Waiting on science our savior

As the evidence for traumatic brain injury connected to football forced its way into the sporting consciousness over the 1990s and 2000s, one of the occasional yet persistent responses to the concern was to insist that technology would eventually provide a solution that would preserve football in something like the form we have come to know. In most cases this technological salvation was expected to come from improved gear for players on the field, most particularly the helmet. League of Denial, the book that has advanced the story on CTE and brain trauma in football most successfully, includes a section on a particularly egregious example of such promotion of a new helmet model, a case of unjustified hype fairly early in the course of the crisis.

A more recent development in technology against football injury, though, seeks to address other factors. A pair of engineering students at Dartmouth University developed what has been called the MVP, or "Mobile Virtual Player." The students, one a former member of the Dartmouth football team, developed the MVP, essentially a robotic tackling dummy that simulates the movements of a runner to allow a defender to practice tackling.

MVP was a response to a maverick move by Buddy Teevens, the head coach at Dartmouth. Teevens, who also had head coaching stints at Tulane and Stanford in his career, returned to Dartmouth in 2005, where he had previously coached from 1987 to 1991. Five years ago, in response to his own rising concerns about concussions and other injuries, Teevens had decided to eliminate tacking drills in Dartmouth practices. The counterintuitive move didn't seem to hurt Dartmouth's defense; as the NPR article notes, the team's rate of missed tackles dropped by half in the first full season after the protocol was implemented, and the team sits at #2 in the preseason rankings for the Ivy League, mirroring Teevens's success in turning Dartmouth around from his earlier coaching stint. Teevens, though, still perceived that the team couldn't get experience with moving targets.

While it's encouraging to see people coming up with creative solutions, there are still concerns about relying on technological advances to fix football's problems. What problems, you ask?

1) Technology doesn't come cheap. Each of the MVPs Dartmouth is now using cost about $3500 to develop. A third MVP is on order at Dartmouth, and you might guess that a well-heeled Ivy League school can afford it. That's not a number that would deter an NFL team from ordering up a whole offensive platoon of them, and your Ohio States and Alabamas would have no trouble enticing a donor to pay for them as well. For Compass-Point State College, though, that could be a steep price, and for, say, a poor rural high school, that would be prohibitive. The ethical quandries abound. Who gets to play safely, and who has to put their brains at risk in practice as well as games? The divide between rich programs and poor programs would be cemented.

2) While the use of MVPs as a practice aid seems promising so far (it certainly seems to be working just fine at Dartmouth), it's too soon to say that for certain. A hit is still a hit, after all. In theory hitting a mobile dummy that wobbles like a Weeble should be less damaging than hitting another human being. It's still necessary to keep track of just how true this turns out to be.

3) Football has its own particular culture. It is a culture that more or less routinely expects its players to do, shall we say, rash things to prove their manhood. Can a sport that so reveres the "Oklahoma drill" seriously be expected to talk away from regular tackling drills?

4) Even if the MVP does prove to be beneficial in reducing injury in practice (and all you have to do is observe NFL preseason injury rates to know that this would be no small thing), there are still games to play. And very large and very fast people are still going to run into each other over and over again, and brains are still going to slosh around in skulls. And so far technology doesn't have any answers for that.

4a) And that becomes a problem that is pretty much always in play in any crisis where those affected in the crisis look to technology for answers. Continuing efforts to find technological answers to problems have a bad habit of both leading to unintended consequences, and delaying the actions that will inevitably be necessary to bring about real change. And people continue to get hurt, while the football world is "just killing time, with our eyes to the skies/waiting on science our savior..."*

*from "Murder in the Big House," from the album Chagall Guevara.

M-V-P! M-V-P! (photo credit: AP)

God hates Jordy Nelson!

In writing an issue-oriented blog, and trying to keep to some kind of consistent schedule, there are days when it can be challenging to decide what particular aspect of the topic to address. Hmm, I just hit the CTE issue *again* last time...it's too soon and a little too ghoulish to write about the IndyCar fatality...haven't hit basketball in a while... .

And then there are days when a topic falls into your lap, or drops out of the sky and slaps you around a couple of times until you give in.

The NFL preseason is underway, which means key players are already getting injuries that will keep them out for part or all of the upcoming season. This is not new; it happens every preseason, to the point where some people wonder if preseason games are all that good of an idea, if perhaps the preseason should be abolished or at least shortened.

The part I missed, though, is that apparently God is the one choosing which players will get hurt.

