NFL experimenting with ways to "get the head out of the game"

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News with a Twist

NFL’s Goodell minimizes head injury risk

Says there’s risk sitting on a couch

In a hoped for self-congratulatory wrap-up of Super Bowl Week festivities in San Francisco, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell addressed the growing controversy surrounding degenerative brain disease affecting football players at all levels of the game. 

And he fumbled the ball.

Responding to a question by a reporter regarding whether he felt comfortable encouraging parents to let their teenage sons play football Goodell said, “If I had a son, I’d love to have him play the game of football,” adding, “There’s risk in life. There’s risk in sitting on the couch.”

Goodell’s answer, which seemed to suggest that kids are equally at risk by not exercising, did not expand on the possibility that there are other forms of exercise for kids that don’t involve the potential of brain damage.

Personalizing the benefits of playing football, Goodell went on to say, “From my standpoint, I played football for nine years through high school and I wouldn’t give up a single day of that. And, look, I make $65 million a year. So clearly, no brain damage here,” as he used his head in a sympbolic “knock on wood.”

Goodell did say that the NFL was not punting when it comes to safety however. “We’ve made changes in the NFL, and those changes are going all the way through every level of football,” he said. “Getting the head out of the game is a very important initiative at all levels.”

Regarding getting the head out of the game, rumors circulating around the NFL point to two secret initiatives.

In one, the league is working with former Chinese Communist interrogators (think the Manchurian Candidate) to brainwash players into not thinking about brain injuries, thereby “getting their heads out of the game.”

In the second far more ambitious program, the NFL is working with geneticists and the estate of author Washington Irving in an attempt to breed a new form of headless football player modeled after the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. While experimental, and at the earliest stages of development, NFL insiders point to this initiative as the best way to achieve Goodell’s promise to “get the head out of the game.