With all due respect to the lovers of snow sports whose favorite season still reigns supreme in the Arctic, I would like to dedicate my first blog post of 2025 to the National Football League fans. For the uninitiated, the NFL is a business association headquartered in New York City, just a few minutes’ jog from the headquarters of the Biggest Businessperson Alive.
Thanks to an exclusive interview with the above-mentioned Businessperson, we now know what’s in store for the game of (American) football soon.
First the good news, though. When asked to opine on the “tush push” controversy, the Businessperson who also happens to be the Biggest NFL Fan Alive sided with the proponents of status quo: “I wouldn’t ban it.” This means the quarterback (i.e. the player who receives the ball at the start of every play) can still be violently pushed by his teammates across the goal-line. It makes great television, doesn’t it?
Then, with no advance warning, the tone of the Biggest NFL Fan changed. “But what I would ban is this horrible kickoff rule,” he thundered, “this new kickoff rule that is so bad.”
Granted, the 2024 rule doesn’t make great television, but it was devised for another, arguably more noble purpose – to reduce injury risks. On kickoffs, the players no longer crash into each other at full speed, and the decrease in concussions has been quite dramatic, according to the NFL.
Unless the NFL is guilty of concocting fake news. The new kickoff rule is “dangerous,” the business association’s Biggest Fan argued with not much evidence in the accepted sense of the word. “It’s much more dangerous. It is so terrible.”
Healthy is harmful, peace is war. A friend is a foe, and an act of treason is a laudable show of patriotism.
To be expected before the next NFL season kicks off: a football-related executive order that tears the current, “so bad” and, indeed, “dangerous” rulebook into pieces.
Image source: William C. Morris, Spokesman-Review Cartoons, 1908
