Nobody should be fired. The league memo on this could very easily read, "You know guys ... come on. No, really. Come on."
The only dishonor is in getting caught, but that's what the market demands. Whatever we need to do to fix this, we might as well do. But it is always going to be a Faustian bargain.
If football wasn't dangerous, who would watch?
This was inevitable. I'm nearly certain this has been going on for a long time. These guys are just the ones that got caught.
It is at once reprehensible and understandable.
We're a football family; my father was a high school and college coach, once upon a time. We also have what we call "Paul Stories", named after an old associate of my dad's. Paul was what you might call an archetypal old-school football player. He looked the part, with neanderthal brow and broad frame. And he was the object of many a hilarious story, like the time he got arrested for indecent exposure because some woman believed he had a four-foot schlong. Or the ferry story, but we'll set that one aside for now.
Paul played collegiate football while my father was a student coach at a local NAIA school.
On one particular occasion, they found themselves up against a small school from California whose quarterback, as it turns out, was destined for a long and successful career in the NFL.
The young QB also doubled as the team's kicker. There was only one option: "Paul!" barked the head coach, before the opening kickoff. "You're on that kicker. He doesn't finish the game."
It's a clean play. I once got put on a chunky, oversized kicker, and while I didn't injure him, he wasn't expecting a wiry, 150-lb nobody to ring his bell like that. It was one of those accidental nexes of form and occasion, and everything went into that hit.
But Paul ... he had a specific mission: Make it hurt enough that this guy doesn't continue the game.
Everbody knew this quarterback was good. There was no doubt, from game to game, that teams were looking to tally up his ticket to the IR list.
The young man kicked off, Paul closed on the easy prey.
When the whistle blew at the end of the play, the young quarterback trotted lightly off the field. The unconscious linebacker lay flat on his back for several minutes before hobbling off with the assistance of his coaches.
That's our Paul.
On one particular occasion, they found themselves up against a small school from California whose quarterback, as it turns out, was destined for a long and successful career in the NFL.
The young QB also doubled as the team's kicker. There was only one option: "Paul!" barked the head coach, before the opening kickoff. "You're on that kicker. He doesn't finish the game."
It's a clean play. I once got put on a chunky, oversized kicker, and while I didn't injure him, he wasn't expecting a wiry, 150-lb nobody to ring his bell like that. It was one of those accidental nexes of form and occasion, and everything went into that hit.
But Paul ... he had a specific mission: Make it hurt enough that this guy doesn't continue the game.
Everbody knew this quarterback was good. There was no doubt, from game to game, that teams were looking to tally up his ticket to the IR list.
The young man kicked off, Paul closed on the easy prey.
When the whistle blew at the end of the play, the young quarterback trotted lightly off the field. The unconscious linebacker lay flat on his back for several minutes before hobbling off with the assistance of his coaches.
That's our Paul.
I understand the public horror as people learn more and more about the world of football; I very much understand that people might find the whole bounty idea outrageous. There are all manner of questions about American football that must seem soul-chilling to many. But it doesn't really move me. I guess it's like any number of football scandals: That's football.
And no, it's not a justification in the sense that boys will be boys, and all that. But football is, ultimately, a gladiator sport. And it is influential. What football has that MMA doesn't is society's long, devoted attention. Football has anthropological significance in American culture. It's not alone in sports, as such—baseball, too, is of such gravity—but these guys have been thrilling us for generations, now, by killing themselves. Slowly, quickly, hit by bone-jarring hit, self-inflicted gunshot wound. Brain cancer. Alzheimer's.
Much like other subcultures, the football subculture has been slow to recognize the full range of implications about increased access. I recall, some years ago, a scandal erupting when a videotape of a college head coach's pre-game speech emerged. It's a hazy sort of scandal, but I think small animals were killed to whip the team into a frenzy. And while everybody else was outraged, it seems that within football culture people said, "Well, yeah, the bloodshed was probably over the line, but what a dick—don't let people videotape it!"
Simultaneously, though, the broader society goes through periodic convulsions over some shocking detail about the football subculture. People repeatedly overlook the proposition that this is what happens when you dress up two teams of operant-conditioned, testosterone-charged, athletes in body armor and send them out to rearrange one another's skeletal structures. Football is, ultimately, a war game. Don't shoot 'til you see the whites of their eyes. Line up, knock 'em down, line up again. Over and over.
So to the one, society is in some kind of ego defense about the psychoanalytical meaning of football in American history. To the other, the football subculture has itself been so insulated against outside critique from the outset that these people don't recognize the idea that cash bounties for game-ending injuries just sounds bad. A game-ending injury can also be a career-ending injury.
There is a right and a wrong way to injure someone in a football game. If you can jar someone out of the game with proper tackling form, that's what you're supposed to do; it's a war game. A gladiator sport.
But from the top down—that is, from the NFL down through the colleges and even into the high schools—those who are willing to break form and take chances are the standouts. With something like basketball, you can be an excellent shooter even if you have your own divergent shooting form. But in football, you become dangerous when you're out of form. It's the juxtaposition—success and danger—that the subculture doesn't want to discuss, because it has no good answer, and the broader society would rather avoid because, well, it has no good answers and, furthermore, does not wish to admit the entire range of implications.
It is quite easy to see how people are horrified. It is also quite easy to see why they are horrified. But this is nothing new; this is just the point where people become aware of it and someone else is expected to do something about it.
I just don't know what they can possibly do about it. This facet of the subculture is nearly sublime. That is, somebody will always buy you a drink for a good hit. Everybody will want to buy you a drink if you put a superstar down cleanly. But that juxtaposition of success and danger is what defines the idea of what is clean.
Football has long been getting more dangerous. And we, the public, have enjoyed the hell out of it for doing so.
Nobody should be fired. The league memo on this could very easily read, "You know guys ... come on. No, really. Come on."
The only dishonor is in getting caught, but that's what the market demands. Whatever we need to do to fix this, we might as well do. But it is always going to be a Faustian bargain.
If football wasn't dangerous, who would watch?
My three brothers and I all quit watching football, one at a time without telling the others over a few years, when the injury problem began (in our vision) to get visibly out of hand. That was before the concussion publicity.
A personal decision, each time. We mutually realized what had happened, and why, not too long ago at a family dinner. Two of us are baseball fans, and I still pick up an occasional football game - it really is a wonderful sport - but I can't be a fan any more. I don't feel good about it.
And I think people underestimate the long term effects of the perception, once it take hold. The mood around the game changes. This is going to have an erosive effect that grows for years, I think.