Introducing the theological stylings of Glover Quin, a safety for the Detroit Lions, after a play in which his tackle on Green Bay Packers receiver Jordy Nelson left the latter player with a torn ACL and likely to miss several weeks of play. You will see Quin's words:

But as part of the answer, Quin also said "God had meant for Jordy to be hurt."

That was on Monday. After that touched off an agitated reaction in the media (social and otherwise), some media member on Tuesday came back with a question about that answer; a "did you really mean what you said?" moment. Quin responded with classic "I'm sorry you got offended" patter:

Quin clarified his comment Tuesday, saying he didn't believe he said anything that would have caused a backlash, but "obviously, it upset a whole bunch of people."

OK, then. One can already observe that Glover Quin has a pretty insular religious outlook, if it didn't occur to him that such a remark -- that God had it in for Jordy Nelson this season -- might tick some people off.

More:

"I feel like injuries are going to happen, same way Jordy got hurt," Quin said Monday. "I hate that Jordy got hurt, but in my belief and the way that I believe, it was God had meant for Jordy to get hurt. If he wouldn't have got hurt today, if he wouldn't have played in that game, if he wouldn't have practiced anymore and the next time he walked on the field would have been opening day, I feel like he would have got hurt opening day.

So this is less a theology than a recapitulation of the Final Destination movies, then?

I'm being somewhat flippant here only because otherwise I'd be swearing a lot. This isn't Christian theology. I say that in the sense that it, so far as it is a theology, is completely uninformed by the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is not Christian because there is nothing Christlike about it. Trying to connect this particular theological position to anything Jesus ever said or did will result in your lying.

It's a very self-serving position, in that it allows Quin to bear no consequences for his actions. It's not wildly different in that respect from reaction after another hit on a quarterback over the weekend, in which the Baltimore Ravens' Terrell Suggs blasted Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Sam Bradford after he had handed the ball off to a running back, specifically diving at Bradford's surgically repaired knees. (By all means click on those links and enjoy the kabuki theater of dueling coachspeak. Harry Frankfurt would have a field day.) If Quin is really feeling full of himself he can simply claim he was God's instrument for administering the required injury to Nelson. At any rate, he can't be blamed.

(Just so we understand each other, Glover, if in twenty years you can't remember your own name and get lost trying to go to the bathroom, we're to assume that's just what God meant to happen to you?)

I'm not naive; Glover Quin is hardly the only person in the world who holds some variant of this belief. It will, however, get a little extra push from its having been uttered by an NFL player, even a rather anonymous one like Quin. And there isn't a preacher in the country with enough pull to refute it, no matter how correct the preacher might be (and yes, there are plenty of preachers who will preach exactly the same thing).

God was not up in heaven plotting how to tear Jordy Nelson's ACL, any more than God was plotting how to kill Justin Wilson on Sunday at Pocono raceway, or Mike Webster after his NFL career. It's ghoulish and hateful to suggest otherwise, particularly when your actions played a part in the injury (like it or not).

If this seems a little personal to me, well, it is, to some degree. It was just three years and a day ago that I came out of my anesthetic fog after a colonoscopy to be told by the gastroenterologist that I had cancer of the rectum. By Quin's articulated theological position, God was going to do that to me at some point or other. God is Quin's agent of suffering, by his own admission.

Now I'll concede a lot of things about that cancer experience (for the uninitiated, I've been clean for a couple of years now). I'll concede that my experience of cancer was pretty mild, compared to some (I'm reminded of this frequently in my current vocation). I'll concede that I was in a pretty good place to be treated for it. And I'll even concede that it probably worked out better that it happened to me while a student at seminary than if I had still been in my previous career as a college professor; in retrospect I doubt I'd have been able to carry that load all that well, while I got through that year at seminary o.k. partly due to a lot of help and being too stupid to know what I wasn't capable of doing.

So, I've had some brush with traumatic illness, and there wasn't a headhunting safety or linebacker around to blame. (For what it's worth, according to my oncologist at the time, the most common risk factor for rectal cancer -- as opposed to colon or colorectal cancer -- is ... a family history of cancer.)

And the notion that God did that to me, again, has nothing of Christ in it. It might have some badly interpreted Paul in it (no, that old saw about "all things work together for good" does not mean it was good for me to have cancer, or for Jordy Nelson to have his ACL ripped; God will work through the bad circumstance, but that doesn't make the circumstance good or God-caused), but no Christ.

But thanks to Glover Quin, that's the theology, that's the view of Christianity that somebody out there is going to take in today.

