An experiment: Live-blogging the NFL Spectacle of Commodification

So last time around I took some shots at the NFL Draft.

I don't take back anything I said, mind you. This is no apology. However, it did occur to me that I really haven't sat myself in front of the TV and watched said spectacle in, oh, many years.

Despite myself, it occurred to me that I should really check myself, and look at the whole NFL draft spectacle (or at least the biggest highlight, the first round).

I did actually think to turn on ESPN early. Just in case anything interesting happened.

O.M.G. The event is even stranger than I remember.

They have a red carpet now. A red carpet for the select soon-to-be draftees to enter, sporting their own distinctive fashion choices. The greatest fascination appeared to be for what looked like rhinestone-studded shoes being worn by a small mountain as he entered. On display, a la the Oscars? Check.

Anyway, on with the spectacle/commodification checklist:

Interviews with Urban Meyer, coach of Ohio State University's football franchise, and Nick Saban, coach of the University of Alabama's franchise, to talk about the oh so human moment of seeing their former players and families at the moment of drafting. (Saban was interviewed while being driven in from whichever Chicago airport.) This is an efficient way to take care of one of the required "see, we really do know they're human" moments meant to distract you from the commodification and objectification to come.

Jon Gruden, former NFL coach, in to take care of the required number of football clichés. I highly discourage you from playing any drinking games involving words such as "intensity," "hard-working" or any variant thereof, "physical," and so forth. You will die of alcohol poisoning.

The reporters stationed with various teams. Not quite Bernard Shaw hunkered down in Baghdad, but close, I guess.

Lunatic fans. If I wonder if I missed anything in Tuesday's entry, I wonder if I missed out on the commodification/objectification of the fans themselves. Are they just as much a commodity to be used as the players are? Are they simply just another cog in the spectacle machine?

Patriotic interlude, with military member singing the national anthem.

Green room interviews. Right now the twin quarterbacks, Jared Goff (formerly of the University of California) and Carson Wentz (of North Dakota State University), are the ones in front of the camera. Goff played his part perfectly by delivering the only right answer about his dream: "This is it." You didn't think he was going to talk about curing cancer, did you?

Draft retrospective. What happened to last year's draft picks; past first-round picks; almost anything can be included here. (As I type this there appears to me some commercial for Peyton Manning.)

The inevitable appearance of Mel Kiper, who owes his existence to the NFL draft, a circumstance beyond explanation.

An unavoidably human moment, in which the ESPN crew acknolwedges the absence of NFL analyst Chris Mortensen, away due to cancer treatment.

Breaking news, I guess, that Myles Jack might not get drafted in the top ten. Okay. Are they trying to set him up as this year's slider? I mean, the injury he suffered last season wasn't new news.

So, against my better judgment, I'm going to live-blog this event. I want to see if I can try to comprehend the spectacle machine. I'll update as I can. I'm probably going to hate myself for it. But to begin to understand how the hype machine affects football's dealing with its ongoing brain-trauma I suppose I'd better confront it head-on.

So here goes.

8:05 ET: Forgot to mention the mandatory interview with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. Of course, no mention of brain trauma of any sort. Dismissal of Deflategate. Now of course Goodell has just opened the draft, with the St. Louis Los Angeles Rams on the clock. So of course a review of their previous tenure in LA, and Chris Berman tenuously suggesting that some St. Louis fans might still support the team. Please tell me you have more pride than that. 

8:08 ET: Discussion of all those traded draft picks that set the Rams up in the first spot of the draft. One agreed, more or less; another said he wouldn't have done it. Had to be that way; agreement isn't interesting TV. Jared Goff, the presumed top pick, is being dissected now.

8:11 ET: Former California quarterback Steve Bartkowski (Steve Bartkowski!) was invoked during the pre-show; now former California quarterback Aaron Rodgers is invoked. I'm beginning to realize that part of the spectacle/distraction is the sheer overabundance of information. I already know more about Jared Goff than I ever knew about most of the people that orignially were in the running for the Republican presidential nomination.

8:16 ET: Shockingly, the Rams select Goff. "What a moment..." uttered for the first of probably 76,349 times this round.

