The players and the public just found out about the degree of these risks.

2500 former players have filed a lawsuit claiming that the NFL (like the tobacco companies) suppressed study data showing these risks. If true, then the only people who knew all of what was going on in years past was the NFL ownership itself.

Have you not been paying attention to this in the news?

1) You fear the unknown and have a preference for the status quo, you don't know the future. Understand the difference between the two. It will serve you well.

2) Smokers and others said that bars and restaurants would collapse if smoking was banned. Because they feared the unknown and had a preference for the status quo.

I don't know what's going to happen, but I'll be that the self interested complainers will once again be seen to be chicken littles. And the NFL is betting big that I'm right.

Time will tell, but if I'm wrong, they will adapt again.

So you're telling me that the players and the public were too stupid to recognize the risks of playing a violent sport? I'm sorry I'm not buying that. Even if the NFL suppressed the study data, common sense dictated otherwise.

If personal responsibility was actually valued in today's society, the NFL wouldn't even be in this situation to begin with.

Both the NFL and College Football generate tremendous revenue and the players are being financially compensated (pros are being paid millions and collegiate athletes receive free schooling with the chance to be paid millions within the next four years). Team sell out their stadiums every Saturday and Sunday. What's wrong with the status quo?

It's human nature.

Smoking, steroids and brain injuries.

Addiction, and competition/money combined with the immediate gratification and delayed consequences not directly attributable to the bad actions... leaves the person incentivized to take certain actions.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/zI6vW-I8H-M" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Those poor former players. They had no idea what they were getting into.

The NFL is an institution and is taking personal responsibility for the situation. You are bitching about it because it interference with your satisfaction. You apparently want to be served at any expense.

The NFL wants to take actions that mitigate the risks and enable the game to continue.

You want that too.

However, you (as an analogy) want to drink, smoke, do drugs, have uncontrolled sex, eat anything at any volume... and want nothing to change as a result.

Which is the antithesis of personal responsibility. You are championing for unrestrained self indulgence.

Kind of an odd turn about, huh?

Nothing for you. Which is why you bitch when the people who the status quo doesn't benefit try to change it.

And that you dared to throw in college football (where payers may have identical risks but receive nearly 0% of the compensation) is the height of self serving denial.

Again, where is the personal responsibility? The players can't have their cake and eat it too. No one would watch them if they didn't beat each other up. They would then be forced to get real jobs.

I wouldn't call a free education from an accredited university and the potential to receive a lucrative contract within four years "0% of the compensation." You refuse to acknowledge that individuals should be held accountable for their actions. No one is holding a gun to an 18 year-old's head on signing day.

Again, you say that as if it's a fact. But it's not. And history says you are wrong to predict that. And the reality is that the NFL is a group of sentient beings who have the capacity to adopt to new data and changing circumstances.

If the league starts to collapse from this rule change or a series of them, the owners will act again.

I promise you this.

First of all, college basketball and football players are not remotely maximizing their economic self interest. The NFL Players get what, 50% of the billions their game generates? College players get next to nothing.

And you are the one demanding that the world act as if it hasn't learned anything about this in the last 20 years. With higher risks comes higher rewards, or greater failure.

You might argue that over time, indirectly the costs of the health risks are embedded into the league salaries.

That might be your only path to a defensible argument.

But in college that is not even remotely true. They get the same singular thing in return, that they did 50+ years ago. Nothing more today despite the higher risks.

And to your point earlier... yes, the player could make a choice to not play football.

And that is where your own arguments collapse.

You want to save the game, but you ignore the long term threats that the NFL is not ignoring. You are being self indulgent drug addict who demands the gratification today, tomorrow be dammed.

If parents, kids and the highest performing athletes start skipping football and choose to play baseball and basketball instead, because the risks of brain injury are too high to justify participation starting in pop warner where the rewards are zero, then the system collapses in just one generation.