Chris Borland, re-searching

When it comes to the ongoing and probably unchanging question of football and brain trauma, ESPN is in a curious position.

This network is heavily, heavily invested in football. NFL games on Monday nights. Daily NFL news programming. Extensive college football schedules that will, eventually this season, encompass every day of the week except Sunday and Monday, as well as a daily college football news show as the season kicks in. The odd Canadian Football League game to fill a gap in the schedule. Even a few high school games, at least early in the season, including a "kickoff" game this coming Friday night.

ESPN is, increasingly, a football network, one which will show other sports when forced to by contracts or the lack of actual football to show or talk about.

On the other hand, ESPN also wants to project itself as, among other teams, a journalism organization. Indeed, ESPN has, since the "World Series earthquake" in 1989, been able to generate some degree of reputation for having at least a small stable of reporters who were capable of stepping up to function outside the sports realm, as their on-site reporters became valuable assets in the field in support of sister company ABC, which was broadcasting the World Series that year. Since then, the network has gradually sought to establish a reputation for serious reporting on sports, with programs such as Outside the Lines.

Sometimes, this leads to strange excesses such as the panicked reporting of a quarterback's broken jaw along the lines of a political assassination. At other times, though, it leads to the return of Chris Borland.

You may remember Borland as the San Francisco 49ers' linebacker who created a stir in the off-season by retiring after his rookie season, citing concerns about the possibility of long-term brain trauma (and his own concussion experience) as motivation. The announcement caused several days' worth of stir in sports media, as one might expect, before quieting down, as one might also expect.

In the interim time, the "concussion story"* returned to a low simmer, with occasional stories that brought the issue to attention at least slightly.

*Here is my standard reminder that concussions themselves are not the only risk faced by the football- (or hockey- or soccer- or boxing-) affected brain; a hit doesn't have to cause a concussion to cause damage. Note also the date on that article; this isn't 'new news.'

So this week, in the middle of its fevered buildup to football season, and convincing you that you can only live if football season begins as soon as possible, ESPN's journalistic impulse caused a spasm that reintroduced Chris Borland to a public that had probably forgotten him already.

Since Borland's retirement announcement, ESPN has used their ace investigative team of Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru to follow Borland and observe his transition from NFL player to lightning rod. Mark Fainaru-Wada first came to fame for his collaboration on Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal That Rocked Professional Sports. It was his second book, this one in collaboration with his brother Steve, that brought the NFL and its brain-trauma issues into the public spotlight for many. In addition to the book, a PBS Frontline special of the same title brought the book's findings to a wider audience. The program was originally supposed to be a collaboration between PBS and ESPN, but the latter network withdrew its brand from the project in what would be a major blow to its journalistic credibility. Still, the network, or at least its online arm, continues to piddle around the edges of the story and keeps the Fainaru brothers on retainer somehow.

One of the more striking revelations of this latest long-form article, also published in ESPN: The Magazine (cross-platform synchronicity!), was that, a full month after his very public retirement, Borland was summoned by the NFL to take one of its periodic drug tests, which are typically required of people who, well, are active players in the NFL. According to the NFL, such drug tests may be administered to players who have retired in order to prevent such players from dodging texts and then deciding to un-retire. Borland, not surprisingly, wondered if an ulterior motive might be at work. In the end, as the linked article describes, he decided to submit to the NFL test but also have an independent test done concurrently, lest the NFL be planning a smear campaign against him (such is the NFL's credibility at this point with Borland and others). In the end, both tests came back negative.

The article continues to describe Borland's post-retirement experiences; running a marathon, meeting experts on brain trauma (including those included in League of Denial, hence the initial connection to the Fainaru brothers), and taking a European trip fairly typical of well-off recent college graduates, enduring examinations both straightforward and strange, turning down an invitation to be involved in the promotion of a Will Smith movie about one of the main figures in the concussion crisis (not kidding; look for it around Christmas).

Perhaps the most striking part of the article is observing Borland's attempt to strike balances: between his continuing love for the game (something common to a lot of former athletes) and his increasing perception of the game as too destructive for people to play; between being a symbol of all that's wrong with football and a symbol of how football needs to be saved (his exchange with a former high school coach is particularly poignant); his increasing awareness of the hype machine of which he was once a part.

