Of contact sports and professional cowards

Talking about head injuries and other trauma from athletics is de rigueur in the sporty places of our media world after a weekend full of huge hits in the NFL, some that were merely controversial and some that were pretty dire.

So … let’s talk about head injuries and other trauma as they touch our sport. And that is what we’re talking about, right? Serious injuries?

So why have a couple of media knuckleheads taken the opportunity to harken back to a better day for them – when it was cool to be lunch room bullies, to go spill some trays at the uncool kids’ table, to take a gratuitous pot shot at soccer?

ESPN’s Mark Schlereth thought he was being cute to suggest that removing big hits from football would turn the game into soccer. (Good on young U.S. forward Jozy Altidore to throw a Twitter dart at Schlereth in soccer’s defense.) I also heard some disembodied voice on Colin Cowherd’s ESPN national radio show line up soccer and kick it squarely between the legs.

Aside from the first point, that this is serious business and that they really should leave the zingers on the sidelines, it's a terribly ignorant comment. There's plenty of contact in soccer. Is it American football? Of course not. That's the king daddy of violent sports. But there is contact.

And from a media standpoint, here’s the thing: this is just professional cowardice. Why? Because taking a shot at soccer is easy. As I said before, it’s like pushing around the smaller kid in the lunchroom just to look like a big man around your buds. Meanwhile, there are bigger boys around … but the bullies don’t mess with them.

There’s surely a lot more contact in soccer than in baseball, right? Yes, I understand that batters stand in a small box while someone throws hard objects upwards of 90 mph. But that’s not what we’re talking about here, is it? We’re talking about contact, about collisions between human beings that are part of so many sports.

How about golf? There’s no contact. It’s a sport. So why wouldn’t Schlereth or Cowherd’s minions kick those sports in the nuts? I tell you why: because they know that more fans and advertisers like them. See, there’s real risk in lobbing verbal grenades those directions. Not so much for soccer – so it’s “game on.” And that’s professional cowardice.

I also wonder what Schlereth and others, those who like to slyly question soccer’s manliness, would say to Alecko Eskandarian, whose career appears to be over due to concussion-related problems? What would they say to Preston Burpo, who had his leg snapped nearly in half in one of those less-than-manly collisions that sometimes happen in soccer?

I could go on with other examples … but you get the idea.

Word to you professional cowards: go pick on someone your own size.