Amid talk of concussions in NFL, fans don’t want to lose the big hits

Amid concussion talk, fans want to keep big hits

NEW YORK — Football fans hear about Congress grilling the NFL on head injuries and the league setting up new guidelines for handling concussions.

Then they see those big hits on TV, and the response is still to cheer, not cringe. Corporate sponsors don’t seem to mind, either.

“The whole concussion issue is scary, but it’s not going to change the way a real football fan looks at the game,” Matt Sandbrook of Tampa, Fla., said while watching a late season Colts-Jaguars game at a sports bar. “Injuries are a detriment; concussions are a detriment. It’s good they’re trying to do some things to help the players, but fans still want to see football. Hitting is part of football. There’s no way to escape that.

“Do people want to see guys get concussions? No. Do they want to see all those big hits? You bet.”

That contradiction ripples through the concussion debate. Fans express hope that better equipment and tweaks to the rules can help the situation, but they seem more likely to complain about policies restricting hits on quarterbacks than the treatment of players with concussions. Television viewership is up bigtime this season, suggesting all the attention to the long-term effects of head injuries hasn’t dampened interest.

“When you hear the helmet to pad thumps on there, it is a big aspect of it,” Denny Pasternak of Phoenix said while watching the game at a neighborhood sports bar. “It gets you going and gets your interest. It’s like NASCAR — you watch it for the crashes. If there were no crashes, people probably wouldn’t watch it as much.”

Pasternak grew up in Chicago idolizing Dick Butkus. With all the rules changes, he figures Butkus would get thrown out of every game if he played today.

“I can see they don’t want injuries to the multimillion dollar players,” he said, “but you’re going to get to a point where everybody’s going to be afraid to touch anybody or they’re going to get fined or tossed or whatever. That’s going to lose a lot of spark to the game.”

The league’s corporate sponsors seem to be silent on the issue, or supportive of the league. Of more than a dozen major NFL sponsors contacted by The Associated Press, none took the opportunity to express concern about the issue.

“We believe the NFL takes the health of their players very seriously,” said Anne Westbrook, who works in external relations for Procter & Gamble. “We believe being the world-class organization that they are, that they’re doing what’s best and what’s best for their players.”

Canon, IBM, Mars, MillerCoors, Pepsi and Samsung declined comment. Bank of America, Campbell, FedEx, Motorola, Sprint and Visa did not respond to requests for comment.

TV commentators are frequently discussing the concussion issue and some of the networks are encouraging their analysts to tone down their remarks on big hits. But plenty of coverage still sounds the same.

When the Vikings’ Cedric Griffin nailed the Bengals’ Chad Ochocinco in a Dec. 13 game — sending the receiver’s helmet flying, injuring his nose and drawing a penalty — CBS announcer Dan Dierdorf said, “First of all, let’s listen to this.”

The network showed the replay with the sound of the impact loud and clear.

“You understand the rule, and … you’ve got to protect those guys,” Dierdorf said of the flag. “But, gee whiz, you’re asking the impossible sometimes from a defender.”

Later, on NBC’s “Football Night in America” pregame show, the highlight was shown even though it was irrelevant to the game’s outcome.

Keith Olbermann joked: “If you look at the replay, you will notice that Griffin took Chad’s sombrero right off. So Ochocinco’s gimmick this week? He had cosmetic surgery. A nose job right on the sidelines.”

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said the league has not talked to NFL Network crews about what language to use in discussing head injuries.

Chris Ciechoski of Buffalo expressed the ambivalence of many fans.

“If I had a job and my job description was I have to go out and do X, Y, Z, these are my risks,” he said while watching the Colts-Jaguars game. “If I still sign up for that job, I know full well going in that these are the risks I’m taking.”

He has no problem with rules that prevent flagrant hits and players from leading with their helmets. But he wonders if the restrictions are going too far.

“If it’s just clean hits where you’re catching a guy with a helmet or a glancing blow, I don’t think you can stop that from happening unless he’s covered in bubble wrap,” he said.

Joe Coretti, a Steelers fan from Milford, Conn., is sensitive to the concussion issue after quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was sidelined by one this season. He still likes those big hits, though.

“Don’t want them to go away,” he said while watching the game in Tampa. “I love it when a guy goes across the middle, gets hit and you go, ‘Whoa!’ Everybody loves that. At the same time, you don’t want anybody to get hurt.

“I want the guy to get up. As long as he gets up, I’m happy. Keep the hits coming.”

AP Sports Writers Bob Baum in Phoenix, Howard Fendrich in Washington, Fred Goodall in Tampa, Fla., and John Wawrow in Buffalo, N.Y., contributed to this story.