Bruce Arians: “Our Sport is Being Attacked”

For longtime football fans, Arizona Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians must seem like the last of a dying breed. The old school, no-nonsense coach delivered on that reputation Friday, telling the audience at the team’s High School Football Coaches Clinic that the sport is being unfairly vilified in popular culture, leading many to distance themselves and their children from football.

“We feel like this is our sport. It’s being attacked, and we’ve got to stop it at the grass roots,” he said of detractors to the sport and its high profile cases of injuries and concussions at a time when sports medicine is entering a new age. “It’s the best game that’s ever been invented, and we’ve got to make sure that moms get the message; because that’s who’s afraid of our game right now.”

Arians acknowledged that the sport is an inherently dangerous one, but also one that can be made safer simply by changing the way it is taught to young people, and not through intermittent rule changes at the highest level.

“Our job is to make sure the game is safe, at all levels,” he continued. “The head really has no business being in the game. When I was taught how to tackle, and block, it was on a two-man sled, and you did it with your shoulder pads. That’s still the best way to do it. There’s really isn’t any place for your face in the game. I would beg all of you to continue to learn more about what they’re now calling rugby style tackling.”

Despite his sensationalist comments on exactly who is trying to bring about the downfall of football, Arians’ comments on emphasising rugby-style techniques are fair, but he seems to ignore the fact that even the most intricate tackling drills won’t always prepare players for inherent violence on the field. The days of signing a child up to a Peewee league and just hoping he or she has a good time are over.