By the end of the game, a 52-0 rout, five boys on the losing team were receiving emergency medical care for concussions.

Even as the smaller boys on the field were hit hard and carted off one by one, their own parents did not try to stop the game. Moms and dads stood on the sidelines, cheering. Though later suspended after a hearing, the refs and coaches continued playing, concerned about notching up another game for the 2012 Pop Warner football schedule.

This was not a Monty Python bit or a South Park episode. This really happened in Southbridge a few weeks ago.

Such is the glory and delirium of American football—invigorating autumn air, the crack of a beer at the tailgate, the snuggly team-logo sweatshirt, boys with men in showers.

It’s been a bad year for America’s favorite fall sport, what with lawsuits by former NFL players, the Penn State scandal, pro player suicides, college and high school deaths, and brain injuries at all levels. The NFL just threw $30 million at the National Institutes of Health in a Hail Mary philanthropic pass to avert the PR and legal mess over a link between football’s repeated concussions and early-onset Alzheimers. The commissioner is using words like “evolve” to describe football’s future.

It’s been building for years, but the sport seems to have reached a crisis point. The National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research says all football games (from sandlot to NFL) cause an average of nine deaths a year. Just last week, a 19-year-old kid named William Wayne Jones III collapsed and died during a practice on the field at Tennessee State University. The cause of death is yet to be determined.

Then there are the deaths off the field: in August, Tennessee Titans wide receiver O.J. Murdock shot himself in a car and died at age 25, becoming the sixth NFL player to commit suicide in two years, a phenomenon that may be related to brain injury.

The dead are far outnumbered by the walking wounded. A study released in September found that NFL players faced a higher than average risk of Alzheimer’s. The study followed 3,400 long-term NFL players between 1959 and 1988 and found that their risk of developing the disease was four times that of the general population.

Thousands of former players have sued the league claiming the NFL failed to inform them of the long-term danger of brain damage from repeated concussions. Plaintiffs are seeking to hold the league responsible for the care of players suffering from these problems.

But is there any way to reconcile player safety and the sport’s inherent crowd-pleasing brutality?

Baseball is often called America’s pastime, but the tapestry of physical grace and brute strength at the heart of football is the more perfect distillation of our national essence. We are the only nation that plays real football, not the delicate “futbol” of the rest of the world. Perhaps only British and Australian rugby teams or Spanish bullfighters match us in terms of public blood sport.

The NFL retirees deserve to win their lawsuits, although knocking brains out of their own and other men’s heads is what they signed up for. Unlike the gladiators of ancient Rome, who were literal slaves forced onto the stadium grounds to fight for their lives, pro football players choose the sport, and get paid quite a lot. The median NFL player’s salary is $770,000. Of course the money’s not quite so staggering when you consider that the average career lasts just three and a half years, unless you include an announcer gig or a Ford dealership.

Is $2 million just compensation for relinquishing one’s compos mentis years long before one’s peers? It’s too late to ask Michael “Iron Mike” Webster, the famed Pittsburgh Steelers center who, like so many other players, was diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy—a degenerative disease—only after his death, following years of depression, pain and dementia.

Trouble is, college ball is dangled as one way out of poverty for big, athletic kids. The pot of gold is alluring, and it’s hard to blame kids for choosing the sport. But the de facto commodification of poor strong kids means that players are all still property of the team “owners.”

And what owners they are. The average team is worth more than a billion dollars, and rakes in an average of $261 million a season. Ads for the Super Bowl sold for $116,667 per second last year, according to Bloomberg.

Advertisers and billionaires are not the only ones invested: average Americans finance the great stadiums where the clashes play out, as the public till is poured into construction projects instead of childhood education. The Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, where the Super Bowl was played last year, cost $720 million—much of it taxpayer-financed.

Despite all the money invested in the sport, the bloom is coming off the Rose Bowl. Publicity about the long-term symptoms suffered by brain-injured football players has lowered participation in the sport at the youth level, according to reports from around the country this fall.

