Change the gridiron game?

While I love violence (yes I do, sorry) and have always loved both, being hit and hitting someone else, I’ve got to say, that with each passing day, I become more convinced that today’s version of football needs some serious fixing.

Today, more than ever, players are getting routine concussions, dying from heat exhaustion or ending up paralyzed because of the increasingly violent collisions that come with the territory of playing the beloved game of American football.

As much as I loved playing football in my youth, I am joining the ever-growing legion of former players and parents that say they would never let their sons play the game the way it is played today.

I mean, it’s a pretty powerful when a Hall of Fame-bound former NFL quarterback like Kurt Warner makes a statement like he did on the Dan Patrick Show in May.

“They (his sons) both have the dream, like dad, to play in the NFL,” Warner said. “That’s their goal. And when you hear things like the bounties, when you know certain things having played the game, and then obviously when you understand the size, the speed, the violence of the game, and then you couple that with situations like Junior Seau — was that a ramification of all the years playing? And things that go with that. It scares me as a dad. I just wonder — I wonder what the league’s going to be like. I love that the commissioner is doing a lot of things to try to clean up the game from that standpoint and improve player safety, which helps, in my mind, a lot. But it’s a scary thing for me.”

Asked if he would prefer that his sons not play football, Warner answered, “Yes, I would. Can’t make that choice for them if they want to, but there’s no question in my mind.”

Now, maybe it’s me, but I can see change coming to the NFL and the game of football overall, even though I suspect it’s going to take a few more years and a continuing rash of life-threatening and seriously-debilitating injuries in order to do so!