Woody Paige: A Football Fanatic Essay

The NFL was founded on September 17, 1920 and was known as the American Professional Football Association (APFA). It was renamed in 1922 as the National Football League or NFL. In 1920 there were eleven football franchises to form the first professional football league compared to the 32 teams that form the league now. The original teams are: Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland Tigers, Dayton Triangles, Akron Professionals, Rochester (N.Y.) Jeffersons, Rock Island Independents, Muncie Flyers, Decatur Staleys, Chicago Cardinals, and Hammond Pros. Jim Thorpe was elected as the league's first president. In 1970 NFL's rival league AFL merged their schedules and formed two conferences in which the AFL became AFC and NFL became NFC.

The NFL has become the most popular sport in the United States. It is watched my millions every weekend. The NFL is only growing in popularity. With new fans joining the fun every day. The NFL has faced its share of problems too. With concussions scaring away many future players, the NFL is hoping to lower the possibility of concussions in the future. Each NFL team plays a total of 16 games over a span of 17 weeks. There are two conferences in the NFL, the AFC and the NFC. There are four divisions in each conference, each with 4 teams. The playoff teams are decided by the division rankings. The winner of each division makes the playoffs, with the two best 2nd place teams making it in as a wild card.

Football is an American sport that consists of two teams composed of 11 men. On the 100-yard field, they go head to head, trying to keep the other team from advancing the ball down the field toward the end zone, resulting in a touchdown or field goal. Football pits the two teams against each other. The offense, which possesses the ball, is placed against the defense, which tries to prevent the offense from advancing the ball. Several different resources can contribute to a team’s success. Some of those resources are funds, talent level of players, and favorable position on the field, which makes it easier to score points. The four sociological perspectives, structural functionalism, conflict theory, symbolic interactionism, and social exchange theory, all credit different reasons for one team being able to achieve this goal more often than another team. Nevertheless, any of the sociological perspectives you view the sport from, football is a very complex entity. Football is more than just a group of men pounding one another. There is a complex equation that eventually equals success; the differences between these perspectives are the components of the equation that are most heavily weighed on for success. Although it may be a combination of all three perspectives that leads to success in football, it is fair to look at the game from each perspective individually because each holds important insight into what truly leads to a successful football team.

September 20, 2011 was the day that everything changed. Practice that day was long and excruciatingly hot. My coach did not let me take a rest as I was the only full back we had at the time. Hit after hit, it started to add up and my world was spinning but coach told me to keep going, so I did. The very next snap my world got wrecked. My form became lazy because I was beyond exhausted and dehydrated, my head lead my attempt to break the tackle and the kid making the tackle lead with his head as well. Just like that my body went numb, everything was dark, my eyes were open but I could not see. I had no sense of where I was and where I was going. My name left me. At this point I did not know if I was dead or alive. This was the last time I was ever able to strap up and play the game of football. This is what happens to the millions of kids who play football on a daily basis. Somebody was there telling them to go back in even when they were showing early signs of a concussion. The athlete takes one more hit straight to the head out of poor form or exhaustion and then everything goes from bad to worse. These events take place at such a young age that the long term side effects can be fatal.

Since everyone else from around the NFL is doing it, I thought I might as well join in on the fun too. I am going to start a series here on The Huddle where each week, I will project the top players at a certain position for the 2017 Season.

High school football over the years has become a huge spectacle lets just talk about the DWF area or we can even get smaller to make a point if you made a 25 mile radius these local high school teams play at the Star (seats 12,000), Allen stadium (seats 18,000 cost 60 million), and McKinney’s new stadium (seats 12,000 costs 69.9 million). This is just high school football these young kids playing under tremendous pressure from the start. The pressure to play high school football is immense, there are so many media outlets for these kids, and they get coverage from what it seems like all the time during the season, yet this is all just considered a recreational activity I think it has become more than that now. The pressure for coaches is high as well dealing with parents, board members, keeping up with classes as a teacher, and oh you also have to win since football is a performance-based business (forewarning this will be said a lot). For example I will refer to Boobie Miles from Friday Night Lights for one final point. Boobie knew if he did not make it in football there was nothing special for him. That is why when he got hurt he still wanted to play, because he knew that’s all he had. That is a lot of pressure for a 16-18 year to handle, and if they are not up for it they crack.

Football: America’s greatest pastime and favorite all-American sport hides one of our nation’s biggest health concerns; concussions. On average, boys can begin playing tackle football at the age of five and weighing a minimum of 35 pounds, and from that point on they are taught the values of strategy, tackling, running, and teamwork. (Warner, 2016) Some of those children will later become the Professional Football players or college level players.

