RUSH: Bill in River Falls, Wisconsin. Welcome to the program, sir.
CALLER: (garbled) Hey, Rush, how are you?
RUSH: Good. Thank you very much.
CALLER: My comment was I’m (unintelligible).
RUSH: Hold it a minute. Hold it a minute. I can’t understand what you’re saying. Are you out in the wind or something?
CALLER: Yes. I’m standing outside. I’m way into my (garbled).
RUSH: Yeah, that’s what I thought. I have experience with that. Right.
CALLER: I have to say I was listening. I’ve been very concerned about this football stuff. I’m a big fan, but I really care, and I think we need to start a new organization. Something about safety. My thought was perhaps Fans Outraged Organized Loving Safety.
RUSH: Well, one of the things we could do… Folks, I must tell you: Talk about being on the cutting edge. Way back in the nineties I first became aware of the concussion problem in soccer, and I put together a group called Keep Our Own Kids Safe. It was an attempt to educate people about the dangers of soccer. This is 10/15 years ago, and he remembers it. It’s one of the things that he’s talking about here, and it’s another reason you shouldn’t don’t discount what I’m saying to you about the future of football, ’cause I called it on soccer. We put together a couple of PSAs.
I remember we had people calling here telling me that I was full of it and didn’t know what I was talking about. Other people called and agreed and thought I was really on to something. So we put together a PSA. We have two, actually, do we not? (interruption) We have four! We have four PSAs for Keep Our Own Kids Safe. Let’s listen to a couple of them. And again, now, this is easily 10 to 15 years ago.
BEGIN PSA #1
JOHNNY DONNOVAN: (caring music) And now a word from the Keep Our Own Kids Safe campaign about the danger of soccer.
LISA: I have played soccer since I was in kindergarten. I think that it has effected me. After soccer games I would feel lightheaded from hitting the soccer ball. I broke my leg playing a soccer game. Two years ago this time I was in physical therapy for eight months with a hip injury. All from soccer.
DONNOVAN: Keep Our Own Kids Safe national celebrity spokesman Rush Limbaugh…
RUSH: We thank God, Lisa, that you are among the fortunate few who have learned in time. But think of the people who have not learned, who don’t know, who are being led down the primrose path. My friends, I think it’s time for serious, drastic action. It is time to ban soccer from television. That, obviously, is encouraging a lot of people to play. Don’t let any of the sponsors that sponsor soccer advertise on TV. Something must be done now. You heard her story.
LISA: It’s not worth risking my body, injuries that I could be stuck with for life! I mean, who knows? I could be… Like, five hundred years (sic) from now I could be, like, a paraplegic! I mean, who knows? It’s not worth it.
DONNOVAN: Join Rush Limbaugh, and help support the Keep Our Own Kids Safe campaign. Look for the Keep Our Own Kids Safe chapter near you. You’ll find them everywhere.
END PSA #1
BEGIN PSA #2
DONNOVAN: And now a word from the national Keep Our Own Kids Safe campaign about the danger of soccer.
JANE: If they have a competitive player on the field that they can’t beat, they’re coached to hurt them and take them out of the game.
DONNOVAN: Keep Our Own Kids Safe national celebrity spokesman Rush Limbaugh…
RUSH: At what age is that taught?
JANE: Fairly young.
RUSH: That is the entirely different picture from what I have always thought soccer was! I thought soccer was a refuge from violence.
JANE: Yeah.
RUSH: I thought that’s one of the drawing cards of soccer, and that parents were sending their kids out there so they wouldn’t get involved in those kinds of activities on the field!
JANE: Well that’s exactly why we had our boys play soccer. This same son went to college on a soccer scholarship and he thought he would get away from this being attacked. In a tournament game he again won the ball, and the kid he won it from ran wide open at him, lunged at him with his knee up — and got him in the groin and shattered a testicle. They left him lying on the side of the field during that game, and he went into shock.
RUSH: This is a genuine horror story that I am sure it pains you to tell. I think it’s important to point out that the soccer moms obviously didn’t know, and don’t know. It’s not that they were irresponsible or are irresponsible like Jane, here. They were just uninformed. This is why our education campaign is so important.
DONNOVAN: Join Rush Limbaugh, and help support the Keep Our Own Kids Campaign. Look for the Keep Our Own Kids Safe Campaign near you. You’ll find them everywhere.
END PSA #2
RUSH: That’s right. They are everywhere. Then there was another guy that called who thought that I was raising concerns way beyond what was necessary. He pointed out that he’d played soccer all his life and he was entirely normal. I asked him, “Well, have you asked your family members if you’re maybe different?”
“Yeah, there’s no problem.”
I said, “Victims are sometimes the last to know whether they’ve been hurt. You should ask people if you’re brain’s any different now than it was before you started playing soccer.”
He thought I was full of it.
My only point here is that it was years ago, over 10 years ago, that we first spotted the dangers in soccer, which now you can find almost routinely referenced (particularly head injuries). The same thing is gonna happen in football. Well, it is happening in football. And once again, we were here on the cutting edge, the first to warn you of the trends in society toward changing and altering this game in a way to make it unrecognizable.