Longest Yard Long Game: Why A Prison Football Future Isn’t Unfathomable
In case you didn’t want to read the whole post, the lack of caring for convicts compared to non-convicts, coupled with the preferred use of insourcing as a cost cutting measure for a sport/business that is growing more dangerous is why I think a future with prison labor as football players is one that isn’t out of line.
I started playing football when I was about 12 years old. Good ole Junior Football League (JFL) Herbert Hoover Boys and Girls Club action. At the time, I was only like 5'3 and 80 lbs but I had heart playing Defensive End. How I played Defensive End at that size, I’m saying that you’re asking? Well the weight limit was 105 lbs and all I would do is run up, “box out” or take 3–5 steps once the ball was snapped/stayed there, and not let anyone get around me. I was an athletic kid that wanted to make stops for my team although, I would say that my tackles were more like speed bumps with arms but I was effective. Because I didn’t grow much from that size once high school came around, however, I grew out of wanting to play.
Although my knowledge of football was limited when I started playing, it was a simpler time, like most of my non-bill paying life. As bills have come into my life and changed who I am and what I’ve done, in a sense, so has the NFL’s popularity in terms of its relationship with fans. Football’s popularity between the college and pro ranks have seemed to boom over the last 20 years with not much direct change to the product necessarily. In 2013, 34% of persons polled said that their favorite sport to watch was football, which was more than doubled who said baseball was theirs (16%). Baseball has long since been taken over by football as America’s Pastime like Google took over for the World Book.
Rule changes have said to make the game safer but it is like making a machete safer, there’s only so much you can do. The NFL and NCAA have to tell the public that they are making their games safer for their most important factor: children. A farmer knows that they can’t bad mouth their own farm and crops or else less people will buy from them. The NCAA and NFL’s reasoning for spreading a good message about football is twofold. The NFL and NCAA has to tell the prospective/recurring viewers that watch the bloodsport that what they’re watching is just a game like any other professional sport. Both entities also have to tell the prototypical mom that the bloodsport is getting safer and safer and that they’re not sacrificing their children to the divine neanderthals that just so happen to inhabit the colosseum. Together, the collective consciousnesses can rest easy at night.
What I’ve expounded upon earlier brings us to why you’re here. I feel that NFL might be the closest it’s ever been to possibly using prison convicts instead of, you know, non-prison convicts. The reason I say that the NFL is moving closer to a Longest Yard-type situation boils down to different factors: insourcing, lack of caring for the well-being of convicts comparatively to non-convicts, and the overall change in how football is viewed among patrons.
One of the first decision making factors for the move to using convicts is probably cost. Companies have been using prison labor or “insourcing” for years as a means to cut cost on labor. NFL owners (usually) have some other business venture that they’re running or have run, which led them to become franchise owners in the NFL so knowledge of this strategy of insourcing may not be unusual to them.
One of the most common aspects of prison is the recreational time set aside each day. Prisoners would have no problem getting their conditioning in because, what else would they be doing? Also, there’s no shortage of former NFL players that have been or are currently serving time in prison. The use of prison labor would seem financially beneficial possibly in the short term but more than likely in the long term, if successful.
The second factor could be the perception for the well-being of convicts. There’s plenty of people in prison, more like north of 1.5 Million of em. Not every mother would be on board with their child partaking in a sport that may lead to a disease such as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy or “CTE”, which has been linked to depression, aggression and dementia. With the statistic that 96% of deceased NFL players studied (albeit levels of scrutiny) were diagnosed with CTE posthumously, a mom may not be proactive in signing up their child for youth football. A mom would feel better that the people that would be playing the game are criminals used for entertainment purposes. Likewise, instead of NFL fans wincing when they see hits that remind them of yesteryear (see video at the end) and would be fine with a game that looks more like the NFL Blitz gifs you see under this paragraph.
This brings us to the intersection of these topics: use of prison labor could and how it could possibly be used from a management perspective. Football is inherently a violent game and a violent game that according to people like former GM of the Dallas Cowboys Tex Schramm, is known to think of players as more like cattle than humans. When Tex Schramm made the cattle statement, there was far less revenue/publicity allotted to the NFL and education on head injuries had no bearing on the gameplay. When players were seeing stars, they got some smelling salts and told to keep on trucking. When players had triple vision, they were told to aim at the middle guy. Stuff like that.
The logistics of how a league of convicts playing professional football would also be a big sticking point. The NFL, like most American professional sports leagues, receive their talent through drafts and free agency and reallocate talent through trades, waivers and releases. Because the participants would now be convicts, having different prisoners go into a draft pool where team executives would pick and choose between the convicts may be proven daunting. If a system could be worked out similar to the Longest Yard where teams are made up from each prison, a team could (for lack of a better term) “sponsor” that prison and put their financial resources towards that. Outside of equipment, game venue and compensation to both the convicts and possibly the prisons themselves, owners would probably relish at the thought of a cheaper and possibly more employee-controlled route.
I often hear that playing in the NFL is a privilege and that the guys that play it should be grateful that they’re getting paid to do it. I think that’s bullshit. Excuse me for my language, I meant to type horseshit but that bullshit was a bull in a china shop within my brain/thumbs. A privilege would mean that anyone else in the world, if given the opportunity, would be given the same amount of notoriety and star power as an Odell Beckham Jr, Antonio Brown or Todd Gurley. There’s only one of those three guys and if you gave Dave from accounting the opportunity to run a slant route in Lambeau in December, it’s probably not going to look at the level of a Gurley, Brown or OBJ.
With all of that being said and if people really feel that the opportunity to get paid a lot of money could be replaced by absolutely anyone, why not pay to watch convicts play the game?
Now with all that being said, LET’S LOOK AT SOME FOOTBALL HITZZZZ!!!!
