UNC Head Football Coach Larry Fedora did every other ACC football coach a solid yesterday, by putting all attention on him. During his media session, Fedora — Well, I mean how do you describe a guy going off the rails?

His media session seemed to be going fine. He was bantering with the reporters. Calling out one for wearing a shirt with avocados on it.

And then he went somewhere else.

Fedora was asked about the rule changes for the kickoffs that allow for a fair catch anywhere inside the 20 to have the ball placed at the 25 to start the offensive possession and how the game has changed. And he had feelings.

“I feel that the game will be pushed so far to one extreme that you won’t recognize the game 10 years from now,” Fedora said.

Okay, this is not an uncommon opinion. The game has clearly been changing over the decades. And there are plenty of people who have that thought. And he even prefaced the comments by talking about the improved safety of the game because of a lot of the rule changes that have been put in place. Perhaps suggesting caution and pumping the brakes on more changes.

“And I do believe that if it gets to that point, then our country goes down too.”

Wait. What?

Is he saying the US is going down in 10 years if football continues to change? I’m sure it’s a bit of hyperbole on that part, but you know that an absurd statement linking football changing to the decline and fall of the United States is going to get everyone’s attention($).

His next answer was prompted by a simple question about what is the one thing that cannot go away from football:

“If we go to touch football, the game’s definitely changed,” Fedora said. “And the game will not be as physical. The game will not be as tough as it is, you know? A few years back, I had an opportunity to ask a three-star general, I had a question for him: ‘What is it that makes our country, our military, superior to every other military in the world?’ He was like: ‘That’s easy. We’re the only football-playing nation in the world.’ And he said most of all of our troops have grown up, have played the game at some point in their life, at some level. And the lessons that they learned from that game is what makes us who we are.”

So a general blows smoke up the ass of a football coach and he takes it as gospel? Wait, I got it. NFL Europe was actually a secret plan to toughen up Europe and NATO. It’s failure can be directly tied to the present administration’s complaints. It’s all there people. Just follow the trail!

Sorry. Got a little sidetracked. It used to be, “Baseball. America. Apple pie.” You know, the Great American Pastime and stuff. Things change. Maybe.

To some degree it is amusing to see Fedora puff himself and football coaches as a whole as some sort of noble patriotic beings who are out there fighting for the soul of America.

On the other hand…

Seriously, dude. WTF?

When asked who is attacking and really what the hell he is talking about?

When asked who he blames for the game being under attack, Fedora said “a groundswell of data that is tweaked one way or the other.”

“Because I can take the data and I can make it one way, you can take the data and make it look another way,” he said. “And whoever is presenting it is the one that gets the say-so.

“So are there some things that are negative about the game? There’s no doubt about that. But I can tell you just in my lifetime from when I played the game early on to where we are today, there’s a huge difference in the way the game is played and the way athletes are taken care of.”

Care for a cigarette?

It was wild. And it caused a stir. So much so, that Fedora had to come back for more. Inviting some media for a little more talk. The expectation being of political-style clarification that walks back some of the crazy.

Nope.

Here’s the video if you want.

But I’ll go with the print.

Obviously aware of the stir, UNC arranged for Fedora to do a separate breakout session with reporters, although the five-minute exchange left those in the gathering wondering what exactly was the purpose of this follow-up.

“What do you guys want?” Fedora cracked upon his second go-round.

Everyone wanted to know what exactly he was thinking when he uttered his earlier comments, on his fears about the future of football.

…

“I don’t know if clarification’s the right word,” he said. “It’s more about what I said: I’m not sure that anything is proven that football itself causes it. Now, we do know from what my understanding is, is repeated blows to the head cause it. So I’m assuming that every sport that you have, football included, could be a problem with that, right? As long as you’ve got any kind of contact, you can have that. That does not diminish the fact that the game is still safer than it’s ever been, and it is for the game. Because we continue to tweak the game to try to make it safer for our players.

“I’m gonna take, for what we do just even in Chapel Hill: We have the accelerometers in our helmet, we’re able to measure the impacts on their heads. We’ve got (Dr.) Kevin Guskiewicz, who’s one of the leaders in studying concussions across the country. You’ve got the retired players from the NFL coming to Chapel Hill to be researched while they’re there. So we do so many things there in Chapel Hill to make it even safer for our players.”

So what, exactly, did Fedora mean when he insisted that the game was under attack? He spoke earlier about how there is a “huge difference” in the way the game is played today compared to when he played more than 30 years ago.

Is that it? A safety thing?

“No, that’s not what I meant. No. I did not,” Fedora said the second time around. “How is the game under attack? To me, it’s more about people twisting the data and the information out there to use for whatever their agenda is. Tweaking the game doesn’t mean that the game is under attack. Anytime you’re changing the game for the betterment of the health and safety of the players, you’re doing a great thing. So that’s not attacking the game; that is changing the game. That’s not attacking it.”

Asked who was attacking the game, he said he had nobody specific in mind. Asked if he does not believe in studies about the sport’s safety, he said it depends on the study. Asked if all studies did not come to the same conclusion, he said, “I don’t know. I don’t know all the studies.”

…

He was asked if reports on the drop-off of pee-wee football participation were what he meant by fearing for the game’s future, and he said that was it … even though he had stated in his earlier media session that kids should not play tackle football until middle school.

What it comes down to with Fedora is he doesn’t want to hear about CTE and doesn’t want anyone else to either. Just like the NFL.

The best way to do that is to argue that the science isn’t complete. That there is disagreement. That more work needs to be done, and not sensationalized.

Stop.

Football is a brutal and at times ugly sport. It involves punishing physical abuse that can result in physical trauma, wrecked joints, major obesity issues, CTE and other long-term physical problems for the people who participate. Not all. Some don’t. Whether by some freak of their body, luck or what have you. But it is not something that can be wished away.

As a fan, I make the devil’s bargain with this. I enjoy it. I watch it. Hell, I’ve been blogging on Pitt football for 15 years. I’m complicit in my own way. But I’m not pretending it isn’t there.

More changes are coming. Maybe it becomes “unrecognizable” in 10 years. Just as the game is unrecognizable from where it was 100+ years ago — when the sport was nearly outlawed because college kids were literally being killed playing the game.