RUSH: Have you heard this news about the NFL? You haven’t heard this about the NFL? Running backs are not gonna be allowed to duck their heads? I mean, I told you people this was coming. I warned you. You all thought that I was exaggerating just like you did back during the SUV craze, 1996. Yep, no longer will you be able to use the crown of your head as a running back because you might hurt somebody, including yourself.

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RUSH: I am not making this up. And I think if the NFL keeps going, they may as well make Michael Bloomberg the commissioner.

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RUSH: This is amazing. A rule is gonna be proposed to the NFL competition committee that would make it a penalty for a ball carrier to smash into a defender with the crown of his helmet in open space. Even if he’s gay, it will be a penalty to smash into a defender with the crown of his helmet. Of course, nobody’s gonna really know if he’s gay, and therefore that will be permitted.

Now, I know many of you haven’t played football, but I of course have. I’ll never forget. We used to play these flag football or touch football games when I worked for the Kansas City Royals. Every Thursday afternoon, the baseball season ended, we would play touch football games, the Kansas City Chiefs front office. It was not tackle football. It was nothing. But even then, I mean the instinct when you are carrying the ball, the instinct is to lower your head and plow through. It’s an instinct. People that have never been taught to play the game do it automatically. That’s how instinctive it is. You lower your head and you plow through. They’re gonna make that a penalty now if this actually comes to pass.

“It would be the first rule in American football history limiting a runner’s contact with a defender.” Now, this is from a Canadian website. I’ve looked at a bunch of American websites, and it’s not all over the place. You have to really hunt for this to find it. Popular NFL websites in this country have not yet run with this story because, I’ll tell you, there are people who are flabbergasted over this. And there are a lot of people who probably remember my prediction. It was the middle of the year last year, maybe even longer ago. I could see what was coming. You know, the politically correct were embracing and getting their arms around this game and were gonna forever change it, and I warned everybody, “Enjoy it while you can because they’re gonna forever change it.”

If the owners are not careful here — I know it’s ultimately the owners who vote — but so much of this, like everything else, is rooted in, rather than taking a stand and believing in something, it’s rooted in trying to figure out what the fans want or what the noisiest social do-gooders want and making ’em happy. “First rule in American football history limiting a runner’s contact with a defender, outside of egregious acts such as punching a tackler, or grabbing his facemask.”

So they went and grabbed Emmitt Smith, the Hall of Fame running back for the Dallas Cowboys. They got him on the radio down in Dallas and a co-host said, “There is a new rule being proposed, saying basically you can’t put your head down to crash into a tackle.” Here’s Emmitt Smith’s reaction, the Hall of Fame running back for the Dallas Cowboys.

SMITH: As a running back, it’s almost impossible. ‘Cause the first thing you do is get behind your shoulder pads. And what that means is you’re leaning forward and the first part of contact that’s going to take place is going to be your head, regardless. I disagree with the rule altogether. It doesn’t make any sense for that position. It sounds like it’s been made up by people that never played the game of football. I don’t know how you’re going to be able to enforce that rule without really jeopardizing the integrity of the game itself

RUSH: Exactly. But did you note what he said here? This is really crucial. “It sounds like the rule has been made up by people who’ve never played the game of football.” Just like it sounds like health care has been taken over in this country by people who have never had any experience in that business at all. It’s the same thing, folks. If you think it’s probably the best thing for the government to run health care, realize this, from Obama on down, there isn’t anybody, outside of maybe a couple of doctors that are in Congress, that have the slightest idea what they’re doing. They’ve never run insurance companies. They’ve never run hospitals. They don’t know the first thing about insurance, medicine, treatment, any of the sort.

All they know is power. All they know is arrogance. They think they know how to do everything better than everybody else. They have contempt for average people. “You don’t know how to run your own life. You don’t know how to make the decisions to live a normal life. You’re just incompetent,” and here Emmitt Smith is basically saying it’s as if people that never played the game are making this rule. Because, folks, trust me: Go out and play football.

Not just with three or four people. Go out and play football. Get the ball in your hands and try to simulate gaining yardage, and you will find you instinctively lower your head whether you’ve been trained, coached, or not. This is a rule that is the equivalent of saying, “Don’t think pink.” What are you thinking right now? You’re thinking pink. It’s just absurd. Here’s the next Emmitt bite. He kept talking in his answer…

SMITH: If I’m a running back and I’m running into a linebacker, and you’re telling me I gotta keep my head up so he can take my chin off, you absolutely lost your mind.

RUSH: It’s exactly right. If you have to run through the line with your head up, you’ll get clotheslined or forearmed in the face, what have you. Now, again, you can’t find very much about this on a lot of American football websites, but it isn’t being denied anywhere. I bring this up because I want you to know, especially those of you who are new in the program — we have new people tuning in every day listening for the first time. I want you to understand, particularly you low-information people out there.