The NFL is scrambling to deal with the fallout. Commissioner Roger Goodell, speaking at the Harvard School of Public Health recently, insisted the game can “evolve” and be made safer. He said the league has changed rules, including outlawing the flying wedge tackle to make the game safer, and introducing enhanced helmet technology.

“Not long ago, the game allowed the head-slap, tackling by the face mask, horse-collar tackles, dangerous blocks and hits to the head of defenseless receivers and quarterbacks. All of that has changed,” he said.

Mr. Goodell claimed the new attention to long-term effects of brain injuries means the game is potentially safer. The league has taken strides to move up the kickoff line, penalize hits to the head and more quickly diagnose concussions on the sideline.

On one recent Sunday, three NFL quarterbacks—Alex Smith, Jay Cutler and Michael Vick—were taken out of games with concussions, with Mr. Vick’s injury described as “pretty significant.” Quarterbacks have probably been spending Sunday nights with concussions ever since pro football hit the airwaves. But three taken off the field on one afternoon is unusual, and likely related to the NFL’s newfound consideration for players’ brains.

About now, I sound like I’d rather be watching Masterpiece Theatre on Thanksgiving, but au contraire, I love these brutes. I can’t get enough of the prancing beauty of the running back or the quarterback’s soaring arc of a pass, the human perfection of Tom Brady and his throwing arm in the second before being crushed by the troglodytes of the defensive line. Who can resist the clash of helmets, the crunch of flesh and bone slamming to earth? Primal savagery delivered to our living rooms is sort of the whole point. Without it, it’s “futbol.”

But the price paid by brain-injured boys and teens, and by potentially thousands of grown men reduced to shuffling around with early-onset Alzheimer’s, is a pretty bill to pay for couch-potato thrills.

More publicity about football and brain injuries is anecdotally causing more parents to keep their kids off the field. Some changes underway include handing out penalties for tackling with the head, and emphasizing safer defensive techniques. But high school players still suffer 67,000 concussions a year in football, fueling a multibillion-dollar obsession that thrives on their new blood. Every Friday night this time of year, college scouts haunt the high school stands with binoculars and charts, scoping out boys like race horses.

Pop Warner, the sport’s equivalent of Little League, has made some changes, including limiting contact drills to one-third of practice time and prohibiting full-speed, head-on drills. One brain injury expert has advised “no tackle” football until age 14, yet Pop Warner phased out safer flag football in 2005 because parents insisted on the full-contact version. The league even added tackle for 5- and 6-year-olds.

The NFL can throw millions at brain injury and helmet research, but the real changes have to start at the local level, on fields like the one in Southbridge, Mass. Parents should demand that leagues and schools install stiffer rules to protect their kids and that coaches actually enforce them. If that means a kinder, gentler game, so be it.

On the one hand, Mr. Belichick has made a little money on the sale of the townhouse, netting $2.75 million, according to city records. Not bad considering that he paid $2.2 million for the five-bedroom, three-bath residence back in 2006.

But on the other hand, the house was allegedly a love nest for Mr. Belichick and mistress Sharon Shenocca, whom Mr. Belichick was rumored to have taken up with after splitting from his longtime wife in 2006. Or, if not a love nest, at least a friendly benefit of Ms. Shenocca's close relationship with Mr. Belichick. Whatever the state of relations, or lack thereof, between Mr. Belichick and Ms. Shenocca, their love affair with the Park Slope townhouse is fini.

The house sold at ask to 609 6th Street Realty LLC. after being listed in March (perhaps 609 6th Street is also trying to conceal a secret love along with his or her, or most likely their name(s)?). As for Mr. Belichick, while he purchased the home with infinite care under the BR Realty Trust back in 2006, he took a far more laissez-faire approach when it came time to sell, signing the deed himself before a notary in Foxborough, Mass., where the Patriots' stadium is located.

