MikeDuquet.com

**The following article appears on betED.com’s “Foul Play” section here**

As Jeremiah Jones watched his beloved Bears get flagged for a crucial 15-yard Unnecessary Roughness penalty in their matchup against the Green Bay Packers this past Sunday he couldn’t help but let out a Charlie Brown-ish “Good Grief!”. The former All Pro Linebacker, who played from 1952-59, is a vocal opponent of Commissioner Goddell’s crackdown on potentially dangerous plays, especially where contact to the helmet is concerned.

“The league has just gotten so sissy now. It’s like a bunch of little girls out there prancing. If I wanted to watch the ballet I’d move to Communist Russia, comrade. Back in my day we’d…we’d…um…we’d uh…you know we’d just…um…uhhhhh…what was I talking about?”

Jones and a large number of former NFL players have been organizing a group which aims to meet with the NFL Commissioner to ask the league to regress its new policies on player contact.

Jones continued, “In my day you were lucky if they gave you a helmet. And you had to pay for it by bashing your head into the goalpost over and over to toughen it up. Was that a smart policy? Hells no, but it’s a man’s game and by gonnit sometimes as a man you don’t do what’s smart. That’s football!”

A spokesperson for the Commissioner’s office released a statement to Foul Play* urging retired players to see the reasoning behind the crackdown on hits, quoting numerous medical studies indicating former players are more prone to illnesses and syndromes related to concussions sustained while playing.

The spokesperson also noted that the League office has tried to meet with the group several times, however their members always forget to show up at the agreed upon meeting time, noting that they’ll sometimes “come here at random hours, like 11pm and such.”

“Ah that’s a load of hooey,” responded former Lineman Dave Wachowskis, a stalwart of the Pittsburgh Steelers teams in the late 1960’s. “Getting hit in the head has absolutely nothing to do…getting hit in the head has absolutely nothing to do with…getting hit in the head has…getting hit in the head has nothing to do with dinner. I want steak dammit!”

When pressed on the potential life saving impact these policies could make, Wachowskis admitted that “sure it could mean some of these guys have better lives after retiring,” noting that he himself has trouble with his back, knees, shoulders and ankles, bouts of memory loss, occasional migraines and suffers from ‘horrible, just horrible’ night tremors, “but I mean when I’m there lying on the ground, rolling around trying to remember the name of my nurse so she can help me back in bed and least I feel like a man, not some lilly-livered current NFL player like that ‘girly-haired Hawaiian’ who plays for the Steelers.”

“Sure they may have the media contracts, money, fame, women, union representation and a better overall quality of life than we ever had, but at least when my son comes to me and ask s about the game I can sit him on my knee and say ‘Jimmy…umm…Johnny. No Johnny is my cribbage partner. Um, someone get my kid on the phone and ask him his name, that kid is so lazy sometimes.’

Dave quickly trailed off and sat staring out the window but his son was quick to come to his defense:

“Dad may not remember much these days, but he still gets a smile on his face when he sees footage of his NFL Glory Days. The game may have taken away his mobility and his mind, but they can never take that away from him. I wonder if someone like Tom Brady will feel the same forty years from now staring out the window of one of his fancy mansions with his supermodel wife and millions of dollars and whatnot.”