Forgive me while I talk about a real life game for a bit, rather than video games.

"The NCAA was founded in 1906 to protect young people from the dangerous and exploitive athletics practices of the time.

The rugged nature of early-day football, typified by mass formations and gang tackling, resulted in numerous injuries and deaths and prompted many college and universities to discontinue the sport. In many places, college football was run by student groups that often hired players and allowed them to compete as non-students. Common sentiment among the public was that college football should be reformed or abolished.

President Theodore Roosevelt summoned college athletics leaders to two White House conferences to encourage reforms. In early December 1905, Chancellor Henry M. MacCracken of New York University convened a meeting of 13 institutions to initiate changes in football playing rules. At a subsequent meeting December 28 in New York City, 62 colleges and universities became charter members of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS)."

The above is from the official history of the NCAA as posted on their Web site[1].

A little over 100 years ago, American football was so dangerous, the President of the United States stepped in and made those in charge adopt new rules to protect player safety. In the wake of the New Orleans Saints Bounty Scandal[2], many talking-head ex-football players keep telling us non-football-playing folks we "just don't get it." This is the culture of the NFL, they say. Defensive players are coached to take out the other team's star players. Adding a little money to sweeten the pot may sound thuggish, but it isn't really needed. Defensive players are all just head-hunters anyway and we should accept it as a part of football.

Well, let's read between the lines, shall we?

First, when defensive players admit they play to take out the other team's best offensive players, they are implicitly calling themselves incompetent. They are confessing they can't actually play with the other team, so they have to physically maim them in order to win. Nice call, guys. I guess you can't all be Deion Sanders, who made himself the most feared defensive player on the field despite having a reputation as not liking to actually touch anyone, much more tackle or hit them.

Second, defensive players reveal they are completely out of touch with mainstream America, which is developing an abhorrence for this type of blatant violence. Football is a physical sport, yes, and accidents and injuries happen. But Americans don't want teams deliberately trying to injure each other. We want to see the stars—offensive and defensive—perform, not sit on the bench because they took a helmet in the knee. If people want to watch men try to maim each other, they can turn on boxing or MMA. But there's a reason football draws much larger audiences than those two bloodsports—football fans want to see a strategic game of chess, not a bloodbath.[3]

Third, defensive players are biting the hand that feeds them. Fantasy football has become big business in America and around the world. Putting the stars on the bench is a sure way of irritating millions of fantasy football players—the same people who help support the huge salaries many pro athletes command. All fantasy players expect chance may implode their team; knowing the defensive players are deliberately trying to implode fantasy teams? That's pushing the fantasy players, at least, to want to enforce more rules to increase safety on the field.

Which brings up the final point: we, the fans, are the customer of the product the NFL is selling. If you are selling a product and your customers come to you with a complaint, do you really think you ought to look your customers in the eye and tell them they "just don't get it?"

Yeah, I don't think so, either. The overt (and covert) nature of the game must change. We, the fans, demand it. The NFL has been moving in that direction for quite some time—whether to please fans or avoid lawsuits is irrelevant. The game is changing, it must change before the government steps in again, as it did in 1906, and force the change on the NFL. The fact Gregg Williams and his crew blatantly chose to ignore the rules of the game and the changing nature of the sport is sad and disheartening.

It is they—and all the talking-heads who are defending them—who just don't get it.

[1] http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/NCAA/About+the+NCAA/Who+We+Are/About+the+NCAA+history

[2] For the past three years, defensive players on the Saints have been rewarded with cash payments for "taking out" (i.e. knocking out of the game) players on the other team. The "bounties" were paid with full knowledge of the defensive coordinator, Gregg Williams, and in direct violation of a standing rule of the NFL and NFL Players Association for the past 20 years. You can read all the sordid details on ESPN or SI or any other sports news Web site.

[3] All the researchers putting time into trying to prove violent video games make kids violent ought to turn their attention to this real-life game that celebrates violence. More and more parents are waking up to the fact a life in football offers only a slim chance of fame and wealth and a very large chance of permanent, debilitating injury.