'This isn't Tiddlywinks': NFL violence brings the worst out of sports-talk radio
Posted
by Joe Tone
on Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 2:00 PM
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Apparently concussed, Nick Wright "doesn't care" if an NFL player dies on the field.
An especially violent football Sunday -- which peaked with the head-on collision of DeSean Jackson and Dunta Robinson (video below) -- has once again sent the NFL searching for ways to limit the game's brain-scrambling hits.
That, in turn, has further scrambled the brains of local radio sports squawkers, who manage to say even more really outlandish shit than normal whenever the topic turns to violence in the NFL.
It started last night, when I heard 610 AM's Nick Wright say he "didn't care" if an NFL player died on the field during the game. To be fair, I tuned into that conversation late, so it's possible I missed some context. But this Tweet from Wright makes me think that's actually his take:
The NFL isn't trying to institute a speed limit; it's trying to deter intentionally bumping the car in the next lane. It's targeting specific types of collisions, ones it thinks are unnecessarily causing severe injuries. Is it doing it hastily and, therefore, a little sloppily? Maybe. But that's how you deal things when death and dismemberment is on the horizon.
Also, being OK with death on the football field? That's just fucking weird.
Being a sadistic fellow, I tuned back into 610 this morning. They were still talking about the NFL's new reality, wherein players will be suspended for particularly violent hits on defenseless players. They made some good points, mostly about how impossible it is for an NFL defender -- whose livelihood is based on stopping the ball carrier at all costs, and who will be berated endlessly by an out-of-shape position coach if he doesn't -- to recognize the defenselessness of an opponent and react to it.
But the logic stopped there. The gents from Fescoe in the Morning went on to complain about how the new rule would "change the game" (that's sort of the point, guys), and how NFL players went into professional football knowing it was violent (as if that somehow makes protecting their health off limits).
Then one of them actually said the words, "This isn't Tiddlywinks," marking the 3,456 time in sports-radio history that a broadcaster has compared the NFL to Tiddlywinks. I assure you that if it weren't for the combination of hard-hitting safeties and uncreative radio personalities, the makers of Tiddlywinks would have gone out of business in 1992.
So there you have it, exclusive breaking news from the now-bleeding speakers of my car: Sports radio guys say stupid shit to pass the time.