Maybe Mr. Belichick became tired of the lonely life in Brooklyn and decided to seek out the company of fellow NFL coaches Bill Cowher and Romeo Crennel on the Upper East Side. Group huddle!

So what did this unimaginatively named LLC that bought the place get? A double parlor, lots of windowed rooms with Southern exposures, a library with a fireplace and a large garden (it's no football field, but there's space enough to sun). Listing photos show a place disappointingly devoid of big screen TVs and sports memorabilia. The listing held by Brown Harris Stevens broker Charles Ruoff makes no mention of the closet situation, but we suppose it would have to be somewhat generous to accommodate Mr. Belichick's countless hoodies.

kvelsey@observer.com

Cosell. (Vernon Biever/Getty)

Howard Cosell—the man largely responsible for making modern sports commentating into what it is today and turning football spectating into a careful, tedious study (all while wearing some of the loudest ties)—damn near ruined the game. At a time when the only truly analytical approach to football was being conducted by mobsters calculating the betting spread, his beat-like commentary did something terrible. Harnessing his brash personality and deliberate way with words—and his unchecked arrogance—the law-degree-totin’ foulmouth changed the very nature of how we understood the action on the field. Much of this handiwork involved his ongoing, televised war of words with “Dandy Don” Meredith in primetime. Gone were the days when football was simply football. A new era was ushered in, and with it came the number-crunching sideline savants who bled the game dry of its blue-collar bravado and replaced it with a pedantic, stat-sick approach. Non-athletes were not only welcomed into the press box as vaunted experts, but came carrying a condescending tone toward the battle-hardened veterans who once lived and breathed the game to the utmost. 

Cosell wasn’t bad for the game in the ’70s—much the opposite, really. He brought a newfound appreciation for the reach of sports in America, illuminating the effect that athletes had on society: what happened on the field reverberated throughout. And, more importantly, he offered his keen insights with a check of reality, keeping in mind—for both himself and his audience—that the game was indeed a game. The raw, unfiltered excitement he brought with his now-legendary calls reflected the athletic spirit and vested interest of the country—yet when John Lennon was shot outside of his apartment, Cosell refused to keep the breaking news from Monday Night Football viewers, despite what it would likely do to the mood of the rest of the broadcast.

But the talking bobbleheads over at ESPN, the self-anointed Worldwide Leader in Sports, have made a mess of the tell-it-as-it-is reporter’s modus operandi, mistaking their overwrought analysis of the most insignificant stats for some invaluable contribution to a larger conversation that, quite frankly, is maniacal mumbo jumbo concentrate. Mel Kiper and Todd McShay’s countless mock drafts and Chris Mortensen’s hour-by-hour updates on everything under Commissioner Roger Goodell’s sun are tired, pointless sound bites. Enough already with the downplayed enthusiasm and removed deconstruction. I’d rather see coach Herm Edward all riled up, delivering his inarticulate spit baths, telling a rookie to get his head out of his ass. Or even former lineman Damien Woody’s huggable bear routine.

This Bristol-based circle-jerk of never-have-beens and their perfervid monologues are validated by six-figure (and the occasional seven-figure ...) paychecks—and high television ratings, extensive Twitter followings and innumerous Facebook Likes to boot. I understand why ESPN and like-minded networks allocate so much time and money to this programming: It’s a cash cow. But what does Adam Schefter actually do? He is simply the well-placed mouthpiece for organizations that want to pad their reputations and subsequent sales with audience interest—feigned or real—in their team’s depth charts, injury reports and locker-room rummagings. They “leak” him the “news,” and he turns around and effectively sells it at a premium. He’s a glorified PR flunky. There is not a smidgen of added value—at least not that he brings. This would be considered “sponsored advertisement” if it were on any proper news site. The point here is that anybody could report out these releases. However, ESPN doesn’t let just anybody do it. They wrangle journalism students—Mr. Schefter is a proud Medhill grad—who honestly believe they’re providing a community service. And they allocate a large chunk of their daily broadcast time to it.

