Phil Mushnick

Phil Mushnick

NFL

Brain teaser: Let’s see NFL quit concussive promos

This will be a good season to measure whether the NFL, its coaches, players, licensing department and especially its TV partners and own TV network actually get it.

For the last, roughly 35 years, the NFL’s marketing strategists and message-senders have sold the most excessive, often illegal acts of on-field brutality.

“Kill shots” frequently were followed by the assailant’s chest-pounding and/or muscle-flexing — behavior that often appeared as hideous displays of low tribalism. Yet, these demonstrations quickly were chosen for enjoy-it-again send-offs to commercial breaks and, later in the week, promos.

Troy Aikman, who had 10 concussions, once noted what the NFL condemns with fines on Tuesdays, it sells the rest of the week.

But now the NFL, better very late than never, has entered a new day of sensitivity. That $765 million settlement on behalf of disabled and prematurely dead victims of player-on-player violence — immeasurably aided by the NFL’s failure to enforce its rules on blocking and tackling — encouraged the NFL toward such sensitivity.

The NFL now even sponsors concussion-prevention initiatives.

So, following an extended era when the NFL chose “Feel The Power” as its marketing slogan and unapologetic concussionist Ray Lewis as a product-pusher, and the wrong-headed bosses at ESPN attached “Monday Night Football” to the merry “He Got Jacked Up!” segment, and players stood blood-howling over players whose brains they’d just rattled, let’s now see if anyone gets it.