8:17 ET: Now on to the Philadelphia Eagles, who also traded up, and now have a disgruntled quarterback in Sam Bradford, who really hasn't done enough in the NFL to earn disgruntlement. This time the inevitable Mel Kiper seems to dislike the trade for both teams. Segueing to the presumed pick Carson Wentz. In the meantime, the inevitable interview with Jared Goff, who continues to get his lines right.

8:20 ET: Goff talks about the connection he felt with the Rams coaching staff. Now we're taking off on The Bachelor, I guess.

8:22 ET: To the perennial chorus of boos, Goodell announces that the Eagles pick Wentz. Chris Berman reaches impossibly far for a Roger Maris reference. This reminds me that I'm actually pretty happy not to have Berman announcing baseball games, or at least none that I've seen. Since Wentz played for an FCS team, players like Phil Simms and Joe Flacco are now invoked.

8:26 ET: Now the cliché about "fitting the prototype" is invoked upon Wentz. Commercial break, with a bumper featuring Wentz standing among cows.

8:28 ET: After that brief commercial break, we are now promised that the spectacle will be commercial-free for the rest of the hour. The Los Angeles San Diego Chargers now draft Joey Bosa, a defensive end from Ohio State. Chris Berman brings in the "motor" cliché, which is then echoed by the inevitable Mel Kiper. Bosa's speed is questioned; apparently Olympic sprinter speed is required of defensive backs now, and how one runs in a straight line somehow translates into the zigging and zagging required on the field.

8:33 ET: Apparently there are six-digit numbers of people gathered outside the theater where this event is happening. It is apparently part of Roosevelt University. I wonder what that school is getting for this, besides trampled.

8:35 ET: Mel Kiper was surprised by the Chargers drafting Joey Bosa.

8:36 ET: More and more I'm getting that the key to this event is absolutely not allowing you, the viewer, to breathe. Filling the many minutes between draft picks with words. This necessarily requires some amount of running down the expected upcoming draft picks, sometimes with mere insinuation. Apparently there's something wrong with Jalen Ramsey that caused him to have only a small number of interceptions in his career. In the meantime, the Dallas Cowboys draft Ohio State running back Ezekiel Elliott, making two of possibly six OSU players to be drafted in this round. This would apparently tie a record. This kind of thing matters in this vortex of words.

8:41 ET: Booking.com is the sponsor of the interviews with the just-drafted players. Apparently the difference between being drafted first and being drafted second is getting interviewed by Suzy Kolber. Sorry, Carson Wentz. But Ezekiel Elliott does get interviewed, leading to our first war-room peek-in, where we learn (!!!) that the Cowboys considered trading down before deciding not to. (An aside: really, guys? "War room"?)

8:45 ET: The Jacksonville Jaguars pick Jalen Ramsey, a defensive back who can just tootle on down I-10 from Tallahassee (Florida State). He is shown nearly decapitating a receiver in a highlight clip. We are told he is not a finished product. We are also told he is not a safety, and has not shown the "urgency" (drink!) to play deep or something.

8:50 ET: Another humanitarian moment: linebacker Jaylon Smith of Notre Dame, and his catastrophic knee injury, are now discussed. The expectation is that he will not be able to play at all this year, although Smith will not cop to that. We learn he is a character guy. The Baltimore Ravens, who we learn do not typically draft this high, pick another Notre Dame guy, offensive tackle Ronnie Stanley.

8:54 ET: We have our first "slider" candidate: Laremy Tunsil, offensive lineman, Mississippi. This is mostly because he was expected to be the first o-lineman drafted, and was not. Now it is time to invoke the domestic violence charge he faced some months ago, and a tweeted video, apparently on Tunsil's account, of someone hitting a bong (from the brief view shown, it's pretty much impossible to identify the man behind the bong). This gives Gruden the chance to play cranky grandpa about social media. The presumption of guilt is more or less a given in this spot.

9:01 ET: The San Francisco 49ers, now coached by former Oregon coach and Eagles washout Chip Kelly, draft d-lineman DeForest Buckner from ... Oregon. For today, the party line is that this is not a Chip Kelly thing, but reflective of the team's general manager and his philosophy. Okay. Then Jon Gruden goes off the party line and pretty much assumes it's a Chip Kelly-Oregon thing.

