Make Football Safer with Smaller Players

Vadal Alexander of LSU is 6'6", 340 pounds. That's too beg for safety.

I'm beginning to think that if we're ever going to have any sanity college football--and by its very nature, football is hardly sane--it will come by employing weight limits the way the Ivy League did with its 150-pound league some years ago. That league was meant to open college football to smaller people, but a version of it could well save the game.

I have always liked football, college football specifically, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to justify my support of an activity which causes so much mayhem, so many permanent and debilitating injuries (including mine, two of my brothers' and my father's).

Let's consider putting weight limits of 190 pounds on backs and 250 pounds on linemen. Nobody in the game could weigh more than 250 pounds. Period. We would not limit speed, aggression or intelligence, just size. And my guess is we'd cut injuries by a significant amount and permanent injuries by more than that. Think about all the lard asses who'd have to diet just to play, which would be healthier for them to begin with.

Men who are 190 to 250 pounds are big and football games among them could be marvelously entertaining (as they were when that was the normal size for football players; my dad was a big end at Virginia Tech at 190 pounds in 1933).

Young men, because of training methods, drugs, diets and other important elements are bigger than ever and stronger than ever. A 6-foot-7-inch, 380-pound tackle in Division I football is not all that unusual. We're headed toward 400 pounds as a new norm when 300 is far too big.

If you have a better idea, let's hear it.