Big hits are what we like

Tired of all this “football has to become less violent” (see?  it already sounds weird) discussion.

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On youtube you can find the biggest hits in the NFL of 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, etc.  In fact, you can probably find about twenty versions of each.  You can also find the best hits of a single player’s career, a single team’s history, etc.  And when you look, yeah, those videos have a lot of views.

We love to see the big hits.  We love to see a big hit, see the replay, say “holy shit” and analyze it with our friends about whether it was “really that bad or not.”

In ex-offensive lineman Ross Tucker’s recent article “Hard hits will keep coming” he compares big hits like those on DeSean Jackson and Josh Cribbs to crashes in NASCAR.  I hate NASCAR, it sucks.  People drive in circles in engineered cars, drink milk if they win and, worst of all, a lot of them speak in drawls.  But if I see a youtube video entitled “BIGGEST NASCAR CRASH OF ALL TIME!” there’s a pretty large chance I watch it.

And like Tucker said in his piece, I’m not afraid to admit it.

Of course players shouldn’t be trying to helmet-to-helmet hit, and I’m pretty sure most of them don’t try to do that.  They understand the consequences, especially now with the incessant research done and results released on the impact of concussions.  They simply want to blow up the guy they’re about to hit; it’s part of football, it’s part of the risk of playing it.

It’s part of what sets something like football apart from every other sport.  What would you rather watch, the Jets play the Cowboys (random selection) in a regular game of football or a game of flag football?

It was just years ago where ESPN used to hold a segment called “jacked up” during halftime of Monday Night Football.  Everyone in the room used to rush back to the TV to watch.

F Cliff Lee,

nicktgal