I missed last week because I came down with a case of the Van Vlecks, so maybe I owe you a recap of the month in sports. Randy Moss was traded...and waived...and claimed. The Miami Heat took their talents to Beantown and lost the opener. The Giants won the World Series. The Oregon Duck did some pushups, and someone taught Brett Favre to use a cell phone.

This week, I want to talk about a development I have followed for a few years now: football concussions. There have been some great writers that have covered the issue. Two that have been particularly enlightening are Alan Schwartz writing for the New York Times and Malcolm Gladwell writing for the New Yorker. The damage that the human brain suffers from football is frightening. We have always known that football was dangerous, but the measurable injury that we are now beginning to understand has startled the American consciousness. Once we consider that NFL players lose all their money paying medical bills, well, Bob Dylan said the times are a-changing.

Recently, the NFL responded to a number of big helmet-to-helmet hits that all occurred in Week 6: James Harrison’s hits on Mohamed Massaquoi and Joshua Cribbs, Brandon Meriweather’s hits on Todd Heap, and Dunta Robinson’s hit on DeSean Jackson. The shield of the NFL fined the defensive players enough to get me out from under my student loans. There seem to be three responses to the NFL’s actions.

The first group has welcomed the change, and said that it is about time that we protect the players on the field. The game can be physical without being violent. We don’t need to teach defensive players to be “heat-seeking missiles.”

The second group has criticized the first group as hypocrites. They note that the first group was the same that was running segments like “Jacked Up” on ESPN two years ago. In the segment, talking heads would yuk it up as players lay unconscious on the field. The second group notes that the same people endorsing the NFL for “doing the right thing” were perpetuating the problem by celebrating tackles rooted in a bygone corporeal bestiality.

The third group has criticized the NFL for two reasons. First, it acts hypocritically when it purports to care about player safety today but then moves for a longer schedule and is willing to remove all current insurance plans for players if it does not reach a new collective bargaining agreement with the players union. In other words, we care about DeSean Jackson’s brain, unless lawyers can come to terms on the new settlement. Second, the NFL acts with no identifiable standard. The third group suggests that the NFL has just overreacted to unfortunate happenstance and public reaction with excessive fines.

What I suggest is that all of these responses miss the mark. The NFL has not gone far enough. First let’s look at the rules. The NFL penalizes the following four acts with a fifteen yard penalty: “Unnecessary roughness,” “Unsportsmanlike conduct,” “A tackler using his helmet to butt, spear or ram his opponent,” “Any player who uses the top of his helmet unnecessarily.” http://www.nfl.com/rulebook/penaltysummaries.

These rules stem from safety concerns. The safety concerns have driven how coaches teach a defensive player to tackle. I wanted to find a more legit source, but I’m busy. So you get http://www.wikihow.com/Tackle. Here’s an excerpt: “Place your facemask on the ball. DO NOT DROP YOUR HEAD! You can get seriously injured if you make that big of an impact on the top of your helmet. It will drive your head down and cause your neck to compress. You may even end up paralyzed. Always keep you head up and eyes on the the ball carrier. You cannot hit what you cannot see!”

I am writing this before Week 9 of the NFL season. However, in Week 8 the Patriots played the Vikings. I was struck by something. Brandon Meriweather certainly led with the crown of his helmet a lot. The thing about it was that his tackles were indiscriminate. When he made such a move he hit his own players, he hit the opponent, and he whiffed. So as I understand the NFL’s rules, what Meriweather does is a foul only if the result is a foul. This is strange to me. He needed to come out of the game with what the announcers described as a “stinger” after one of his “tackles.”

The rules in this area are designed to promote safety. What Meriweather does injures himself in a recognizable way. He has injured opponents. Soon he will injure his teammates. I suggest that this is a penalty, and not just when he hits someone, but when he whiffs as well. Furthermore, I suggest that this behavior is so egregious that he should be fined incrementally upwards for every such action. The team should be fined incrementally upwards for every offense by one of their players. These fines should fund both player insurance and concussion research.

This is the point of the article where I make a tenuous legal analogy. When Meriweather spears an opponent, that action clearly falls within the language of the rule. But if safety drives the spirit of the rule, why is Meriweather’s intent to spear his opponent not transferred to his teammate? If I attempt to shoot the fleeing burglar and inadvertently hit the police officer, I have committed an assault. This is true despite the fact that we are both trying to apprehend the criminal on the other team. Likewise, if I attempt to shoot and kill another but miss, I am guilty of attempted murder. This is true despite the fact that no one was injured. The risk of harm is so great we criminalize the whiff.

Here is why this suggestion works and alleviates all of the criticism. The rule is a standard. There is no guessing. If you lead with the crown of your head in a tackle, it’s a penalty and a fine. If you lead with your facemask, and the receiver ducks, you’re in the clear, James Harrison. Also, the NFL, in enacting such a standard, would react to public outcry with a consistent message: the first priority on the field is the relative safety of the players. This is a good thing.

Lastly, and perhaps this is the English major in me, but I have found all the crown-of-the-helmet hits inherently cowardly. I was always told that proper tackling technique was to tackle with your head up. But the controversial hits all come when the player has his head down. My grandmother has forever told me to put my shoulders back, my chin up, and face the world like a man. A defensive player who leads with the crown of his head lacks the stalwart valor to face the man he hurts. Courage is the self-fulfilling prophecy of accumulated good deeds done solely for their own virtue. There is no Courage in ducking.

Listen, Meriweather and Harrison, you can cry about fines while families pray for their sons. But you can act physically without violence. You can either keep your chin down or you can man up.