If you’ve paid attention to the commentary during NFL games this season, you may have noticed the lack of military terms announcers have used. Apparently, this trend has been going on for the last couple years. While the league continues to embrace the military – as they should – they’ve made a conscious effort to distance themselves from the “football is war” cliche.

It is inappropriate, league officials say, to do so at a time when American forces are fighting two wars halfway around the globe.

“It’s a matter of common sense,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said as he stood outside the stadium the other day.

Steve Sabol and NFL Films are following suit.

The same is true at NFL Films, an arm of the league that perpetuated for decades the image of football as controlled warfare by producing movies glorifying the game’s violence with phrases like “linebacker search and destroy.” In recent years the company’s president, Steve Sabol, ordered all allusions to war be removed from its new films.

“I don’t think you will ever see those references coming back,” he said. “They won’t be back in our scripts, certainly not in my lifetime.”

Two of possible sparks of change mentioned in the article are Kellen Winslow’s misguided rant when he was at Miami and the death of former Cardinal Pat Tillman.

[Washington Post]