To paraphrase the great Keanu Reeves: “Football is a rough sport and that’s why girls don’t play the game”.

Taking a  look back at the previous decades it’s easy to see how Mr. Reeves, and myself, believe this philosophy although recent trends in the NFL are moving away from the ‘rough’ aspect of the game.

Without question the leader on the field is the quarterback. He has to be. No one touches the ball more than that jock who always got the hottest cheerleaders throughout college and no one can change the outcome of the game like he can. So it’s easy to understand why Roger Goodell and the NFL want to protect the Favres, Bradys and Staffords but they don’t have to treat them like Faberge eggs.

It’s one thing to make sure your million dollar investment doesn’t end up on the IR because of a cheap shot, but it’s quite another to keep him out of the physical nature of the game. Between the fines and costly penalties, defensive players can barely touch the quarterback. A shoulder bump or a hit on the flak jacket a second after the quarterback launches a pass warrants a late-hit penalty. Tackle him too hard, and you’re looking at a $15,000-$50,000 fine.

These recently instated rules are not only are creating Prima Donna quarterbacks who look for a penalty flag every time they hit the turf, but they’re also eliminating hard-nosed hitters on defense, just ask the Steelers James Harrison who leads the NFL with $125,000 worth of fines this season.

As the saying goes, “football is a game of inches.” With all due respect to the person who came up with that, that theory is wrong . Football is not a game of inches, but rather a game of seconds. If it were really a game of inches, meaning that every inch counts, then we wouldn’t have the officials eye-balling every single spot of the ball, so let’s just forget that notion and move on to why football is actually a game of seconds.

It’s obvious to look at the game clock when thinking about football as a game of seconds, but that’s not the meat and potatoes of this theory. Clearly every second on the clock matters but the reason why football is a game of seconds is because the actions and decisions that take place on the field happen in the blink of an eye. It’s the difference between a sack and a late-hit as well as a clean tackle and a helmet-to-helmet penalty. It’s the difference between a hi-five and five-digit fine and it’s the difference between an action and a reaction.

The players that we see every Sunday are operating at full-speed and moving in every direction imaginable. They are getting pushed from all angles and sometimes even fighting Mother Nature herself. And while dealing with all of this, they still have to do their job and make a decision in a split second.

They are not reacting to the play, but rather continuing their action. Yes, they are reacting to a ball being thrown or caught, but they cannot react to a head drop or a sudden empty hand when tackling the receiver or quarterback. Those things happen as fast as a blink, so why are we penalizing them for not being able to react to it?

Getting back to the “rough” part of Mr. Reeves statement, you cannot take away the roughness of NFL football because of injuries. Taking away that aspect means changing the game that we all know and love. Its true that nobody wants to see a player get injured, but we also don’t want to watch flag football for three hours.

Today’s players entered the league knowing the risks of playing the game. They have been training and practicing for years and we pay them millions of dollars to do what they have been conditioned to do. But suddenly, players are being coached and taught to ease off tackles and not be so aggressive out of fear of being penalized or fined which, in reality, is taking away the core of what football is all about.

Players should still be called for blatant penalties but there needs to be a system in place where they should be thinking about making a tackle instead of being fined. Once that becomes a part of a player’s mentality, then you have ruined the game of football.

When girls start playing the game, then maybe we can start looking at minimizing the roughness of the sport, but since that’s not going to happen, let’s leave football to the men and let them play the way the game’s intended to be played.

Maybe the NFL needs to take heed to comedian and sports fan Adam Carolla’s latest book titled, “In 50 Years We’ll All Be Chicks. . . ”

Used with permission of the author Logan Rhoades–Tom Ferda also contributed to this article.

Los Angeles Based Logan Rhoades is the Associate Editor of the website JocksBehindBars.com. With an extensive knowledge of ESPN topics and celebrity gossip, he is known for mixing sports and pop culture. Check out his “Skip to My Logan” blog and Follow him on Twitter @loganrhoades.

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