The helmet-to-helmet backlash has already arrived on campusBy Matt Hinton
If you're a football fan of any stripe, you haven't been able to get very far the last couple weeks without encountering some version of the really big story of the season, the NFL's controversial crackdown on helmet-to-helmet hits via stiff fines, suspensions and public shame campaigns. The league is super-serious about this. Coincidentally, it was about this time last year that college fans began to worry about the increasingly touchy, NFL-style personal foul calls beginning to trickle down to the amateur game.
So it probably shouldn't come as any surprise that the NFL's new, highly publicized threats to begin suspending players for vicious hits have already inspired two fairly unprecedented suspensions this week in college, beginning with the SEC's decision to bench Mississippi State linebacker Chris Hughes for one game for a helmet-to-helmet hit he put on UAB's Frantrell Forrest Saturday in the second quarter of a close Bulldog win. The Big 12 followed suit today by levying a one-game suspension against Nebraska linebacker Eric Martin for the knockout shot Martin put on Oklahoma State's Will Hudson Saturday during a 'Husker kickoff return:
As obviously dangerous as it is, there's not really anything conventionally wrong with that hit. If you've ever played football, you'll recognize it as exactly the kind of "kill shot" every player dreams of landing from the first time he puts on a helmet in elementary school. It's one of Ronnie Lott's "woo licks," an alpha-male shot that makes the entire crowd sit up and go "woo" and sends a jolt of electricity coursing through the entire stadium. It's these kinds of hits – violent but certainly not dirty, coming neither late, low nor from behind – that coined the cliché "keep your head on a swivel," and have forever been celebrated as the kind of dominance display that largely defined the game. Injuries happen, but the "big hit" is an entrenched point of pride on par with any other aspect of the game, and Martin's crackback on Hudson applies under almost any prevailing definition.
How long will it take increased flags and suspensions to change that? If they're serious and consistently applied over an extended period of time, maybe not very long. Maybe in a decade, we'll have a new crop of recruits who have never been explicitly encouraged to take an opponent's head off. If it's a point of emphasis in offseason clinics, etc., maybe the headhunter mentality can be coached out of them sooner, if it can be effectively legislated out of the coaches – and it will have to be legislated out of most of them. Out of most fans, too. Given what we're learning about concussions, though, there's probably no other alternative to keeping the game viable in a society that will be increasingly unwilling to tolerate those risks, much less cheer them on.