9:04 ET: A trade changes who's up next, bringing up the Tennessee Titans. They choose Jack Conklin, an offensive tackle from Michigan State. Leramy Tunsil is now cemented in the "slider" role. Remember the book and movie The Blind Side, pivoting on the importance of a left tackle and protecting the quarterback's titular blind side? Jack Conklin is a left tackle. Now we hear that Conklin really was the number one o-lineman in the draft after all. Dare I mention that Conklin is white, and Tunsil is ... not?

9:09 ET: Second commercial break. We've had seven draft picks so far. There are, what, twenty-four left? What have I done to myself? Thankfully, tomorrow is my day off. The "slider" storyline, now set in stone, provides the opportunity to turn that vortex of words into an outright hurricane.

9:11 ET: Now we get an interlude: in memory of Walter Payton, the NFL annually gives a Man of the Year award, which recognizes community service as well as on-field capability. Anquan Boldin is revealed as the 2015 award winner. At the risk of seeming cynical, well, that's a nice distraction. Another follows as a junior football team from the Chicago area takes the stage for the announcement of the Bears' pick (after another trade). This seems at least a sideswipe at all those cowardly mothers who doubt whether their wussy sons should play football. (You knew I was going there, given the chance.) Finally the Bears draft a linebacker from Georgia, Leonard Floyd.

9:18 ET: We are now informed that Leonard Floyd is weak. We also keep hearing about teams whose first-round picks didn't play at all last season due to injury, presented as if "hey, it's like they get two picks this year!" Okay. No, not really. It's more like "we just hope this guy gets to the field this year." Oh, and now the commercials are apparently going to come at a much more regular pace. This is odd, if you think about it. Right now is the time when we really don't know what's going to happen next. Early in the round when we knew everything pretty much in advance, we couldn't be allowed to look away. But then, I guess I'm not good at spectacle.

9:22 ET: Ohio State gets back on track as Eli Apple, a cornerback, gets drafted by the New York Giants. That gives them three of the top ten, which is apparently unprecedented, which is a good start to having six of the top twenty-five or whatever the record is. The first Eli "Big" Apple joke has already been made. We also get an update on the continuing slide of Laremy Tunsil.

9:25 ET: Part of the visual spectacle in this thing is the TV screen itself. There's the constant chiron or crawl updating you on who's been drafted and who's coming up; constantly refreshing graphics on teams about to pick and key statistics about that team, what happened to their picks last year, a note that "PICK IS IN," the inevitable Mel Kiper's "Best Available" overall or by position. We're waiting for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Goodell is still being booed. The Buccaneers draft Vernon Hargreaves III, a defensive back from Florida. The Florida NFL teams are shopping local so far.

9:31 ET: Commercial break. We now have graphics on screen that break down the just-drafted player's shortcomings. If you're not in the green room, you probably don't want to watch the draft at all. It's a major whipsaw: "He's great, he's great, he's great, here's why he's awful."

9:33 ET: Just a reminder: SportsCenter is on after the draft, where they will talk endlessly about...the draft. If they get bored, they might mention the NBA playoffs, I guess.

9:34 ET: The Laremy Tunsil Slide Watch is now critical. Suzy Kolber interviews Hugh Freeze, head coach of the University of Mississippi football franchise, to endorse Tunsil's character. Freeze, one of the more blatantly evangelical coaches out there, inevitably invokes God in doing so. He also introduces a pretty clever potential chiché: "it's not Draft Career, it's Draft Day." The thought seems to be that the picture is of Tunsil, but probably as far back as high school. The New Orleans Saints select Sheldon Rankins, defensive end from Louisville.

9:42 ET: The commercial breaks are getting longer; maybe a clue that things aren't as important now? Or just that the motormouths need a bigger break? Now we get an extended look at Mel's "Best Available."

9:43 ET: The Miami Dolphins break the Laremy Tunsil Slide, picking him at #13. Really, in the grand scheme of the NFL draft, that's not much of a slide. Now, as if to make up for the hell that has been visited upon the kid, the procedure is reversed, and we hear how talented and how great a kid Tunsil is. We hear "you have to root for the kid" for the first time.

9:47 ET: The ESPN crew now gets around to admitting that the Leramy Tunsil Slide, while costing some number of dollars, wasn't much in the grand scheme of things.

