Earl Campbell is perhaps the greatest football player ever to play in Houston, and with the Super Bowl in Houston this week he’s getting plenty of attention. His views on the current game are a little surprising.
The 61-year-old Campbell suffered plenty of injuries in the NFL. He has had both knees replaced. He has had four back surgeries. He went to an in-patient rehab program for a painkiller addiction. Football took a toll on his body. And yet Campbell thinks today’s NFL isn’t tough enough, and he misses the days when men were men, and they injured each other with brutal hits on concrete-like Astroturf.
“Well, football is not played like it was when I played,” Campbell told USA Today. “It was real football when Jack Tatum and I hit each other on the 2-yard line and I backed into the end zone. And after the game I said, ‘Hey, that’s the best I had,’ and he said, ‘That’s the best I had, too, Campbell.’ I mean, that was real football. But now . . . ”
Now, Campbell says, football players have gone soft, won’t play through injuries the way he did, and seem more interested in staying safe than winning a game.
“I can’t play because I’ve got a hangnail on my toe,” Campbell joked that today’s players say. “I can’t play because I didn’t get a pedicure this week. I don’t play because my head hurt. That wouldn’t have got the job done back in my day.”
The NFL is never going back to the kind of football Campbell prefers. Concerns about brain injuries have ended that style of play in the NFL forever. But Campbell doesn’t like it.
“It’s great that they’re teaching guys about the CTE and the tackling and all that,” he said. “But to play football you’ve got to be pretty physical.”
The game is still physical. Just not as physical as it used to be.