Here’s an article that is hot off the presses today: “Despite growing safety concerns, Jon Gruden fights for kids to be able to play football.” It is your standard There is A War on Football fare, but now it has the voice of Monday Night Football leading the defense. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention right here that no one is waging war on football. People, actually, like football. They like watching it, they like playing it, they like betting on it. Even Jets fans, I swear. It’s a pretty cool sport, really. What people don’t like is: the league’s corporate arm lying to its own players for years about the actual science of concussions and the debilitating health effects playing could have, the league continuing to downplay these effects, and the league generally being an organization that seems incapable of doing anything right, whether that’s Ray Rice, Deflategate, or touchdown celebrations.

You might notice something about that list: it’s all about the organization of football, not the game. The NFL tries very hard to make its name synonymous with “football,” but it is not. The NFL is a P.O. box business address for an actual game that millions of people love. There is no war on football, there is only a war on the NFL, or at least the NFL’s often dubious actions. Even players and coaches in the NFL have voiced their dislike for the league, and commissioner Roger Goodell.

So, when Gruden says that he’s “really disgusted and almost pissed at people that are beating up football,” he’s only half right.

“I know (Hall of Fame linebacker) Harry Carson came out and said, ‘Hey, I wouldn’t let my (grandson) play.’ I heard (President Barack) Obama say ‘I wouldn’t let my kid play.’ And those are the articles that you guys are writing. But nobody’s writing articles about the people that say, ‘Bulls—!’ This is a great game!”

These are, in fact, things that have happened. As we learn more about the inherent risk in playing football, people are reconsidering whether to take that risk. Or to allow their young children to take that risk. While I would disagree with Gruden that “nobody’s writing articles” about how great football is, the default position for most Americans is that football is great. That is widely accepted and doesn’t need to be reported on. What does need reporting is the ways in which football is not so great, and that’s what is happening.

Gruden argues that safety concerns have always been around football, noting that he had to sign a waiver acknowledging that he might get hurt or die before he could play high school football. This is true, safety concerns have always been there and they will always be there. We just have more safety concerns now than we did before. Perhaps if Gruden or his parents were aware that he could develop CTE as a result of years of subconcussive hits, which could contribute to depression and violent mood swings that for some have led to suicide, maybe he wouldn’t have signed his waiver. Or maybe he still would have.

America “used to be a place where you could pick out what you wanted to do, and you could do it,” Gruden said. “You want to take a charge from LeBron James coming down the lane with no helmet on – that’s dangerous. But you know what? Some people like to do that stuff. So leave them alone.

America is still that place. No one is preventing people from playing football. People across the country still play football, hopefully now they’ve just made a more informed decision. That’s the craziest thing about the War on Football crowd. They argue that it is a Buyer Beware game, but bristle when people point out the things the buyers should beware.