Even as this article surfaced on ESPN.com, another pair of stories made their way onto that service during the week. One was a report of an apparent suicide attempt by a former NFL quarterback, Erik Kramer, whose ex-wife believes he suffers from brain trauma.  The other was a feature piece on the "Oklahoma drill," an exercise in running headfirst into one another in full football armor from a distance of several yards, meant apparently to prove toughness and manhood. (Apparently being man enough to say "screw you, you idiot, I'm not killing myself for you" is considered unmanly.) While the NFL, under the hottest scrutiny for brain trauma, has apparently cooled on the drill, it remains maniacally popular on the college, high school, and peewee levels of football, to the point of drawing spectators to practice just to watch that drill.

So, questions:

--How much of a grain of salt does the reporting of ESPN on football and brain trauma require? Will the Fainaru brothers get their leash jerked again if the NFL takes offense, as some allege happened with the Frontline documentary?

--Is Chris Borland really "the most dangerous man in football," as the rather sensationalistic title of that feature suggests? Is he really dangerous at all to football? I went on record before as believing that Borland really doesn't pose much of a threat, even if he now shares my inability or unwillingness to watch the game. I don't think my mind has changed yet.

--So, as always, what does any of this mean for the mindful, faithful fan? What's the limit? Or, how many is too many?

Like Borland, I can't tell you what to decide. You've gotta come to that place yourself.

That doesn't mean I won't occasionally push.

When your head gets in the way

It happened again in major league baseball. A pitcher became a piñata.

In the second inning of Monday night's game between the New York Yankees and the Minnesota Twins, Yankees pitcher Bryan Mitchell was struck in the head by a line drive off the bat of Eduardo Nunez. In the end it was a particularly grisly-looking scene, with much blood shed, but Mitchell emerged relatively unscathed; a partial nasal fracture and a possible concussion, which means he won't be playing any time soon, but he never lost consciousness and left the field under his own power. That isn't always the case.

While any position on the field is susceptible to injury, pitchers have a particular vulnerability due to simple math. On any given play the pitcher is by far the closest person on the field to the hitter (aside from the catcher, who is behind the hitter and at least somewhat out of the way, but with his own perils). Furthermore, the pitcher is typically in a position, after delivering his pitch, not suitable for defense. Even the most well-prepared pitcher is still vulnerable to a line drive that rockets directly back at him at speeds over 100 mph (even faster, in most cases, than the pitch he just threw). In short, if the batter happens to hit that kind of line drive, in most cases the pitcher has little recourse but to throw up his hands -- his glove, specifically -- and pray.

Mitchell became the ninth (at least) MLB pitcher to be hit by a line drive in the past five seasons. Also earlier this month, Evan Marshall, a minor-league pitcher in the Arizona Diamondbacks' organization, was struck by a line drive while pitching for Reno against El Paso, in AAA; he suffered a fractured skull and required surgery to relieve swelling and pressure, and had twenty stitches removed from an incision on his head the day before Mitchell's scare.

Scary as these incidents are, it is still the case that no major-league pitcher has ever died from being struck in the head by a batted ball. The only fatality in major league history remains Ray Chapman, the Cleveland shortstop who died after being struck by a pitch in a game ninety-five years ago yesterday. That would be 1920. In more recent times, Mike Coolbaugh, a minor-league coach, died due to being struck in the neck by a line drive while coaching first base. No pitchers, though, at least not professionally.

That doesn't mean some careers weren't altered or ended, though. Probably the most famous such case is that of Cleveland pitcher Herb Score, in 1957; though he denied being affected by the injury and trauma, his career never regained the heights it had reached before the injury. (Score would enjoy years of fame as Cleveland's radio announcer.) A more recent example is that of Bryce Florie, a journeyman pitcher who was struck by a line drive while pitching for the Boston Red Sox against the Yankees in September 2000. Florie attempted to return for the Red Sox in 2001, but mostly bounced around minor-league teams for the rest of that decade.

Every sport has its dangers, and baseball has its share. How best to handle this particular danger, though, has proven challenging, though not for lack of effort on MLB's part (in contrast to certain professional sports leagues I could name). After Chapman's death (in 1920, remember), baseball eventually developed the batting helmet, which finally became standard equipment in the game...thirty years later. A first model of a padded cap for pitchers is now available, though only one pitcher has used it in play so far (Alex Torres, who is currently in the minors with the New York Mets; he played for the Tampa Bay Rays in 2013 when Alex Cobb was struck by a line drive). Most pitchers who have tried it have found it bulky and difficult to wear.

It is worth noting, in this case, that even such a cap would not have made a difference for Mitchell, who was struck below the part of his head that would have been covered by a cap.

