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I didn’t even feel it. I was having the best game I ever played against Wyoming Indian as a junior. There was a giant, slow tackle across from me and I spent much of the afternoon in the Chiefs backfield chasing my friend Ronnie Oldman who was quarterbacking. Then it happened, as I stacked up a running back, I was hit low on the side of my right knee. I crumpled to the ground, got back up, then fell again. As I tried to stand up again, coach Blackwell told me to stay down.
I didn’t know why, my knee didn’t hurt, but it wobbled side-to-side as I walked back to the sideline. About five minutes later, it really hurt as my knee swelled to double its normal size.
My season was over with a torn ACL/MCL all on that one play.
You don’t see kids standing on the sidelines as you once did with crutches, casts and arms in slings. That’s a positive thing.
Those that profess golf, tennis, swimming and running as lifetime sports just don’t realize that football is also a lifetime sport. You’ll feel the effects every morning when you get up for the rest of your life.
A half-century later, and with two artificial knees, one titanium and the other a beryllium alloy, my knees feel better than they did as a college kid. They don’t move nearly as fast as they once did, but I’m not standing, waiting for 30 seconds for the pain to subside and then starting to walk as I once did just a few years ago.
The healthier bodies on the sidelines are the combined result of a lot of things. One is proper tackling and blocking technique, learning how to fall and better nutrition than we had. The other is conditioning, weight training and equipment.
When it comes to modern football equipment compared to what players wore just a few decades ago, the difference is tremendous.
Let’s start with helmets. Imagine a hard plastic helmet, held in place with non-adjustable cotton straps and just a semblance of a pad covering the nuts and bolts that held the helmet liner, facemask and chinstrap in place.
If you hit someone head on, as we were taught to tackle, the top of the helmet often hit you directly on top of the head, leaving a bruise, and by the end of the game, a bump on the peak of your head.
As a senior, we had some “new” water filled helmets. These had dozens of packets, filled with water that were supposed to absorb impact and prevent head injuries.
They weren’t popular, they weighed a ton, and neck injuries while wearing these heavy battering rams jumped.
The coaches and manufacturers never mentioned concussions, that was a term waiting for the next generation.
If you blacked out, passed out, or as happened to me a few times, had tunnel vision with a roaring in your ears, followed by a sudden headache, you just walked it off, or if a kid was woozy, a few whiffs of an ammonia capsule brought them back to their senses.
Yes, it was primitive, and something the snowplow moms of today would never tolerate. For once, I’m on their side.
The knee pads, hip pads and shoulder pads were one-size-fits-all. A huge senior wore the same size pads as an 85-pound freshman. The younger, skinnier guys always looked a little like a scarecrow before they grew into their equipment. Seniors always had first pick of equipment and in those days, the tighter the pants, the better. The underclassmen were often left with pants three to four sizes to large but just sucked up their belts a little tighter and went on their way.
While equipment was primitive, so were the rules.
Armchair quarterbacks lament that the NFL just isn’t what it used to be. That’s true, there aren’t any Ronny Lott’s, Steve Atwater’s or Jack Tatum’s coming up from the safety spot to deliver kill shots to Christian Akoye or Earl Campbell these days. The NFL fines players for the style of hits that Dick Butkus and Lawrence Taylor dealt out on every snap of the ball.
As an undersized player, my favorite downfield block was the cross-body, illegal today. Playing defensive end, I was always on the lookout for a crackback from a wide receiver, illegal today.
If a defensive lineman was getting too aggressive, we’d do the old “post and drive” where one offensive lineman hit him in the knees and another took him out head on, yep, illegal today.
Running backs loved to chop block incoming pass rushers with a well-placed block below the knees, not only illegal today, but likely a personal foul and possible ejection if you’re caught trying it.
My favorite, not really, since I had many headaches from it in both practice and games was the head slap. Some guys were masters at it.
There is a growing sport called “Slap Fighting” where two men or two women face each other and take turns slapping each other in the face until one falls. That gives you an idea of how the head slap worked.
A heavy forearm pad was whopped against the side of your helmet at the snap of the ball, the only defense against it was to punch the guy as hard as you could right in the armpit. Yes, that slowed his tendency to use it.
Coaches taught us to put the quarterback on his rear end every play, whether he had the ball or not. I taught that same technique when I began my football coaching career in Lusk, Riverton and Shoshoni.
Coaches still teach it, but now you’ll get an occasional flag. Do it to a franchise quarterback in the NFL and you’re likely to get a prison sentence for the infraction. Ok, maybe I exaggerate a little bit, but they do like to protect the quarterback and make a conscientious effort to increase offense and limit defense with each passing season.
One vestige of the old game remains, the “free blocking zone.” That’s the space between the tackles, two yards on either side of the line of scrimmage where anything goes, anything except the old post and drive that is.
That’s why you see so many more offensive and defensive linemen injured than you do running backs or quarterbacks. The guys carrying the ball are protected by multiple rules and the officials take note. Sometimes even a legal hit, albeit a hard one, will draw a penalty flag for unnecessary roughness.
Receivers used to be fair game as well, but now if you hit one too hard when he’s extended, trying to catch the ball, you’ll get a flag.
The same is true for blocking behind a play.
One of the joys of the old game was finding the guy you’d been lined up against all afternoon looking the other way on a breakaway run. It was perfectly legal to blindside him, often generating the legendary “slobber knock” style hit that knocked out his mouthpiece and often crumpled him, knocking the wind out of him. Today if you’re more than 15 yards behind the play and lay somebody out with a blindside, come back block, you’ll be flagged.
It’s still a great game, and the three zippers on my knees from a full reconstruction back in 1979 and two knee replacements in 2020 and 2022 bear testament that the old style has evolved into a better, safer game today.
But still…