Still A. Dog Guest Post

A guest article from Still A. Dog lamenting on the current state of the NFL.

Blame The Steelers

I have been watching football for a long time now. By my recollection around 43 years. I started out at around 7 or 8 years old watching the old AFL on NBC. At that time Curt Gowdy and Charley Jones were the announcers and Paul Maguire was the punter and linebacker for the Buffalo Bills. Boy have things changed. And not all for the better either.

In those days the AFL had the 2 point conversion and the NFL did not. The 2 point conversion was adopted by the NFL at the time of the league merger in 1970. But very little has improved since then. Oh yeah, the players are bigger, stronger, faster, better athletes etc. But the game itself has been pussified to the point that sometimes, for an old guy like me, it's hard to watch anymore.

Recently -and you'll see more and more of this in the coming 2 weeks- old Super Bowls have been replayed in their entirety on TV. And watching some of those old games now you can really see how the game has changed over the years.

Back in the 60s and 70s real men played the game. You saw very little, if any, taunting as the players do today. The game was played with respect for your opponent. No celebrations after TDs, no dances after tackles, no gesturing after breaking up a pass. Every single play was not cause for celebration. I suppose TV is to blame for that but that's not the point. The point is that taunting and celebrating are not supposed to be part of the game. It's OK to get excited but that crap is for entertainment value and not for the purist enjoyment of a football game.

That part of the "modernization" of football aside, the worst part of modern football are the rule changes. Can't cut block anymore. Can't hit the QB anywhere but precisely on the numbered part of his torso or it's a personal foul. No more clothesline tackles. What the old guys called "bulldogging" has evolved into "horsecollaring" and now that's illegal. No more headslaps. No more hands to the face. The violence of the game is slowly being diluted to the point that not only should the QBs wear a skirt -as Jack Lambert once declared- but the entire team might as well dress for a tea party instead of a football game. While it was OK in the 70s for "Turkey" Jones to lay a suplex on Terry Bradshaw, it is a 15 yard penalty for "Silverback" Harrison to do the same to a stubborn RB who just won't go down easy.

All this just makes the officials jobs much more difficult than they were meant to be. Too many judgement calls. Is it any wonder they have to use replay reviews? There's just too much to legislate in real time.

So how did this pussification movement evolve? Looking at old film of Ray Nitchske, and Dick Butkus they certainly laid the wood and got in some extracurricular punches, shoves and kicks without a big thing being made of it. Dick "Night Train" Lane of the Detroit Lions almost single-handedly caused the outlawing of the Clothesline tackle. Deacon Jones may or may not have invented the head slap but he surely perfected it as a pass rushing technique. At other times I've seen Joe Greene kick and punch guys who were holding him and Lambert was notorious for throwing elbows and blows after the whistle.

Jack Tatum of the Oakland Raiders may well have been imprisoned for some of the hits he made. And I'm not just talking about the one that gave Lynn Swann a concussion. He also put Daryl Stingley in a wheelchair permanently. But Woody Hayes taught him all that stuff way back at Ohio State. That was football back in the day. It wasn't a dance contest.

This all culminated with the Steel Curtain Steelers of the 1970s. The most fearsome defense of all time. And the reason? In addition to being excellent athletes, these Steelers perfected the techniques for intimidation developed by their predecessors mentioned above. A whole team of headhunters. "Turnpike" Ernie Holmes was crazy enough to shoot a shotgun at Ohio State Police! Who's gonna mess with a dude like that? The Steelers became so dominant that the league felt they had to make rule changes to level the playing field for other teams. The 5-yard chuck rule was enacted to limit the effectiveness of cornerbacks like Mel Blount who were big enough, strong enough, and fast enough to just knock the snot out of every receiver they lined up against all over the field rendering him completely ineffective. Never before did a team have defensive personnel who, in addition to just beating you outright, could intimidate you within the rules of the time.

Look at film from Super Bowl X. Jack Lambert would not have made it through 2 quarters without disqualification if that game were played today. Dwight "Mad Dog" White was not afraid to use a little clothesline here or there either despite the fact that it had already been outlawed.

So us old guys can lament the pussification and the Disneyfication of today's NFL all we want. It's not likely to change. But the game was much more enjoyable when the hits were real, the players were men, and a 4 yard complete pass 2 yards shy of a first down didn't call for a choreographed dance. And who do we have to blame for this? The 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers. A team so good they had to change the game.