Football is a game of passion, a time when nothing else matters and the only thing that matters is going out there having fun and fighting for the guy next to you. Football has always been something that I loved and had a wild passion for. I’ve made friendships and memories to last a life time and I can always be grateful that football did that for me. Now of course I’ve had some bad memories during football as well, I remember walking out of the film room on the last day of spring ball and having Coach Antle grab me and say “Gage, I think I want to try you at a new position, I want to put you at defensive end. We need you more there and we think you can really excel there.” I remember being so furious, I had played linebacker ever since I could remember and now the last day of spring ball my senior year everything was about to change.

In the last five years, either an NFC West (Seattle twice; San Francisco) or NFC South (Carolina Panthers; Atlanta Falcons) team has represented the conference in the Super Bowl. However, as divisional powers shift, we could see a shakeup in the NFC during the upcoming season. With the NFL Draft completed and training camps beginning, let’s look at the NFC teams that could represent their divisions in the 2017-18 playoffs.

Football is America’s past and present-time, however, due to the findings of new research on chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the NFL must find ways to increase player safety. C.T.E. is a brain disorder caused by long-term, repetitive head trauma that is “now associated with such things as dementia, depression, memory loss, and lack of impulse control.” For decades the long-term affects of contact sports remained unknown and not until retired players began to express the problem has awareness for the issue increased. The NFL has made dramatic changes to the requirements for equipment — such as helmets — and to their rules to increase safety, however, are these changes decreasing the sport’s hidden affects on players mental health? Countless studies have been conducted over this issue and the affects of sub-concussive contact are illustrated in several of these research studies. Although the NFL changes rules and equipment requirements in an attempt to increase the safety of their players, it remains difficult to determine whether these changes will decrease the long-term affects of football as they appear in retired players and research on sub-concussive contact.

In 2009, arguably one of the best Super Bowl was played in Tampa, Florida. This game featured the AFC champions Steelers and the NFC champions Cardinals, in which the Steelers prevailed 27-23. As any football fan could tell you the score of this game was not a low one at all. For the cardinals to put up 23 against the Steelers number one defense was shocking. Even more stunning, was to see the Steelers offense generate enough offense to put up 27 point. The Steelers offensive game had been struggling throughout the season, but their hard hitting, alert defense made up for it. Yet, this game is no joke a tam cannot win if any part of their game is slacking. Knowing this the Steelers came out ready to play. This game wasn’t just a high scoring

Pittsburgh beat Cleveland the following week in the home opener, yet continued to stumble by going on to loose their next three games. Suddenly Steeler opponents were giving back what they had been getting for two years. A team built on defense and intimidation was now being bullied by teams they had ground to dust just one year before. Pittsburg’s backslide was punctuated in week five during a rematch with the Browns. The lasting memory of Cleveland’s Joe “Turkey” Jones slamming Terry Bradshaw head first into the turf of Municipal Stadium epitomized the shocking debut of the 76 Steelers. A proud team had hit rock bottom. Pittsburgh’s record was now 1 and 4. With Bradshaw injured, the Steelers would have to limp along with an unknown rookie quarterback named Mike Kruczek. With the Division leading Cincinnati Bengals coming to town the following week, the prospect of a third straight Super Bowl was nonexistent.

A couple of weeks ago, Philadelphia Eagles' second-round pick cornerback Sidney Jones participated in first NFL practice after 10 months of rehab. Jones, who was projected to be a first-round pick in this past spring's NFL draft, ruptured his Achilles at his pro-day at the University of Washington on March 11.

Seattle's pass defense has collapsed without Earl Thomas, ranking fifth in Football Outsiders DVOA through Week 11 but 30th out of 32 teams since Thomas missed his first game in Week 12. However, Detroit's passing game has similarly collapsed since Matthew Stafford hurt his finger early in Week 14, ranking 10th through Week 13 but 27th over the past four weeks. It would seem those matching declines would cancel each other out, but the problem for Detroit is that Seattle is better at everything else except special teams. Detroit has little ground attack, while Seattle has one of the 12 best run defenses since FO advanced stats began in 1989. Seattle's offense has been only average this season, but the Detroit defense is much worse than it looks.

In today’s world of big time professional sports there are the two major players and they are football represented by the National Football League (NFL) and baseball represented by Major League Baseball (MLB). Now there are other sports that the American public enjoys watching, however the argument generally boils down to which sport is the true favorite of the American people: baseball or football. In this paper I will attempt to examine both sports from several different angles to include attendance, television revenue, ticket costs, venues, salaries, entertainment value, and athlete perception. The goal of this exercise will be to determine, once and for all, which sport is the American