9:48 ET: Now it's safe to interview Leramy Tunsil, who has his lines down. "It's a blessing just to be here" enters the lexicon. Suzy Kolber actually asks "Is it you?" and Tunsil's answer sounds like "yes," but isn't all that clear.

9:50 ET: The Los Angeles Oakland (Las Vegas?) Raiders pick Karl Joseph, a defensive back from West Virginia. We get footabe of multiple interceptions and some hits, one of which is what used to be called a "de-cleater" when it was cool to talk about hits like that. It's beginning to sound like the ESPN crew is floundering around a bit trying to find their new hook now that Leramy Tunsil has been drafted.

9:57 ET: The Cleveland Browns finally make a pick, after a lot of trading down both before the draft and tonight. The pick is a Baylor wide receiver, Corey Coleman. We learn he is fast, but played in a system where learning to run routes was apparently not a priority. I may not watch many games, but I do know that Baylor scores a lot of points. Apparently he learned something.

10:00 ET: Two hours in, we're about halfway through the round.

10:02 ET: The Detroit Lions draft an offensive tackle, Taylor Decker, from Ohio State. The OSU franchise is well on track to those six picks in twenty-five or the first round or whatever. The graphic says "INCONSISTENT EFFORT." Jon Gruden was disappointed. I really don't know what to make of the graphic bumpers leading out to commercial breaks. Images of the player just drafted, in fast-cut style, ranging from da Vinci-esque poses to vaguely hip-hop gestures. I can't decide if it's idolization of the body or just distraction.

10:08 ET: The Atlanta Falcons draft Keanu Neal, a defensive back from the University of Florida. I'm trying to figure out if that makes UF the only other school besides Ohio State with more than one former player drafted so far. Now it's time to turn attention to Myles Jack, who's getting lonely in the green room. Jack suffered a knee injury during the season, and perhaps drew red flags because of his unconventional choice to leave the team (being unable to play anyway) and start rehabbing/preparing for the draft on his own. Oddly, the ESPN crew isn't really getting into that, part, focusing only on the injury. The Indianapolis Colts draft center Ryan Kelly from Alabama. He has he generic Alabama offensive lineman look.

10:14 ET: Before the commercial break we got an acknowledgment that Ryan Kelly had a 4.0 GPA in a graduate program this past season. This is, as far as I can tell, the first acknowledgment that any of these young men were college students.

10:17 ET: The Buffalo Bills draft Shaq Lawson, defensive lineman, Clemson. It's official: we are now living in the generation of people who were born when Shaquille O'Neal was a big thing. Now Jon Gruden abuses Shaq for getting handled by Ronnie Stanley when Clemson played Notre Dame this past season. You might recall that Ronnie Stanley was drafted sixth. We learn that Lawson's father was killed in a car accident five years ago. Asking Lawson about this in this spot seems a bit exploitative, but he handles it about as well as one could ask.

10:21 ET: Now we're getting Twitter highlights, in this case about Shaq Lawson. An interesting contribution to the spectacle. In the meantime it's time to start talking up some of these second-tier prospects before they get drafted; in this case the subject is Paxton Lynch, quarterback from the University of Memphis. To the degree I was paying attention, I thought Lynch was a more likely second-round pick, but whatever. The New York Jets choose to add to the Ohio State run by drafting linebacker Darron Lee. This makes five, so that record or whatever is very much in reach.

10:28 ET: The commercials are getting longer and more frequent. Guess Chris Berman ain't as young as he used to be.

10:31 ET: Now they're finally playing the Ohio State angle. Ohio State did of course win a national championship two seasons ago, so I guess it's not a shock. The Houston Texans don't cooperate, instead taking Notre Dame wide receiver Will Fuller.

10:35 ET: The spectacle is flagging at this point, with much more frequent commercials and frankly less hook-like stuff to talk about. I have the feeling that once the Leramy Tunsil Slide got broken, their game was thrown off. The green-room shots are fewer and farther between, even though Myles Jack is still there. That's a kindness of a sort, I guess.

10:39 ET: The Washington franchise chooses Josh Doctson, TCU wide receiver. By contrast to some previous picks, Doctson gets a virtual love-in from the ESPN foofs. Doctson is shown getting the Goodell Hug, which we just haven't seen enough of tonight. I mean, really, you can't see enough of the Goodell Hug. Seems vaguely mafia-like.