While this is a seemingly intractable problem in baseball, it is not routine; it does not happen every play or every game, or even every season. If this happens to a pitcher, it is an example of something going horribly wrong. One might also point to the horrific leg injuries suffered by basketball players Paul George of the Indiana Pacers (while preparing for Team USA), or by college player Kevin Ware, then with the Louisville Cardinals, during the NCAA tournament in 2013. Something went extremely, horribly wrong in each case; a routine play turned anything but routine. That doesn't make the incidents any less horrific, or their consequences any less difficult. But it isn't routine.  

This still leaves us with only one kind of traumatic sports injury that accumulates over numbers of routine plays. And if you've paid any kind of attention to this blog, you know which one I'm talking about.

The violence switch

So today I came home for lunch, which I do sometimes. Often at times I'd be reading something in preparation for the following Sunday's sermon, but since I'm not preaching this weekend I flipped on the television, which offered only two worthwhile possibilities, SportsCenter on ESPN and the Weather Channel. I settled for flipping between the two.

Until, that is, something with a "BREAKING NEWS" popped up on SportsCenter. Now the concept of "breaking news" on a sports program requires a bit of mental adjustment; while such a graphic might cause alarm when seen on a network or a news channel, in most cases such graphic on ESPN isn't cause for legitimate panic. (September 11, 2001 would be one exception.) And indeed, such was the case here. in the training camp of the New York Jets, a fight had broken out in the locker room that resulted in a broken jaw for the team's quarterback, Geno Smith. So there are sports ramifications to the story, for sure; the Jets are likely to be without their starting quarterback for about half the forthcoming season, which should cause some difficulties for the team.

Still, it was a bit bizarre to watch ESPN pursue the story with the fervor with which CNN might pursue a major political assassin (or perhaps a missing airliner). Announcement. Analysts. Press with one of the principals (head coach in this case). More analysts. Background on Smith. Background on "assailant," a deep-bench linebacker named I.K. Enemkpali. News that Enemkpali had been released by the Jets. Repeat press appearance by head coach. More analysts. Background on the backup quarterback who will be elevated by the incident, Ryan Fitzpatrick. More analysts, or the same analysts again.

It was a bit of a surreal experience, but I suppose a 24-hour sports network needs to fill its day somehow.

But before I tore myself away to go back to the office, the analytic discourse took a somewhat more provocative turn, towards the thing that inevitably comes up in these situations. Where is the borderline between the violence required to be successful on the football field and the restraint necessary to be a basic civilized person off of it? And what gradations impose themselves between gridiron and home, or whatever public off-field life a player has?

There are the obvious prohibitions; you can't go off slugging the quarterback in the jaw (at least not if you're a fourth-string linebacker; what might have happened to a more prominent teammate is an open question). You can't go slugging your wife (at least not if there might be cameras around). You certainly can't kill somebody.

Then there are the more ambiguous types of violence. Terrorizing a teammate. "Dirty" play. This person.

What I can't figure out is where the switch is. You know, the switch. The one you flip "on" when you go on the field, and flip to "off" when the game's over. I've never quite understood it.

Evidently some people manage it. While a lot of football players do end up in the headlines for inappropriate violence, that number is less than 100%, substantially so. Some guys manage to keep it together off the field, and even live prestigious lives off the field. (Or end up in Congress. Not sure how prestigious that is anymore.)

Of course, the on-field violence has its own stigma these days. That hasn't always been the case, of course, even when it had horrific off-field consequences.

It's easy to slip into an attitude of "what do you expect?" when a story like today's broken jaw comes along. Well, whadaya expect? These guys go around beating each other up every week, of course they're gonna beat up each other off the field. But of course we really don't believe that, otherwise we wouldn't be so shocked when Ray Rice decks his fiancee in an elevator or Adrian Peterson gets charged with abusing his children. Clearly we expect them to flip the switch to the "off" position, and get offended when they don't.

(Let's not pretend that football players even have it the worst in this regard. But I find it wiser to let war veterans speak for themselves.)

So where's the switch? Or why do some guys seem to be able to manage it, and some guys can't?

Lord knows there are enough folks who never played football who seem to have their violence switch in the "on" position in perpetuity. It's hard enough to contain oneself sometimes without being a practitioner of violence on a regular basis.

So where's the switch? I'd really like to know.

Before he became The Guy Who Broke Geno Smith's Jaw

From Mike Webster to Junior Seau

Yesterday my wife and I walked into a local restaurant for lunch, and one of the TVs over the bar was showing an NFL team practicing.

Just practicing.

Of course it was the NFL Network. But still, practicing.

