Here's what I'll say about Mays and his hits. They're illegal yet he continues to lay them. There's a fucking reason they're illegal, and this reason is especially applicable to Mays given his freak athletic build and abilities; that being, helmet-to-helmet blows drastically increase risk of serious injury, including instantaneous harm, like paraplegia, as well as long term harm (see any number of boxers).
You can say that Spielman or any number of other players we worshiped in the past were guilty of the same type of ultra-aggressive play, and you wouldn't be wrong. But the distinction is that helmet-to-helmet hits are illegal now and they weren't then. And, most importantly, the reason they're now illegal is that medical evidence demonstrates their long and short term effects. In other words, we now know what we did not know when Spielman played. I don't know whether Chris Speilman would have played the game differently had he played today as opposed to back then, but the rules have changed for damn good reasons. This isn't about football being a contact sport or about super-machismo in a physical sport. It's about ensuring that the young kids we love to watch play the game can have healthy and full lives once they exit the gridiron.
I can understand the occasional helmet-to-helmet hit as an unintentional ramification of hard play, especially from a safety. But that's not what I've seen from Mays--I've seen a guy who just doesn't give a fuck. Roy Williams and the horse collar comes to mind here. He perfected that tackling method and was celebrated for it. But you know what? We realized, through experience, that tackling from the horse collar is excessively dangerous and can ruin players' careers. So it was outlawed. Yet he kept doing it. Well you know what? It's not legit anymore, so play within the rules, and don't put your desire to make the tackle above your opponent's ability to walk properly for the rest of his life. It's the same shit with Mays. He's been warned and warned again. With his size and speed, it's only a matter of time before someone ends up permanently in a wheel chair if he doesn't start to give a fuck about the rules. You can say it's a man's game all you want, but I say the manly thing to do is to make an effort to play within well-founded rules, and to achieve within those rules.