10:43 ET: SC@night promises to break down the first-round winners and losers. Seriously, can you really do that before the player has had two or three years to play?

10:44 ET: PICK IS IN. And yet they keep talking.

10:46 ET: The Minnesota Vikings select Laquon Treadwell, Mississippi wide receiver and apparently a Chicago-area native, which matters tonight. We get comparisons to Terrell Owens and Anquan Boldin. He can jump, which apparently will help his new quarterback. CREATING EXPLOSIVE SEPARATION. The Twitter updates are back. DROPPED PASSES. The whipsaw is getting really quick now.

10:51 ET: Apparently Laquon Treadwell's daughter was stealing the show at the podium and after, though the ESPN foofs either didn't see to comment on it or didn't deem it worthy, though the daugher is in daddy's arms as he gets the Booking.com interview treatment. Actual humanity must not be allowed to interfere with the serious business of spectacle. Instead, we were getting the CREATING EXPLOSIVE SEPARATION and DROPPED PASSES graphics. The Cincinnati Bengals select Houston defensive back William Jackson III. We're not hearing much from Mel Kiper at this point; he finally shows up, trying not to act surprised.

10:56 ET: The Pittsburgh Steelers select Artie Burns, a cornerback from Miami, who appears not to be at the draft. However, we got a shot of him apparently getting the phone call at home with family around him. I think that's the first appearance of that particular bit of theater.

10:59 ET: The Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos are on the clock, and the hype machine suddenly shudders back to life with the Breaking News that the Broncos need a quarterback, and traded up to be able to get one. Meanwhile, with no new Ohio State draft picks of late, that storyline has been allowed to go quiet.

11:02 ET: Another humanizing interlude, as a sixteen-year-old cancer survivor from Denver is at the podium to announce the Broncos' first-round pick: Paxton Lynch, Memphis quarterback, who is also not at the draft, apparently. If it were up to the crowd, the sixteen-year-old would take Goodell's everyday job. Apparently Jon Gruden fell in love with Lynch when he interviewed him; all he can come up with to criticize is that he needs to get quicker, which is qualified with "as all 6'7" quarterbacks do." In the meantime, all the talk about Lynch needing a couple of years to learn things suggests that Mark Sanchez will be your starting quarterback next year, Broncos fans.

11:09 ET: Another person still in the green room is Mississippi defensive tackle Robert Nkemdiche, who is belatedly being set up as the new slider. The Green Bay Packers are no help, taking UCLA defensive tackle Kenny Clark. His own tragedy was ESPN.com fodder already this week.

11:14 ET: The commercials for the NFL draft don't have the cache of Super Bowl commercials, but we're getting weird Nationwide commercials with Peyton Manning and a McDonald's ad in which a father sneaks a Big Mac into his newly-married daughter's limo because "there's never time to eat at your own wedding." Oh, and occasionally you get reminded that ESPN also shows basketball and baseball.

11:16 ET: Myles Jack is still the "Best Available." There are only four picks left, so it seems like Ohio State's quest for history is fading. (Remember, the New England Patriots don't have a first-round pick this year because of Deflategate, so the first round is one pick shorter than usual. Joshua Garnett, a guard from Stanford, is drafted by the San Francisco 49ers (who traded up for the pick), prompting Mel Kiper's first real freakout. He was supposed to go in the mid-second round, apparently, and was the 67th player on Kiper's board. In the commercial bumper Garnett is seen being mean to several foam pillars of some sort.

11:24 ET: Adam Shefter promises "an interesting pick" from the Arizona Cardinals, and they more or less deliver: the aforementioned Robert Nkemdiche, just slipping into the first round. We now learn that the self-described "eccentric" Nkemdiche plays the sax, and that the team might ask him to distance himself from his brother. They've been waiting to spring this stuff all night, you can tell. I'm not a fan of Cardinals coach Bruce Arians for reasons already noted in this blog. Also, Jon Gruden actually says that it's not right for them to sit up there and judge these guys, after the ESPN crew has spent three hours sitting up there judging these guys. Meanwhile Nkemdiche gets the Suzy Kolber interview. Apparently they saved her for the controversial guys. Nkemdiche gets his lines right without sounding robotic, becoming the first interviewee tonight to do so.