Yet everyday Joes plop down in front of the boob tube and pay heed to these priggish ramblings. As if what these people have to say matters. We take Mr. Schefter’s word, and the views of his NFL “insider” colleagues, as gospel. And revere the preacher as such as well. Hell, it seems more people watch the fantasy football breakdown than the entirety of their hometown team’s game—let alone post-game analysis done by former players who have more of a real feel for what might’ve happened.

Plainly spoken, in this Madden (the video game) society, we all know better that anyone who has experienced it firsthand. Where did heroism and unabashed adulation go? Who is today’s Johnny Unitas, or Raymond Berry? Larry Moore? Alan Ameche? Baltimore Colts and New York Giants? Football was once a game that carried with it a present-day lore of legendary leaders and their on-field performances. The week after a gunslingin’ outing by Broadway Joe, there was a triumphant energy derived from his winning the game in a magnificent manner—not the throwing percentage or total yards amassed. Now all we hear in the days that follow is how Phillip Rivers’s 450 yards in the air make him the top quarterback to trade for (even if the Chargers are losing) or that make-or-break fantasy draft choice Chris Johnson’s success is being hindered by the Titans' penchant for slant patterns (even if they are winning).

The narrative of America’s game has become less about the game and more about the box scores and arbitrary assignments of calculable “worth.” But where do “intangibles”—that final effort, a two-minute offense led by the fearless field marshall who bounced back up following a blindside hit that left us thinking his day was over, only to see him stick it out in the pocket and make a few clutch audibles opening holes up for the tailback—go when doling out points for Sunday’s performances?

It’s all a convoluted numbers game now.

The season kicks off this evening, with the New York Giants squaring off against the Dallas Cowboys—two teams with hallowed traditions and true-to-their-colors supporters. And jerseys will be rife about town. As will the work banter and pregame happy hours. The G-Men will dictate much of today’s conversation. But tomorrow, it will be back to the drawing board for most. Fantasy football junkies—and casual enthusiasts in office leagues—will forget about the momentum that carried whichever team through a tenuous third quarter. All that will matter will be the stats. Will Eli Manning’s 330 yards (and whatever that equates to in fantasy points) stack up against whatever defense your team is facing in that week’s game? Is Dez Bryant’s one touchdown (six points, I know) going to do it?

This isn’t an indictment of fantasy football—I can appreciate the allure of it—or the extent to which sports journalists take their work seriously, or even ESPN (which isn’t the sole perpetrator). This is a cry for a simpler time, when stadiums, not unlimited access to the NFL Package on Time Warner, were the promised land.

“After all, is football a game or a religion?” Cosell once asked from beneath his egregious toupee.

Neither, Howard. It’s sheer science.

mwoodsmall@observer.com

Either way, Jerry Jones's famously expensive (and mostly unsuccessful-as-of-late) team, the Dallas Cowboys, were eliminated by last year's Super Bowl winners, the New York Giants. You may have heard of them: They have been counted out by pretty much everybody year after year and people often call for their coach to be fired and their quarterback to be traded.

Instead, they won the league championship twice in the last four years, which isn't half bad.

As it turns out, they will be playing this other team from Texas at the beginning of the season, in New York. Later in the season, the New York Giants will go to Texas, where they will play this Cowboys team. And the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones, had this to say about not the upcoming match, but the one after it today at a training camp:

"Y'all should come to Cowboys Stadium and watch us beat the Giants' asses," Jones told fans during a ceremony to signal the opening of Cowboys' training camp Monday, a festival-like event that featured a few skydivers and a performance from the franchise's famous cheerleaders.

