The reverberations of the New Orleans Saints bounty scandal will be felt down through the college and high school ranks soon enough.

The connection between what the Saints did and the lower levels of football has already been made. Those who defended the practice, most of them players, pointed out that rewards for big hits are part of the culture of football.

There is no denying they are an accepted and encouraged practice in college and high school football. The reward isn’t a $10,000 bounty. It’s a helmet sticker, a notch or engraved name in an ax, “hit stick” or some other symbolic prop.

One need not dig too deep into the Sun Journal photo archives to find teams with skull-and-crossbones stickers on their helmets. We can safely assume those aren’t handed out for raising the most money at the annual bottle drive.

Even if they don’t put stickers on their helmets, coaches still tap kids on the  headgear when they come to the sideline after a bone-crunching hit. Most of those hits are clean, some are not. Some coaches chastise a player when a hit isn’t clean, some don’t.

Teammates congratulate the hitter. The hitee is usually the object of genuine concern if he is injured, but sometimes the players taking a knee are simultaneously quietly mocking the kid writhing in pain on the 30-yard-line or muttering that the s.o.b had it coming to him or that they can’t wait to see the hit again on film.

The coaches usually don’t disappoint at the weekly film session. Sometimes they even stop the tape, rewind it and show the hit again, in slow motion, and not just because they want to use it to illustrate textbook form tackling.

For a high school football player, the “oohs” and “aahs” and “attaboys” they hear from their coaches and teammates for delivering one of those blows is almost as big a rush as delivering the hit itself.

But football is a violent sport. With that in mind, the overwhelming majority of coaches spend a great deal of time teaching players the fundamentals of blocking and tackling to protect themselves and their opponents from injury.

Coaches, players, administrators, officials, trainers and parents are more educated than ever on injury prevention and recognition, yet injuries are still unavoidable.

Most people who know the game know about the inherent risks and accept them but still maintain their vigilance. They also know there is a difference between your typical big hit and what Saints coaches Sean Payton and Gregg Williams promoted in their locker room. And they know that any coach who promotes that kind of dirty football isn’t going to last very long in high school football, especially in Maine.

But some people don’t understand this and will look at what the Saints did and the overall culture of football and try to change it.

Surely the culture could use some, uh, modernization. But it can be taken too far and forever change the way the game is played. You don’t need to be a cynical sportswriter to figure it ultimately will.

It may be through litigation. So far, greedy and/or misguided parents who have  tried that avenue have been largely unsuccessful. But the wheels of justice are known to dramatic turns against common sense. 

It could be through something else infested with lawyers, the federal government, where opportunities to grandstand and meddle are rarely missed. Sen. Dick Durbin has already called for hearings on the Saints’ bounty program and is demanding professional and collegiate leagues explain what they’re doing to curb dirty football. Late last year, a Senate committee held hearings on another topic making a lot of headlines, concussions.

It could be through rec committees and booster clubs. Over the last couple of decades, they’ve assaulted the spirit of competition in some corners by not keeping score and giving everybody a trophy so nobody gets their feelings hurt.  Would anybody be stunned to see those groups overrun by the next generation of nervous Nellies who won’t tolerate any physical risk to their sons and daughters and demand youth and high school football become a non-contact sport?

Call that pessimistic or even silly. But just like the pros, high school players are getting bigger, stronger and faster and are capable of inflicting more physical harm now than ever. The more frequent and devastating injuries become, the more likely outside forces will step in and force change. And they probably won’t know or care to know the difference between a bounty and a helmet sticker.

Randy Whitehouse is a staff writer. His email is [email protected].