Not playing a "practice game." That happens often enough in baseball, as spring training games do get broadcast fairly often. But not even MLB Network broadcasts practice.

Of course, this is the weekend that teams actually play a game of sorts, as the Pittsburgh Steelers and Minnesota Vikings play the Hall of Fame Game tonight, a day after a new class of players was inducted into the NFL's Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

Between the Steelers' inclusion in the game and the induction of Jerome Bettis, the city is covered in gold and black, especially with Pittsburgh not all that far away. Another inductee, though, also garnered a good deal of attention this weekend, in his case by his unavoidable absence.

Junior Seau was inducted into the Hall of Fame posthumously. One of the greatest linebackers to play the game and one of its most liked and popular players, Seau retired in 2010 after a stellar career with the San Diego Chargers and New England Patriots. About two years later, Seau was dead of a self-inflicted gunshot would in the chest. His death followed by about a year the similar suicide of former Chicago Bears safety Dave Duerson, who also shot himself in the chest; in Duerson's case he left specific instructions that his brain be taken for examination, to determine if it showed the telltale traces of what had already become well-known in the sporting world as CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy. While Seau left no specific instructions, the gunshot wound to the chest had after Duerson's case already taken on the status of a signature; a means of suicide that left the brain intact for examination.

Like Duerson's, Seau's brain showed the telltale protein markers signifying CTE, which would confirm anecdotal evidence of Seau's struggle with the onset of CTE -- marked personality changes, violent mood swings, inability to focus or perform basic mental tasks -- that were already showing up before his career had ended. Sean became easily the most famous and widely popular player to have been found with CTE after his death, supplanting another Hall of Famer whose induction ceremony marked, for many sports fans, their first exposure to the debilitating effects of this particular brain trauma.


*The following is indebted to League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions, and the Battle For Truth, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru (New York: Crown Archetype, 2013). I've said before you need to read this book if you give a damn at all about this issue. That still holds true, even if at times it is a difficult and even gruesome read.

Mike Webster was selected for induction into the NFL Hall of Fame in 1997, after a seventeen-year career with the Steelers and Kansas City Chiefs. Signs of deterioration, though mostly overlooked, were also showing before the end of Webster's career, but his post-football decline was both tragically quick and tragically extended. Financial collapse, constantly increasing pain, drug reliance (eventually popping Ritalin like candy, some would say), memory failure and more were the routine of Webster's life. By the time of his Hall of Fame induction, seven years after his retirement, those closest to him feared for his ability to get through his acceptance speech.

As the ceremony approached, media outlets began to seek out the inductees and do the seemingly requisite profiles of the greats, their careers and their post-career lives. The sordid details of Webster's decline created a sensation in the weeks leading up to the ceremony, after a profile by ESPN laid out the details of Webster's decline. The following weeks were peppered with headlines such as "Webster's Induction Comes Amid Chaos" (Houston Chronicle), "A Life Off-Center" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), "A Man of Steel Crumbles" (St. Petersburg Times), and "Humbled Hero: Webster Fights to Overcome Despair" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution). Even as Webster tried to portray the ESPN profile and the following stories as overblown and exaggerated, his own behavior undermined his claims.

The induction ceremony went about as badly as his friends and family expected. Webster's speech, extending thirteen minutes beyond his allotted eight-minute slot, was frequently incoherent, disconnected, and rambling, while also being occasionally funny and even inspiring. Still, no one who had read or heard the troubling stories about Webster were convinced by Webster's speech that his situation was not every bit as dire as those stories suggested.

Webster to Bradshaw, one last snap at Webster's Hall of Fame induction

One of the more lucid quotes from Webster's speech:

You know, it's painful to play football, obviously. It's not fun out there being in two-a-day drills in the heat of summer and banging heads. It's not a natural thing.

A little more than five years later Webster was dead. He did not commit suicide; simply put, his body failed. One wonders if the suicides that have followed in intervening years were even a little bit motivated by a desire to avoid ending up like Mike Webster.


To some degree, the current concern for the long-term effects of playing football, at least as a public concern, stem from the publicity generated by Webster's Hall of Fame induction and the reports generated by it.

Little wonder, then, that the NFL, under Roger Goodell's imperative to "protect the shield," reacted with hyperactive determination to prevent the family of Junior Seau from causing even the tiniest scene this weekend in Canton. Even given a standing policy of having no family speeches for posthumous inductions (and I have no idea if it's true or not), and even given the Seau family's wrongful-death lawsuit against the NFL, the NFL's overly aggressive policing ended up being the black mark they sought to avoid. Even NPR, basically somnolent on the concussion/brain trauma story up to now, finally trotted out a piece for the weekend.

