It’s Saturday so let’s throw it back, what do you say? Rewind to 50 years ago at the Division III level when the North Central College football team was under the direction of Head Coach Ralph McAllister and secured a third-place finish in the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (CCIW) and 5-3 overall.
Since 1965, the Cardinals have clinched eight CCIW titles, honored 45 All-Region athletes and 23 All-Americans and played in eight NCAA playoff games.
Fifty years later in 2015, the team has played down to the wire games against nationally ranked teams such as No. 5 Wesley College and No. 22 University of Wisconsin-Platteville. Now 4-2 overall and 3-0 in the CCIW heading into today’s Homecoming game and Battle for the Little Brass Bell versus CCIW rivals, Wheaton College, the Cardinals are gearing up for the rest of the season and the next 50 years.
With Homecoming this weekend and the big game on everyone’s mind, it’s a great week to talk football!
It’s crazy to think that the first game ever played was nearly 150 years ago when Rutgers and Princeton went head to head on Nov. 6, 1869, and paved the way for the sport that modern day fans cannot get enough of.
Wow.
It’s a game we have come to love over the last 50 years and a pastime that will likely be a part of generations to come. The game has come so far from a four point touchdown and “All-Star” players who could do it all to instant replay and now we find ourselves getting hyped for Super Bowl 50, the first Super Bowl to not be numbered with Roman Numerals.
Let’s fast forward to 2065, 50 years from now. Now, I know I’m no fortune teller and I seem to have misplaced my crystal ball, but with my background in sports, I’m sure I could make some predictions for the future of football.
Some people wonder if football will even still be a sport in 50 years. Already, more young boys are picking up lacrosse sticks and putting the pigskin in the closet. Why? The number one concern is the injuries that athletes suffer year after year and the severe toll it takes on the body when they are sidelined. Concussions have become the hot topic and preventing them has become a source for funding and research.
Concussions and the risks associated with them will not go away, but the steps that the NFL, NCAA, and even a hometown football program can take to reduce the risks are plentiful. Over the next fifty years, helmet technology will improve and the fundamentals of the game, especially in regards to tackling and safe play, will be reinforced.
These changes happened back in the day as well—if you remember, the amount of padding that athletes wore 50 years ago was minimal: soft helmets, no mouth guards, flimsy chest and shoulder protectors. Technology has come so far since then and if sports technology improves at the rate that the Apple iPhone does, then football players could one day become technologically engineered athletic machines with a few human characteristics tucked in here and there.
With the culture and stigma football has created, I don’t think we have to worry about it going extinct in the next half a century. But will the numbers decline? There’s a chance. Or will more kids want to get in on the action thanks to the draw of new technology and game play? Also possible.
I can’t imagine not watching my beloved Green Bay Packers on T.V. in the fall or sitting in the box at a North Central game working the stats. Football is such a part of our culture, especially for college students, and would greatly impact colleges and universities if it were to disappear.
Enrollment would go down as football players were not longer recruited and the athletic department’s funding would go up without the cost of a football program. Or maybe all of that would shift to other sports and we wouldn’t have to worry.
For one thing, we would totally miss our football team and the absence of the sport would put a serious damper on our everyday lives. So let’s hope that the game continues to flourish for the next 50 years as it has from 1965 to now.
I don’t know about you, but I am looking forward to the next 50 years of football.
Let’s go Cards. And I can’t forget: Go Pack, Go!