This is interesting, because right before it, Cowboys defensive coordinator Rob Ryan decided he wouldn't say anything in that tone this year, seeing as how it didn't work out so well last year:

Ryan vowed early in last year's training camp that the Cowboys would "beat the ass of the all-hype [Philadelphia Eagles] team," but the otherwise underachieving Eagles won both meetings against Dallas. Ryan, who was especially humiliated in the Cowboys' 34-7 loss in Philadelphia on Oct. 30, plans to keep the bulletin-board material he provides with his mouth to a minimum. "Day 1, I'm not calling anybody out," Ryan said Monday. "I've learned. This is a bigger media than some of the other spots that I've been, so I'm going to keep my mouth shut and work."

That was before the skydivers made an appearance and Jones got on stage with a microphone.

Jerry Jones, who is 69 years-old, and yet, looks like a piece of octogenarian jerky, is married to Gene Jones. Together they have three children, and nine grandchildren. The Cowboys will face in the Giants in a local football game in September, and then again, in an away game, in October.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

In the span of a few months,

1. New York City's very own Archbishop Dolan becomes a Vatican-ordained Cardinal Timothy Dolan.

2. New York City's Jeremy Lin, the biggest breakout of the 2012 NBA season, is deemed The New Tim Tebow.

and now...

3. Tim Tebow, friend of Jeremy Lin, professional sports' most notoriously devout Christian, is coming to play for the New York Jets. ESPN Reports:

Unusually quiet in recent weeks, the New York Jets shattered the calm Wednesday by completing a trade for polarizing quarterback Tim Tebow, the team confirmed. The Jets will send a fourth-round pick to the Denver Broncos, a source said. Tebow, a former first-round pick, went on the trading block Monday when the Broncos secured free agent Peyton Manning, who signed a five-year, $96 million contract.

In other news, the New Testament is having quite a year in the five boroughs. While bookies have yet to set odds on the Jets' potential success with Tebow on the team, needless to say, watching the interactions between New York Jets coach Rex "Let's Go Get a Goddamned Snack" Ryan and one of the most popular figures of Good Christianity in the Western World will be nothing short of phenomenal.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

The plan is somewhat controversial for not including full emergency care or inpatient services, though the judge in the case would not allow a community group backed by a mysterious hospital and developer more time to submit its own plan. According to WNYC, the group, led by former Councilman Alan Gerson, is considering filing an appeal, even as the judge backed St. Vincent's argument that the plan put forth by North-Shore LIJ and the Rudins was the most expeditious option.

What is oddest about the challenge is the one partner the group was willing to identify, which Crain's reveals would have brought the gridiron to Greenwich Village:

But the group cited only one possible collaborator: the National Football League Alumni Association, which the trio said indicated "that they may like to be involved in establishing a hospital to treat their members [as well as the general public]. They would bring the NFL logo to any such development."

There is still a touchdown to be scored by another developer, though, as The Journal reports that St. Vincent's is also selling off a prized 37-acre swath of prime Westchester real estate.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

"Caleb hanie??" I wrote.

"Yeah," John texted back, "u know yur [screwed] when yur football team depends on a guy named caleb." (The actual word he used is one favored by Antonio Cromartie.)

Actually, they were screwed before the game even started. Their coach is Lovie Smith.

This is probably where I should state for the record that I have nothing against Lovie Smith. He has proven himself a capable NFL head coach, taking one decidedly unspectacular Bears team to this year's conference title game and another all the way to the Super Bowl. The problem with Lovie Smith, if you look at the evidence, is that his name is Lovie Smith.

Consider: Of the 90 teams that have now played in the Super Bowl (counting multiple-timers separately), only 10 have been coached by men with polysyllabic first names. (See the full chart.) The rest? Your usual Toms, Dicks, and Harrys—minus the Harrys, of course.

Good old-fashioned all-American appellations dominate the list, names like Hank, Chuck, and Weeb. (Weeb!) "Great strong simple names, suggesting a moral rigor," as DeLillo wrote in White Noise. That's Don DeLillo, by the way, as in Shula and McCafferty.

