Unlikely, pot is, as far as I know, banned by NFL regulations, so anybody who's caught smoking it would be subject to penalties from the league.

And anyways, nobody but a damned fool uses pot if they care about their performance.

the broncos defense and special teams isn't very good. never has been all season. didn't have to be most of time since offense just torched almost everyone else. seahawks did what most other teams couldn't - get push up middle just enuf get in his face and great man press coverage .

I do sometimes wonder what it would be like if someone tried an American football league that cut down on the padding and forced the players to adapt to playing with the knowledge that they can't sacrifice their bodies the same way. Basically something more like the early years of the sport, but hopefully without the outright thuggery and on-field maiming and dying that resulted in all those pads being created in the first place.

Shots fired :D

I had no stake in this game, so I had a gay ol' time watching and eating :]

Here's a funny, but related, picture I saw on reddit: http://imgur.com/WI818TU

edit spelling.

I could not even tell you all the rules of football, not being a big fan. But as a resident of the Northwest I was pleased with the outcome.

I agree with what you posted but I'm not sure about the part I bolded. Some might be wondering that. Not many people I know though. The way I see it, we already have association football/soccer (I don't get why people get so pissy about us calling it since it was originally a British [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_%22-er%22]Oxford "-er" slang term taken from the word "association" that we still use) available, and really, association football was a code of rules for one of the many different variations of football (football is just a word that is used for the most dominant form of the sport of playing with a ball on foot in that region, not whether or not you kick a spherical ball; in fact, many variations of football before soccer became popular had handling the ball as part of the game) that was created to be a safer way to play football. So, in my view, we already have a sport with massive changes made over 150 years ago as a safer alternative and players have a choice of what they want to play.

What kind of massive changes would the changes be anyway? Would American football just basically become association football? I'm all for getting flagrant fouls out of the game where players intentionally try to hurt other players but even that is difficult to do since the plays happen so fast and sometimes it's very hard to determine whether a player was trying to make a play on the ball or not. I'm also all for concussion and injury protocols and also for new research on helmets.

All that said, I do agree that American football is a very violent sport. A sport I wouldn't want to play professionally unless I was getting paid bookoo bucks too. In fact, I think it could be the most violent sport in the U.S., and I say that as a big fan of MMA and I follow several of the individual combat sports as well. Sure, football players aren't allowed to throw punches or kicks at each other, but they run full speed and hit/slam each other head on. The fact that they play games once a week also makes them more likely to risk further injury (the second concussion in a short time span is the more deadly one), whereas in the UFC at least, if fighters suffer a serious head blow, they have to take it easy for at least two months afterwards. Fighters usually only have a few fights a year and they can pull out of an event beforehand and try to fight in another event instead if they feel they are too injured to perform well too. It's also well known that NFL players, especially linemen, often have lower joint problems, usually in the knees.

So yeah, some changes could be okay but if they're massive, might as well just play rugby or soccer instead I think. I'm not trying to say American football is better than those sports either, they're just different.

Wouldn't work. Back when that was the case, players just got hurt even more frequently. Look up information on the "grid iron" from back before modern pads and helmets were invented.

Realistically, they'd have to change most of the rules as the rules were mostly rewritten since those days.

=)

terrifyingly accurate.

I think you would reduce head injures if defensive players actually knew how to tackle. The players today are horrible tacklers. Instead of putting their arms around the opponent and pulling him down, they just launch themselves at the opponent head-first.

Saying that, I'm one of the people who has no problem with the danger. I think it is more the league scared to death of lawsuits than actual fans. Every football player knows exactly what they are getting into. They are also extremely well compensated for the risk.

No offense to UK fans, but it has been bad enough the NFL screws over the fanbase of one team each year to play a regular season game in the UK. Now even more fans get the shaft. Another "brilliant" idea by Goodell.

BTW, did anyone else think Goodell was drunk when he was talking during the trophy presentation? Incredibly unprofessional.

Ok, now that I got my commissioner-hate out, the game: As Niggles stated, the Denver defense has been terrible all season, it just didn't matter because the offense scored so many points. I thought Denver would win, but the whole offense, including Manning, seemed to be overwhelmed by the game itself and then overwhelmed by the Seattle defense. I mean, how the hell do you have a bad snap the very first play of the championship? The Broncos just did not seem ready to play. They even said they did not practice using a silent count as they did not expect the stadium to be so noisy. Manning's ability to change the play and shout out info was hampered. And his offensive line could not prevent Seattle's pass rush.

To be honest, I was disappointed with the Denver TD. At that point, the way the game was going, I wanted to see a shutout.

I believe there are rule changes coming to deal with that, but I doubt that they're going to be enough. I believe they're making rules against leading with the helmet when making a tackle anywhere on the field.

The WTF is that MLB is apparently planning on banning the catcher from standing on home plate to prevent people from sliding into home.

I think we're in a different era and there will be mounting media pressure for the next few decades to reduce the violence in the sport. Could be wrong, it's just a guess, but it seems like that pressure is building.