The ceremony seems to have come off without incident, in the end. It seems the Seaus wanted to have one occasion for simply celebrating their father's life and accomplishments, and everybody managed to get out of each other's way long enough for that to happen.

Of course, one weekend of relative peace changes nothing. The NFL won't change, because nobody is really challenging it to change. The questions about brain trauma will continue.

And this question will continue to be asked.

Not what faith is for

So apparently ESPN.com is fascinated today with the notion that an NFL player does not believe in God.

I'm not sure if they're feeling a bit queasy about the College Football Issue of ESPN The Magazine or what, but this seems to have become the story they've chosen to highlight online. I suppose it could also be taking advantage of the headline coincidence that Arian Foster had surgery today that will keep him out this season.

Anyway, I'm a bit surprised that this is a story. Even I, who gave this blog a title that is the conclusion of a old southern saying that starts "Football isn't a religion, it's...", am a bit flummoxed by this.

I suppose I shouldn't be, though.

After all, as described in the article, Foster's Tennessee college team got taken to church as a team-building exercise. This was Tennessee, as in "University of," which isn't a church-related school as far as I know. Clemson's head coach, Mississippi's head coach, and more than a few others openly do the same thing, and these "exercises" aren't optional.

I'm going to keep this short. There are a whole lot of directions going all over the place from this piece that could provoke reactions from concern to outrage; the non-voluntary nature of the church trips (which tend to be to large evangelical churches instead of, say, the Catholic cathedral), the assumption that everybody is perfectly o.k. with participating in a faith tradition that is not theirs in order to get along with teammates and not get coaches angry at them, the association of Christianity (or would this be Andrew Sullivan's Christianism?) with a sport that seems rather lacking in Christlike graces, so to speak.

Where I get riled, though, is something that seems (to me) a far simpler problem: since when do we get to use Christianity for our own fun and profit?

When does it become acceptable to appropriate the life and death and resurrection, the teaching and healing and walking-on-water, the kingdom of God come near (Mark 1:15), the stuff of faith, as a team-building exercise? What kind of arrogance does it take to pray for a win? Does the church's own rather perverse bent towards militaristic imagery still color its fascination with our most militaristic game?

The Christian faith doesn't make a lick of sense and is extremely pointless if it's not about being Christ-like, as much as any human can be. It is about being transformed instead of conformed (Romans 12), about living into the kingdom of God come near (Mark 1). It's not about being a better quarterback or linebacker, or being molded into a football machine. And it's certainly not about using Christianity in service of football. There's nothing particularly faithful about that.

Walking away from glory

Remember Greg Louganis?

You might have to be of a certain age (like mine), but Louganis was one of the most famous of Olympic athletes of the late twentieth century, possibly rivaling Bruce (at the time, now Caitlyn) Jenner. He swept the gold medals in 3m springboard and 10m platform competition not just at the LA Olympics in 1984, but also in Seoul in 1988. The latter event became the locus of some controversy when it was disclosed after the event, in which he had struck his head on the platform causing a gash requiring five stitches, that he had been diagnosed as HIV-positive before the games. Those 1988 Olympics marked the end of a diving career extending as far back as the 1976 Montreal games, where Louganis first gained attention with a silver medal in the 10m platform.

Louganis has popped up in the public eye again, with a documentary on his career scheduled to premiere tonight on HBO. While much of the doc is expected to deal with those 1988 games, the program also purports to cover other aspects of his career, such as the general turmoil that accompanies such a career (particularly at such a young age), his experience coming out, and his return to the diving world as a mentor to young divers.

In an interview with NPR promoting the documentary, Louganis remarked on what he saw as one of the most important aspects of an athletic career he wants to share with his young charges:

I'm most concerned with aftercare because as an elite athlete you finish your career and then you're pretty young. When you retire from your sport then it's almost like you lose a part of yourself. You lose your identity ... I retired at 28 ... You know, making that transition is not always easy. It's like, "OK, now who am I? Who am I without my sport?"

 Here's something that anyone who cares about the issue of brain trauma (like myself) has to grapple with in trying to address the responsibility of not just athletes, but fans of sport. The athletic career is, in many ways, addictive.