You don't find any Spencers or Aidens dressing down 330-pound nose tackles on Super Sunday. Name your boy John and he's got a shot at the NFL; name him Leonard and he's liable to end up with a Master's in Liberal Studies from Wesleyan. The list of Super Bowl coaches is filled with hardy, hearty, monosyllabic monikers. Vince and Joe, George and Sean, John and Jon.

Guys named Bill have won nine Super Bowls. That makes nine for Bills, none for the Bills. (Sorry, Buffalo fans.) Four different Mikes have won titles; on Sunday the Packers' McCarthy can become the fifth. (The Steelers' Mike Tomlin already won one.) Something's going on here. Right?

Much has been made of the NFL's culture of violence and machismo, especially in light of the recent awareness of the concussion crisis. In contrast to, say, baseball, where managers' names often tend toward the quirky (Sparky, Whitey, Dusty), football has always put a premium on authoritarian leadership and tough love. Bill Parcells, Tom Coughlin, Bill Belichick--these are your archetypical military-type leaders who managed to strike fear into enormous grown men. Football, as George Carlin famously pointed out, is like war, and in war you want your leader, your general, to be a strong, decisive, commanding presence. Imagine marching into battle behind a guy named Eustace. Thanks, but I'd prefer to leave my life in the hands of a Chuck.

Of the 27 coaches who have won Super Bowls, only one, Jimmy Johnson, went by the polysyllabic, more boyish-sounding, version of his name. And 19 of the 23 monosyllabic champions chose pithy nicknames (or a middle name, in the case of Sean Payton) over the ones they were born with. Chuck Noll instead of Charles. Tom Landry instead of Thomas. Admit it: "Michael Ditka" just doesn't have the same punch.

Bear in mind whom this is all coming from. Like millions of other American parents of the 1970s and '80s, mine named me Michael. But--and here's the kicker--my mother absolutely despised the name Mike. (Why she gave her only son a name with a nickname she hated remains a mystery to me.) From day one, I was to be called Michael, and nothing else.

When I was 13, I wanted to be an NFL coach when I grew up. Two decades later, I'm a writer with an MFA from a school that used to be an all-women's college.

This Sunday two other Michaels, now both Mikes, will lead their respective teams onto the field in Super Bowl XLV. One of them, the Steelers' Mike Tomlin, isn't even 40 years old. Let's face it, that could have been me out there. It doesn't matter that I've never played a day of organized football in my life, or that when I was 13, I barely weighed 100 pounds and ran cross-country.

I still blame my mom.

See our comprehensive chart of The Winningest Names in Football. >>

The device is the brainchild of the Dolphins billionaire owner Stephen Ross, who made FanVision available to all N.F.L. teams this season with the league's approval. Twelve squads have decided to test the device, including the Jets. The Giants declined, preferring to work on a cell phone app with one of their stadium sponsors, Verizon.

FanVision has some big advantages over a cell phone. Besides a larger screen it also uses its own spectrum, so service is far more dependable than over a cellular network. If you leave the game early to beat the traffic you can keep watching on your FanVision at least part of the way home.

A few lucky club seat members got the device for free, but fans who feel they would enjoy the game more while toggling between replays, fantasy stats and the Red Zone will have to shell out $200.

According to CNBC, "some people" think this has put a severe crimp in the league's style:

Some people are said to be unhappy about this conservative approach and have nicknamed the NFL the "no fun league" as a result.

We're pretty sure we've heard the "no fun league" epithet before learning of Goodell's fiscal conservatism. Contra CNBC, here are some actually plausible reasons why "some people" might reasonably call the league "no fun":

No Tweeting

No Tweeting by proxy

No impersonating rum icon Captain Morgan

No snow angels

No sex tapes

Rigorous accounting is not fun, but given the choice between the "fun" of teams plunging heedlessly into a financially uncertain future and the actual fun of allowing players to celebrate their touchdowns with snow angels, we'll take the snow angels every time.