Just Awful
I like to have a clear hero and a clear villain in each piece I read on El Reg, but the NFL is an awful bully, and any company with 5,000 multimedia patents is just a troll.
Can I hate them both?
The NFL, the home of America's favorite form of recreational brain trauma, will find itself a bit less wealthy, after it settled a lawsuit brought by a streaming video software developer. The football league on Thursday finalized a settlement with OpenTV, which had accused the NFL of ripping off parts of eight of its US …
I quite like watching the edited games on TV but I couldn't sit through an entire game at a stadium,which mostly consists of large men inhaling oxygen on the sidelines while everyone watches video replays of every move just after it happened.
Rugby is better, happens faster and is played by blokes who think wearing armour is for cissies.
played by blokes who think wearing armour is for cissies
(Google nGram viewer suggests the spelling "sissy" is more common than "cissy", and indeed has been far more common since it began a rapid ascent circa 1900. But maybe "cissy" is still common in the UK?)
Anyway: research suggests that the addition of ever more protective equipment in US football has actually increased the rate and severity of long-lasting injury. I think it was covered in Why Things Bite Back, Tenner's popular treatment of revenge effects.
Not surprisingly, as they "weaponized" protections, trying to inflict more damage to opponents, especially when they are less protected. But even when good protection exist, the trauma can happen anyway - both ways - see the brain damage issues now under the spotlight.
That's why the NFL is introducing new rules to forbid some hits - and there's already some journalists who complain because it "changes" the game. IMHO, some hits should have been forbidden long ago, they add nothing to the "show", they made it only more dangerous - and the show is less interesting when good players are sidelined by big injuries.
I started tuning out of the NFL before Lycra was invented, but are you sure that they wear that?
Also: "Anyway: research suggests that the addition of ever more protective equipment in US football has actually increased the rate and severity of long-lasting injury."
Well, maybe. On the other hand, weight training means that a lot of men who might have been tall and clumsy are tall, strong, and agile, so the both sides of mass x acceleration have gone up over the years. I am old enough to remember the days that linemen might play at 250 lb. Those days are long gone.