It’s a huge problem. And it needs to be said that a class action is not necessarily forthcoming. They might sue individually and see how the initial cases shake out. If it’s class action, though, it’s from a group of guys with really high medical costs. No way that doesn’t get covered. Whether the settlement, after that, winds up fair remains to be seen. Some number of the players may not care.
Moby Goodell. . . I like that a lot. He’s having a tough day, with Wag the Deflated Football not working out so well.
Long form - I mean really long form - piece about Paul Oliver and CTEs. Oliver was a UGA alumnus who didn’t stick around in the NFL due to injuries, the most unfortunate being what turned out to be CTE. He took his own life, like way too many other former NFL players. The stories of his last few years are grim. Also included is a success story; his former teammate Tra Battle also suffered from concussion issues (and then depression after Oliver’s death), but was able to get help in time.
Among the spectacles of our sports-entertainment complex, there are only two in which people are regularly killed — not accidentally, but directly as a result of that sport’s essential identity and, more ghoulishly, that sport’s essential public appeal. One of them is auto racing. The other is American football. Of the two, there is only one in which children are now regularly killed. That sport is not auto racing. That sport is American football. This weekend, the sport killed another child.
Read the book. It’s chilling. My kids will never play football, and i have to say with the exception of my Patriots, I’m not watching a ton of football anymore. I’m conflicted even watching any football.
I have a friend who has been told that he has CTE from all of his years riding in rodeos. He’s only in his 50s and the effects of it are becoming very noticeable. In fact, he had to quit his job. This will be an interesting movie to watch.
Among the spectacles of our sports-entertainment complex, there are only two in which people are regularly killed — not accidentally, but directly as a result of that sport’s essential identity and, more ghoulishly, that sport’s essential public appeal.
The idea that people watch football because there is a possibility that a player will die is ludicrous. And well-suited to Grantland.
Good thing that’s not what the Grantland author was saying.
Rather, it’s that one of the things the public loves about the sport is the physicality. And more specifically “big hits”. Further, that a possible result of those sorts of thing is massive physical trauma and rarely but unfortunately death. Nobody cheering is doing so in the hopes that someone is permanently injured. Nobody that isn’t blind drunk, anyway.
Your re-interpretation of the author’s sentence deprives it of meaning. Let’s boil out some of the excess prose and see the core sentence structure: “people are regularly killed . . . as a result of . . . that sport’s essential appeal,” describing fans of both football and auto racing as “ghoulish.” You can reach your own conclusions, but I think the author’s intent to characterize both as blood sports is clear. And he’s also ignoring deaths from combat sports.
And yeah, I’ve read stuff in Grantland, and they are always in a little bit of awe as to how masterful and erudite they can be without the limits of writing for “ordinary” publication.
I believe that many writers - Grandland’s are not exceptional here, being about average in terms of how guilty they are and how many are guilty - are inclined to all sorts of indulgences and these things are sort of like the tides. But you are too biased the parse this article.
Hey, why doesn’t the NFL switch to flag football rules? If the “big hits” and tackles aren’t part of the draw, we should be just as satisfied with pulling flags from Velcro belts, right?
I saw this movie yesterday. Very well done movie. Purely as a movie, I’d say the Dr. portrayed by Will Smith is immediately fascinating. I love that the movie draws you in with his work on cadavers for death penalty cases, and then the NFL player is presented as an intriguing mystery, and by that point I was completely hooked and drawn in.
Good movie. And I’m glad that this research is helping the NFL make changes with Concussion protocols, etc. Hopefully it will make a difference.
WaPo has an article up about Dr Omalu and how he’s been exaggerating his own role in publicizing CTE, overstating statistics, and profiting mightily from the whole thing.
This isn’t an NFL denial piece. It doesn’t say CTE isn’t an issue. But it does point out some poor behavior by Omalu that can’t be helping efforts to take action to prevent it.