Think about it. The folks you see in the games you watch, whether college or pro football or basketball or baseball or the Olympics or World Cup or whatever you choose to name, have in most cases been playing whichever game you're watching most of their lives. And in all likelihood, those athletes who have made it to the big televised stages on which we see them perform have been garnering attention and acclaim for their athletic prowess from very young ages. That kind of attention becomes hard to live without when it's gone, and adjusting to its absence can become a difficult or traumatic experience of its own.

Little wonder, then, that athletes tend to stick around for as long as somebody will pay them to play, even if their skills are diminished beyond the point of competence or safety. What else are you going to do in your life that can possibly match the rush of adrenaline, provide the same glow of fame and adulation, and fatten the bank account so successfully as a good sports career?

Acting can theoretically be a lifelong career, but there are plenty of actors who flame out at a young age or fail to make the transition from young star to mature star. Still, for the most part, one's body doesn't force one to quit acting. After a certain point athletes simply can't compete any more.

Some are successful at making a transition into a career that keeps them around their sport, as a coach or perhaps a broadcaster. Still, there are plenty who have to transition into a "real life" of some sort, and who struggle with it as Louganis describes. And as noted above, there are plenty who stick around long after they should have hung it up.

This isn't something to which most of us can relate. In theory, if you launch into your career in your twenties, you can most likely (if you choose) continue in that career for decades. Even I, just starting a new vocation at age fifty, can reasonably guess that (barring a cancer recurrence or other such unexpected setback) continue in this vocation for a good twenty years or so. You can choose to give up that career as well, and do so with, most likely, only your friends and family and maybe co-workers being concerned about it, which can make it hard enough to do. Most of us don't do our work in front of maniacal cheering crowds on a weekly or nearly daily basis.

Remember: those crowds are us. We, the fans of these sports and athletes, are the ones who are paying the attention and spending the big bucks on tickets and replica jerseys and such. We're the ones whose attention or adulation becomes hard to give up. Not every fan is a face-painting maniac, by any means. Most of us aren't, in fact. But our attention, our fervor, our cheers and elation are part of the equation that makes the sporting career so hard to leave behind.

Sometimes that adulation becomes extreme for the athlete at a very early age, even before a professional career is an option. We happen to be upon the twentieth anniversary of the book Friday Night Lights, and its author Buzz Bissinger is back with an updated version of the book in which he follows up on some of the athletes from that team. In another NPR interview, Bissinger describes something very like the above, affecting athletes whose careers ended at age eighteen:

For a lot of these players [they have] sort of this glazed look in their eye saying, "What happened? What happened to the crowds? What happened to the attention?" Because no one is more lonely and isolated than a former player who comes back to the locker room. There's a pat on the back and the coach says, "Hey, it's great to see you, man," but then no one cares, nobody cares. They get shell-shocked.

And that's not all. Don't miss his account of the post-football life of one Boobie Miles. Probably an extreme example, but chilling nonetheless.

It's one thing to see Willie Mays stumbling in the outfield in the 1973 World Series. It's quite another to see Muhammad Ali being pummeled into a shell of his former self. It's impossibly sad to see the high school star or college stud who can't get over the adulation when the career doesn't advance as it should. And yet the addictive, irresistible, seductive nature of professional athletic performance and fame makes it so, so hard to walk away, even if faced with the possibility that continuing to play can possibly lead to irreparable damage down the line. It may be in some ways easier for a young player like Chris Borland to walk away before the trauma has a chance to accumulate than for a veteran to let go of a game that has been his (in the NFL) life for potentially twenty to thirty years.

And there's a certain level of addictiveness or compulsion for many of us fans. Not all, by any means, but many. Being a responsible, mindful faithful fan can't possibly include the kind of abusive behavior that gets directed at some athletes, particularly those guilty of major gaffes at critical or highly viewed times. But there is also a stewardship of our passion involved. There is, or must be, a consideration of the human being on the field, whether or not that human being invites it or claims it, that does not forget that athlete's humanness and vulnerability, and does not demand their harm for our entertainment. This would seem obvious, although I'm not sure it is to many fans, even the "Christian" ones (even as I acknowledge the perils of that adjective).

But this is a different challenge. Aside from not being offered a contract or opportunity to play, there's nothing that can really force an athlete to quit. If a coach or teammate or family member can't persuade the athlete to walk away, what is there to be done? And after a career of dings and dents and concussions and subconcussive hits, it still mostly falls on the athlete making the decision to retire. And I don't know that there is much to be done about it, given that there's virtually no way to know how many hits is too many, at this point.

Ugh, no, I'm not putting up the picture of him hitting his head on the board...