I want you to know that when I make a prediction about where we’re headed, I’m on the cutting edge of societal evolution. Particularly when it involves liberals when they’ve gotten their hands on something, don’t doubt me. I warned everybody that the game, particularly in the National Football League, was never gonna be the same once they started focusing on trying to eliminate concussions and quote/unquote, “making the game safer.” I’m not in favor of the game being different. The game is what it is.

You’re either gonna play it the way it is or you ban it.

But to try to change it this way, it’s gonna become something else. You may as well put flags on everybody and forget tackle football. People are gonna get hurt playing the game. It’s just the way it is. But we live in a culture where nobody should ever get hurt doing anything. Nobody should get hurt emotionally. Nobody should ever get hurt physically. Nobody should ever suffer. Nobody should ever get depressed. Nobody should ever feel any kind of pain in any way, shape, manner, or form.

Of course if you don’t, you’re not living!

It’s all part of the whole equation. So, once again, it is what it is. Do you know what I think they ought to do? Those of you who play golf, you know what a “gimme” is. A gimme is when you’re on the green, you’re putting, and you’re a foot or within two feet away from the hole. Depending on who you’re playing with (I play with guys, three feet is good), at that distance you say, “Okay, that’s good. Pick it up. Move on to the next hole. You don’t actually have to putt it out.” Why don’t we just say that if a team gets at the one-yard line, give them the touchdown?

Eliminate the one-yard plunge play where people get hurt, maybe. (interruption) Yeah, it would “take away the most dramatic plays of the game,” but it would also take injuries out of the game, and that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to make it safe. We’re trying to make sure nobody gets hurt playing this game. We’re trying to take the roughness out of it, the barbarism out of it. So if you get down to the one-yard line, it’s just a gimme. Give ’em the touchdown. Well, they’re already getting ready to ban the kickoff.

They’re talking about banning the kickoff as well.

Now, Donovan McNabb. Donovan McNabb, the former quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles, who finished his career with the Minnesota Vikings, is going to host his own radio talk show. You know, it’s getting to the point, folks, where it would take less time to mention all the people that don’t have a show than it would to list all the people that do. “NBC will formally announce Friday that McNabb, who retired after the 2011 season after 13 years as an NFL quarterback, will co-host an NBC Sports Radio show with another former NFL quarterback — Mark Malone. …

“The new radio show will air weekdays from 3-7 p.m. ET and will be produced in Phoenix, where McNabb and Malone live. … ‘NBC has given me a platform to continue to expand in broadcasting… And with radio, you don’t want to be stuck just talking NFL. We’ll talk baseball, basketball, the Olympics, current events. We’re also fans.'” So McNabb and Mark Malone with their own radio show on NBC. I don’t know anything about stations or any of that. Tom on Long Island. Tom, great to have you. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. I wanted to know, why do you think the media focus on safety in the NFL is orders of magnitude higher than in the NHL?

RUSH: Let me ask you a question in reaction. It’s not quite the perfect analogy. Well, first: Why they’re focusing on the NFL instead of the NHL is there’s a far, far, far bigger audience. Far, far, far more money. The NFL is the biggest sport, biggest athletic business in the country by far. It’s not even close. You have to hunt for hockey games on TV. NFL, people make appointments. But why all the regulation in the NFL? Let me ask you this. Have you ever thought why, a year or two ago, no matter where you went every business was focusing on how green it is? They’d have green sales, and they would brag about their new environmental regulations in the store. Did you wonder why that happened?

CALLER: Sure. I mean, marketing reasons.

RUSH: It’s because the people that are in charge of marketing and want to move product, believe that the people, their customers, care about this.

CALLER: Mmm-hmm.

RUSH: They believe that they can separate people from their money by convincing them they care about the environment. The left sets the agenda on these things. The left and the media gets everybody worked up into a frenzy over these things that are gonna kill us, hurt us, destroy us, harm us, make us sad, what have you. “It’s all our fault! Here’s how you can fix it. Give up a little of your freedom. Let government grow, pay more taxes, and you’ll be safe and you’ll never die and all.” It’s the same thing with the NFL.

There’s a gigantic lawsuit, thousands of players suing them claiming they didn’t know how dangerous it was. They were never told they could get concussions. Well, you know, once the trial lawyers start coming after you you’ve gotta make some changes to limit the awards that might come down your way. It’s a hideous thing. It’s simplistic to say, but this is what happens when people on the left get their hooks into something and want to “reform” it and change it, and make it so that they approve of it.

It’s over.

If the NFL doesn’t set itself up as some individual entity and tell these people, “Stuff it! We know our business,” the game’s never gonna be the same.

Mark my words.

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RUSH: By the way, they are gonna crack down on hockey. I didn’t mean to give hockey a pass. It’s gonna be the next target. They’re already looking at it now.