It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

All of those rabble-rousing kids are finally back in school and off of my lawn. As the temperature cools, we can once again wear long-sleeve shirts without looking like we lost a boxing match to a particularly angry ocean, and — most importantly — football is finally back on.

There are those poor souls who still believe that baseball is the “Great American Pastime,” but truly there is nothing like watching inhumanly large men getting paid millions of dollars to flatten each other, guided by no more than their (alleged) PEDss and a set of rules that would make Pythagoras throw his hands up in frustration.

That’s good old-fashioned ‘Murica right there.

But despite my love for football and the Steelers in particular (#HereWeGo), I have realized with much trepidation that in 50 years, just when I’m the right age to sit in my rocking chair with a glass of Iced Tea and “The Boys of Fall” playing in the background as I watch football on a crisp autumn afternoon, football may not be around. Or, if it is, it will look vastly different.

It is even more disheartening to realize that this fact is probably a good thing.

Football has problems that have been acknowledged (ya know, the whole “permanent brain damage” thing tends to not garner many friends), but there are still many that have yet to really spark discussion.

Even starting from the most popular one, the way in which the NFL talks about and deals with concussions is vastly impotent. It took them a long time to even recognize publicly that it was a problem, but even when they did, the things that they did to solve it were more like plugging leaks than trying to fix the quickly fracturing dam wall.

Besides not putting their full weight behind measures and technologies that actually seek to mitigate concussions, the NFL also create rules like “helmet-to-helmet” penalties and apply them unilaterally without much forewarning and explanation. While all new rules take time to be effective, the other problem is that they simply rest on their laurels instead of attempting to gauge whether there is actually a net effect.

That is to say, just because more concussions are being reported per year, it does not mean that the number of instances in which they occur is actually decreasing.

The increased awareness of the risk that comes with playing football and the actions of highly politicized and maligned figures such as Roger Goodell mean that, at some point, the players and fans alike are going to reconsider whether the benefits of football still outweigh the cost.

Whether you like Brady or not, it makes most fans stop and think, “If Goodell decided he didn’t like MY quarterback, could he also unilaterally suspend him with dubious proof?”

I’m still going to call Brady a cheater just because I get a personal joy out of seeing Boston scumbags turn red in the face, but questions are raised on the fan side. And you know that they’ll be raised on the player side too. James Harrison and many others have been very vocal about their disdain for the NFL Commissioner, and it is dynamic players such as these that keep people tuned in. If enough of them leave, the industry goes belly up.

People may say, “Anyone would kill for the opportunity to play at that level,” and that’s true for now. However, there is a tension point that we’re approaching where the payoffs are no longer worth it.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. When we do finally reach the point where a shakeup is necessary, then the hope is that the result would be vastly better.

All I know for sure is that change is coming, and as I crack open a beer and watch next week’s game, I’ll be hoping that football is still alive and well when all is said and done.