Football is not under attack.

North Carolina's Larry Fedora cut deep with his words suggesting the opposite last month at ACC Media Days.

But an attack suggests a coordinated violent effort, an act of war. An attack is an effort to abolish something. Football has issues. It must change. It must get itself out of the courts.

But despite all that, football is not under attack. Not when multi-million dollar coaches who employ million-dollar coordinators are pulling the strings. Not when the educational experience is shoe-horned around a 40-hour-a-week (plus!) "job" that pays for that experience/scholarship.

It is more accurate to say that football the way it is presently built cannot endure. There has to be a reasonable discussion about rule changes related to player safety. Texas' Tom Herman told me in March that the new fair-catch kickoff rule was a precursor to eliminating kickoffs altogether.

Fedora might flinch, but the math adds up. Fewer collisions equal healthier players. That's common sense. The game will change, become less violent. It will always change. We will still love it.  

As camps open this week, can't we celebrate the game just a little? At least discuss it without taking intractable sides?

  • Porter Gustin was walking barefoot out of USC's facility last September. A person on the other side of a door opened it inadvertently breaking Gustin's big toe. Gustin, the Trojans' outside linebacker, gutted out surgery then tried to play that week against Texas. He did until one of the screws inserted into his toe started to come out during the game. He finally went to the sidelines.
  • Stanford wide receiver JJ Arcega-Whiteside is an international relations major with an interesting internship this summer. He answers phones for Stanford provost Condoleeza Rice. In that sense, he is the line of first defense for fake callers who identify themselves as Princess Leia and Salt-N-Pepa.

    "Most of [the calls] are legit. She gets tons [of calls] a week, 'Hey, can I get an autograph, a picture?' Arcega-Whiteside said. "It's either important or not important. The people that are not important take it personal. They hammer me for it. It's funny -- if I'm on the other side of the phone, I do the same thing, too."
  • The good, old days of getting Heisman Trophy swag in the mail have returned. UCF quarterback Milton McKenzie's campaign kicked off this week when media members received in the mail (artificial) leis reminding them of the Hawaii native's accomplishments.
  • The possibility – however slight – of an FAU team coached by Lane Kiffin reaching the playoff.
  • College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock doing 40-plus radio interviews at SEC Media Days because that's the kind of guy he is.
  • Ask Utah offensive lineman Lo Falemaka about his sixth year of eligibility. Also ask him about his scar from surgery for a gunshot wound that, in part, required an appeal for a sixth year. As a freshman, Falemaka hosted a house party a friends. "Had to tell some the guests to leave. They didn't agree," Falemaka said. "One of their friends came out with a gun. I got shot."

    In the stomach. The bullet passed through his body and is still lodged near his hip. The senior thinks nothing of lifting up his shirt and showing a zipper-like scar where he was cut on. For him football, has been a lifeline after surgeries on both knees and an appendectomy. "All I know is I'm alive and I'm blessed to be here," Falemaka concluded.
  • Michigan State senior safety Khari Willis got a standing ovation for his speech at the Big Ten Kickoff Luncheon last week.
  • Two years ago, Malcolm Perry was pulled out of the stands to play quarterback for Navy due to injuries. At the time, he was No. 4 on the depth chart. Now, coach Ken Niumatalolo now calls Perry the most dynamic runner he's had at Navy.  Perry comes into 2018 one of only three players in FBS history to have two 90-yard runs in the same season. Until Perry did it last year, it hadn't been done in 32 years.
  • And is there anything more fun than Miami's Turnover Chain?

Under attack? Let's calm down for a second. It's more like the game is under review.

The NCAA basically exists because 19 players died in one year playing the game at the turn of the 20th century. Spearing wasn't a penalty until 1976. It's only been in this decade that targeting has been addressed.

For football to improve -- exist, even -- it has to become less violent. It's not about football aesthetics; it's about keeping players out of the hospital.

Unfortunately, Fedora doesn't seem to be alone. There is almost a lobby out there pushing the "football-under-attack" narrative.

Four years ago, myself and Dan Wolken of USA Today were the only media members in a room for an American Football Coaches convention presentation. Then-AFCA executive director Grant Teaff said even then, "If you haven't sensed it, our game's under attack."

A cognitive neuroscientist and former Texas cheerleader was trotted out to tell the room, "We're showing a [positive] brain change [after injury], not in months and years but in literally hours."

That's one alternative view. There are others.

Let's hope more of those stories get through. We need to be able to have a cogent discussion. Football these days is complicated, maddening and inspirational. It is not under attack.

At the same time the NCAA is being sued in head trauma cases and paying out multi-million dollar settlements, it is pouring massive resources into concussion research. That's good.

There is one study that shows that women's soccer players are second-most at risk to football players in per capita head trauma injuries. Where is the outcry in that sport for those women?

For football to change, it must accept that it needs to change. Two more college football players have died since May -- one definitely from heat stroke at Maryland.

Too many coaches have too much input in hiring and firing trainers and medical personnel, according to sources I've spoken to in the athletic training community. That raises the issue of who is deciding when injured players should return to the game.

It definitely shouldn't be coaches.

Football is an American institution, but it's a flawed one to be sure. We are told it builds character, just not absolutely. If that were the case, there would be no drug suspensions, arrests or academic issues.

Football is an institution, but it is also just a game. You play it at your own risk. In this age of bigger-stronger-faster, who else assumes the risk of injury is up for debate inside and outside of the courts.

If you don't fix it, the sport goes away. That injury liability is a huge issue. The day is coming -- maybe soon -- when humans can be diagnosed for their susceptibility to head injuries.

Football is an institution, but our country wouldn't "decline" without it, as Fedora suggested. Instead, we must have intelligent discussions about what is best for the game and the players who put their bodies on the line.

If not, it won't be football under attack. God love our favorite game, the attack will continue to be on the players themselves.