11:31 ET: Two more picks left. The Carolina Panthers' PICK IS IN. Goodell is still getting booed. The Panthers select Louisiana Tech defensive tackle Vernon Butler. It takes about ten seconds for any of the ESPN guys to say anything. It's only 10:30 in Chicago, guys. What gives? And we finally get acknowledgment that the Heisman Trophy winner, Derrick Henry of Alabama, hasn't been drafted yet. Actually this is the first mention of Henry all night. I suppose this points to some kind of major disconnect between the NFL and the college ranks.

11:40 ET: Germain Ifedi, Texas A&M offensive lineman, is the final pick of the round, by the Seattle Seahawks. One last barrage of mixed messages issues forth from the ESPN crew. He is also on the phone remotely rather than in the green room. This means that Myles Jack is not drafted yet, and that Ohio State will only have five draftees in the first round, and that the Heisman Trophy winner will have to wait until the second round or later to be drafted.

So the draft resumes tomorrow night at 7:00. I will not be here.

I had no idea just how much the hype and spectacle had elevated in recent years, all formulated around a bunch of guys somewhere in the range of age 22. While the spectacle does slow down, almost of necessity, as the round progresses, it was still a bit crazy.

Random bits:

One of the important stories to be covered on SportsCenter@Night is apparently Ezekiel Elliott's midriff; concealed by his vividly covered sport coat but not by the vest or shirt. From this Scott Van Pelt lurches to an attempted human-interest view of the Laremy Tunsil Slide. I'm not going to stay up for this, but Tunsil is looking a bit more besieged in the post-draft news conference, but still keeps saying that he is "blessed" even if it shows a bit less on his face.

So Tunsil becomes more or less the sacrificial lamb of the evening. The real-time unfolding of the Twitter post and apparent family conflict, and maybe even taking money from his college coaches, is all the more grinding.

Between Tunsil and Nkemdiche, the University of Mississippi football franchise didn't have a great night. The spectacle doesn't limit its blowback to the guys in the green room.

ESPN got handed a story with the Tunsil slide. What would have happened had Tunsil's Twitter account not been hacked? Would Myles Jack have been set up as the paschal victim of the evening? Nkemdiche?

Gonna think about this some more, and come back with some attempt to digest the spectacle and distraction. Meanwhile, no acknowledgment of the NBA playoffs yet on ESPN.

Spectacle, the NFL draft, and Johnny Manziel

With the NFL Draft bearing down like an out-of-control freight train upon the American consciousness, it seems like a good time to talk about spectacle.

Oh, and Johnny Manziel too.

The NFL has, to its credit if you believe it's a good thing, done a pretty amazing job of turning its off-season into a spectacle almost equal to that of the season itself. (Reminder: the subject of spectacle and its relationship to the ongoing concern of this blog was introduced in the previous post.) This itself is not necessarily unique to the NFL, but what is particularly of interest is how much of this off-season spectacle revolves around young men who have played absolutely zero snaps in the league as of yet.

Major League Baseball has long enjoyed an offseason spectacle of sorts, so old and traditional that it earned itself a nickname -- the "hot stove league" -- that has long outlived the source of the name. That bit of spectacle revolves around the trading or potential trading of players and, in more recent years, the signing or potential signing of free agent players. As with much of baseball, the hot stove season unfolds in a relatively leisurely fashion, with occasional spasms of activity around certain off-season markers such as the Winter Meetings or general managers meetings in which trades were often culminated in the past. But again, the emphasis is on players who have established themselves and in some cases are about to get obscenely rich. What the NFL has done is make an all-consuming spectacle of a sequence of events, from NFL scouting combine to the draft itself, out of players entering the league, rather than familiar faces in the league.

Of course, it helps that the players are not exactly unknown. Thanks to the popularity of college football, the league doesn't have to introduce these wannabe-NFL players from nowhere -- in many cases these guys are pretty familiar already. On the other hand, many of the players who become "stars" in the draft -- early draft choices, the number one pick, and so forth -- are not necessarily the ones who became most famous in the NCAA. Really, how much did you follow Carson Wentz's career (North Dakota people, put your hands down) before he became a potential #1 or #2 pick? And when a team settles on an offensive lineman for their draft pick, that player isn't going to be as famous as the Heisman Trophy winner.

