Football Then and Now.

Rose-colored glasses conceded, the 1950s were still the best decade ever. Uncle Sam was propping up a recovering Europe, our borders were not being overrun, the French Riviera was not covered by cement and inhabited by oil-rich oligarchs, and Mickey Mantle hit balls out of the park without the aid of steroids.

And pro football had suddenly caught on. The pros ran onto the field wearing those capes that made them look like ancient warriors, and once the game began we heard the noise--unheard of until then--of bodies hitting bodies at great speed. That wonderful novelist Irwin Shaw once took me to the Giants training camp and told me to just listen: for the noise.

I was hooked. There was the great Sam Huff, a nice boy from the South, whom Time magazine had put on its cover when Time was the number one weekly in America. The story was called "The Violent World of Sam Huff." There was also the all-American boy hero, clean and handsome Frank Gifford; the Texan Kyle Rote; the two grizzly, beaten-up quarterbacks Chuck Connerly and Y.A. Tittle; the two Roosevelts, Grier and Brown; Arnie Weinmeister and Andy Robustelli; and many more.

The currently winless Cleveland Browns had not lost a game throughout the 1950s, or so it seemed as they won the NFL championship year in, year out. Their quarterback was Otto Graham, their fullback Marion Motley, and their coach Paul Brown, who had given his name to the team. There were other great stars of other teams, too many to mention, but names such as Unitas, Bednarik (the last pro to play both offense and defense), Van Buren, Waterfield, and Ameche stand out.

With the 1960s came the great Green Bay Packers under Vince Lombardi, a team so disciplined and drilled that its players weren't charged with a single penalty throughout entire games. Fuzzy Thurston led an offensive wall that made it easy for glamour puss Paul Hornung to hit pay dirt with abandon. The biggest personality of all belonged to a Greek-American, Alex Karras, All-Pro tackle of the Detroit Lions, whose funny remarks in the middle of mayhem stirred opponents and teammates to complain that they were laughing too hard to function. Karras went on to a lucrative Hollywood career and married the beautiful Susan Clark.

But that was then. And this is now: cheap shots, head shots, blindside shots, tackles designed to disable, unsportsmanlike conduct as routine, post-play garbage talk, taunting of fallen opponents, and, of course, exploitation of the national anthem to show the rest of us that NFL players are righteous, socially concerned young men. Not like the old days. Once upon a time a touchdown was celebrated not at all, the player simply putting the ball on the ground and returning to the bench to be congratulated by his teammates.

Today, NFL players are off-the-field leaders in beating up girlfriends and wives, getting arrested for drugs and jailed for murder, and all sorts of other anti-social behavior. The extra curricular violence is too widespread and the incidents too numerous to list in this space.

I witnessed a particularly egregious on-field episode recently: During the Steelers-Bengals game on December 4, JuJu Smith-Schuster, defensive back for the Steelers, leveled Bengal Vontaze Burfict, who was away from the action and not anticipating a block. It was a high hit, helmet to helmet, and it laid Burfict out cold. JuJu then stood over him, yelling taunts laced with profanities. Instead of being ejected from the game, his team was charged with a 15-yard penalty. His coach said nothing. He was suspended for one game.

The man who could put a stop to all this mayhem, Commissioner Roger Goodell, hauls down 30 million bucks annually and is guaranteed a private jet for life, as well as health insurance for the duration. Instead of declaring the violence illegal and acknowledging career-threatening hits for what they are, Goodell turns a blind eye because he believes the violence keeps audiences glued to their seats. In this, he is mistaken. Americans continue to tune out the NFL. The decline in fan viewership is accelerating yearly.

When pro football caught on, teams like the Bears, the Giants, and the Steelers were owned by men who had invented those organizations--men such as George Halas at Chicago, Art Rooney in Pittsburgh, and Wellington Mara in New York. Today nouveau-billionaire owners such as Dan Snyder in D.C., Robert Kraft in Boston, and Arthur Blank in Atlanta made their dough outside football. For them, the bottom line is everything, aside from the ego boost they get with their ownership. Like the commissioner, they believe violence pays. Whereas in the past an owner would fire a player for crimes committed outside the field, now such things don't seem to matter. For the sake of space, I cite here just one example--Janoris Jenkins of the Giants. Jettisoned from the University of Florida following an assault arrest and two drug busts, he was nevertheless signed to a five-year, $62 million deal.

Which brings me to one contingent of people particularly responsible for this cesspool: universities that sign up high school thugs with football talent, call them student athletes, award them scholarships, then turn them loose for NFL recruitment--with hardly a serious concern devoted to their education. The Sam Huffs and Frank Giffords of yesteryear not only could read and write, they followed up their careers with successful businesses. Alas, some of today's stars will end up in the penitentiary.