Mar 25 2008
Futurists Are Morons
So the gang over at 100% Injury Rate started diving into Sports Illustrated’s new SI Vault, an online archive of all the once-great magazine’s stories. They stumbled upon this gem of a Frank DeFord column from 1979 that described how the NFL would look in the year 2000.
DeFord quotes heavily from some guy named Byron Donzis, a football fan/inventor who demonstrated the flak jacket to Houston Oilers quarterback Dan Pastorini by walking into the QB’s hospital room and having a friend whack Donzis in the chest with a baseball bat. Donzis’ 1979 view of football in the year 2000 was, to put it mildly, insane.
“I think you’ll have a lot of women playing quarterback by 2000. For one thing, they have a higher threshold of pain.”
“The quarterback will have a calculator in his helmet. It will be on his Lexan visor, so he’ll be able to see readouts based on percentages and statistics to determine the ideal play to run.”
“I’m visualizing devices that will allow a player—a receiver, say—to jump two or three feet higher than he does now. Or we’ll put a strong enough biomechanical device on a quarterback’s back so he can pass 150 yards, which will be important, because the field will have to be that large by then. Or a power-pack device on a running back’s legs, so he can drive through the line.”
Now here’s the kick in the ass.
“There’s got to be more strategy put into football. It’s got to be more of a war game. I’m really very concerned about football because I’ve loved it all my life, and if it doesn’t move ahead, we are going to be a country of soccer players in 2000.”
Well, God forbid that ever happens. God forbid that our children discover that there’s more than one type of football played on this planet, or that this country ever becomes a true citizen of the world and plays a game the rest of the world plays. What would happen if our children became entranced by these free-flowing kicking games that those loony leftists in Brazil and Australia play? We’re Americans, dammit! We’ll play our own football, and the rest of you commie pinkos can kiss our red, white and blue asses!
I’d like to think America has grown past such isolationism since 1979, but I’m pretty sure I’m wrong about that — just as wrong as Byron Donzis was about football in the year 2000.
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Strange how football chances ,in the mid 90’s i would never of never soccer being such a non contact sport like it has as for Rugby , totally different game now .
The irony is that we were a country of soccer players by 2000. Nobody noticed. No big deal.
BTW, did you see the video of the Estonia vs. Canada friendly, played in the snow in Estonia. Snow was falling, the pitch was covered with an inch or two of snow, you couldn’t see the touch lines or the penalty box. Wild.
I recall a Tank Mcnamara cartoon from this era (late 70’s) that was like this: speculating on American gridiron football with sci fi powered armor, playing on gigantic fields on the Moon in low gravity, etc.
Three words: Titanium Running Back. =^)
Seriously, Atari, update Cyberball for 2008. You know you want to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutant_league_football
Still my favorite 16-bit era football game.
I am a dork.