Ditka: 238, Facemasks: 0

Last week, Steelers’ safety Troy Polamalu spoke out against the league getting all fine-happy lately, saying the NFL is becoming a pansy game. Yesterday, Mike Ditka kindly disagreed with the distinguished gentleman from Southern California, and offered this solution:↵↵⇥“I said a long time ago if you want to change the game take the mask off the helmet,” he said. “It will change the game a lot. If you want to change the game and get it back to where people aren’t striking with the head and using the head as a weapon, take the mask off the helmet.↵⇥↵⇥“A lot of pretty boys aren’t going to stick their face in there. If you’re going to take hitting out of football, you might as well just call it soccer. That’s what I believe. A lot of people will be disappointed I said that, but football is what it is. [Vince] Lombardi said it a long time ago. Football is not a contact game. Dancing is a contact game. Football is a collision sport.” ↵⇥

↵↵So, the idea here is to take the protective part of the helmet -- the face guard -- off, but leave the dangerous, face-breaking part -- the rock-hard outer shell -- on? Brilliant! This is surely the solution the league has been looking for in their quest to cut down on multi-millionaire players being injured. And just to clarify: The players would still be wearing those massive shoulder pads which they could propel into the newly unprotected faces of opposing players, right? Okay cool, just checking.
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↵I say we split the difference and force every player to go back to wearing the single bar facemasks, like the one Ditka is sporting in that photo. It’ll cut down on guys leading with their head and make every player look totally badass at the same time.↵