Bernstein: Now The NFL Wants To Curb Fighting
By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) Football fighting can take it's rightful place on the list of sports stupid, now that it's officially a "point of emphasis" for the NFL's operations department.
The silly spectacle of the baseball brawl – that odd combination of barn dance and rugby that involves the guys jogging in halfheartedly from the bullpens to join the puffy-chested hoedown – is still tops in pointlessness. Next would be the anachronistic activity of hockey boxing, really now a secondary sport in itself that's endorsed and understood primarily by Canadians with multiple facial scars.
Basketball had its moments, certainly, but has so successfully policed itself with easily understood rules and punishments that it has effectively taken in-game fisticuffs out of the sport. Besides, all NBA players are so ungodly wealthy right now that it's probably hard to stay that angry for long enough to want to throw a punch.
But now here's football, after a fight-marred 2014 season culminated in a melee at the end of the Super Bowl. Even the exhibition season this year has seen players getting into it during games and joint practices, and the league has apparently had enough.
Disciplinary tough talk from this office has been undermined by the multi-year clown show of arbitrary fines and suspensions doled out with no rhyme or reason for infractions considered troubling (knocking a woman unconscious in an elevator), serious (beating a toddler bloody with a tree branch), heinous (strangling a woman and throwing her onto a pile of guns) and unconscionably evil (maybe perhaps kinda knowing about somebody making a football a little bit squishy). But undeterred and still empowered, more edicts are handed down.
NFL executive vice president for operations Troy Vincent used his Twitter feed Tuesday to post the video released to players detailing specific concerns for 2015. In it, the voice-over intones, "The increase in fighting is unacceptable and casts a negative light on the game and everyone associated with the NFL."
It then quotes policy directly, also displaying the words graphically.
"Don't fight," it shows. "And if a fight breaks out involving other players, stay away."
Then it gets weird, predictably.
"Peacemaking won't be accepted as an excuse for entering the area," the video states. "The best thing to do is get yourself and your teammates out of the fight area."
Huh?
How can getting teammates out of the area not be considered peacemaking of some kind? And how can somebody get teammates away from the area without entering the area?
Leave it to the NFL to take something as inherently ridiculous as a post-whistle football fight and make it all even more confounding in how they want to police it. Giant, angry people in full suits of armor are already there because they are paid to smash into each other repeatedly, and then they want to punch each other in the helmet because they can't wait the 30 seconds to line up and do it again legally, lest their fragile manhood be challenged.
In a way, this confusion is emblematic of the difficulties the league has been facing in all of its conflicted attempts to curb violence and mayhem even as it packages and sells the very same, only under strict controls that are increasingly difficult to understand.
The underlying and inherent tensions of pro football spill over after the play, outside the lines and beyond careers. It's impossible to prevent, messy to clean up.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. Follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.
