by Harold Newland

Created on: March 18, 2010   Last Updated: March 19, 2010

I am mad as hell and there is nothing I can do about it.
 
I am mad because of what they are doing to change the game of football.
 
I am an avid football fan. My wife say I am a football nut. She claims that if she were to pack up and leave on the first day of football season, I would not know she was gone until after the Super Bowl. She is mistaken.  I would notice after watching a couple of plays, I would notice that no one was talking over the play by play announcer.

 
The constant changing of the way the game is played each year is making football into a game for sissies. Maybe sissies is not the right word. I am  not inferring that any member of the NFL is a sissy. Especially Demarcus Ware and Troy Polamalu. If either of you gentlemen read this, I did not call either of you a sissy. I am making a list of all the sissies in the NFL and if any NFL player reads this and contacts me I will tell them if their name is on the list.
 
Maybe I should  just say the players are getting to be a little overly cautious about their own well being while plying their chosen profession.
 
The players are really not as much to blame as the system itself.  When a franchise puts a value of several million bucks on any player, they want to protect their investment, thus certain instruction are given to that player as to how they should react when Demarcus or Troy is bearing down on them with less than gentle intentions. If said quarterback wants to keep getting paid a ridiculous amount of money he will follow those instructions to a fault,
 
If the coach tells his quarterback to fall down, run out of bounds, or throw the ball to one of the many receivers seated on the fourth row of the stands, it is understandable if that is the action taken. Any reasonably sane person might do the same, but it does not make the game as exciting as it was when guys like Bobby Layne was playing.  In his 16 year career, Bobby played for four different teams (mostly for Detroit) and I doubt if any coach ever told him to fall down before he got tackled. Bobby wouldn't have understood if they had.
 
Bobby was known to Detroit fans as the "Blond Bomber", mainly because he liked to throw the ball deep. In order to throw the ball deep, it is necessary to hold on to the ball a little longer.  That gives the defensive guys a couple of seconds more to find and dismember the quarterback.  Sometimes it became necessary for Bobby to run in order to

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