No matter. First the combine -- a glorified workout session -- leading to the final frenzied push to the draft itself. People now make actual careers out of projecting the draft's results. (Looking at you, Mel Kiper.) What used to be a Saturday afternoon affair has now blown up into a three-day event, although how many people actually stick around for the sixth and seventh rounds isn't necessarily clear.

NOTE: yes, the NBA does a similar thing with its draft, although it's only two rounds and contained in one evening, and there's nothing like the NFL combine. Also, the number of international players that get drafted in that league require a bit of introduction that even the most obscure o-lineman doesn't on Draft Day. 

And yes, there was even a Kevin Costner movie about the NFL draft, at least nominally. (At least it didn't wipe out as badly as the FIFA movie.)

There's a reason I'm alluding to the NFL Draft here, in a blog that concerns itself most frequently with the traumatic effect of the game of football on some substantial chunk of its players. It is at the draft, and during the combine and process leading up to it, that the commodification of the athlete is most clearly on display.

The combine is, frankly, a meat market. The appeal of a bunch of post-college guys standing around in their tighty-whities getting measured and poked and prodded escapes me. At least the potential draftees get to put on clothes before they go out on the field in Indianapolis and run and jump and throw or catch footballs, while Important Men with stopwatches stand around and look important and measure things.

From there NFL scouts will also make visits to various college campuses for "pro days," in which players who for whatever reason don't get to the combine are measured and commodified. Meanwhile the Kipers of the world issue weekly updates about Who Will Be Drafted When, with the breathless urgency of the live updates from Baghdad during one Iraq war or another. It will get louder and more breathless until this weekend.

At the draft itself a select pool of likely high draftees is invited to demonstrate their fashion sense, or lack thereof, while sometimes getting phone calls and otherwise waiting for their names to be called, to find out which franchise controls their fate and how much money they will or won't make. They might get interviewed, or filmed hugging their weeping mother or who knows what. They'll walk to the podium, endure a handshake from Roger Goodell, hold up a replica jersey or ball cap, and be shuffled off to be discussed endlessly.

ESPN or the NFL Network will try to convince you that these players are Real People, with lives and families and interests outside of football. This is less untrue than it is irrelevant. What matters most, what matters at all from this point forward is their value or usefulness to the franchise that drafted them. If it doesn't work out for the team, well, remember that NFL contracts, aside from signing bonuses, are not guaranteed.

And even that human-interest angle is, in the end, part of the spectacle. One would think we were choosing our representatives to defend Earth in some kind of interplanetary battle royale.

Perhaps the most revealing spectacle, one that isn't necessarily going to happen at every draft but happens just often enough, is the Player Who Slides Down The Draft Board. This is usually a fairly famous collegian (the spectacle works best if it's a quarterback) expected to be drafted pretty high, who instead gets passed over by team after team until suddenly we're down around the 20s in picks and he's the only guy left in the green room. This becomes a spectacle rather like that of vultures circling a wounded animal. What went wrong? Why is everybody passing on him? What ugly secret do these teams know about him? It gets pretty grotesque, really, until some team finally pulls the trigger and drafts the kid.

This happened to Aaron Rodgers eleven years ago, and he turned out okay. He fell all the way to the 24th pick in the first round of that draft before the Green Bay Packers selected him. He had to wait a few years for Brett Favre to clear out, but things have turned out pretty well for Rodgers, and his draft slippage only comes up to demonstrate, as here, that it didn't hurt his career so much.

This also happened to Johnny Manziel.

You may remember two years ago that Manziel, carrying the monicker "Johnny Football" and a reputation towards recklessness both on and off the field, tumbled through the first round before being drafted 22nd by the Cleveland Browns.

Now Aaron Rodgers and Johnny Manziel are extremely different people. Rodgers has, for one thing, a life beyond football, or perhaps more accurately an awareness of how to leverage his football fame for things beyond football, and generally seems a level-headed sort. These are not words that fit well with Manziel. Further, Rodgers slid into possibly the best possible football situation for him, while Manziel slid into the dumpster fire that is the Cleveland Browns.

Manziel was pretty well-known as a party animal when drafted. It couldn't have been a surprise that he didn't immediately transform into a choir boy upon being drafted. Even so, his two-year descent from hope of the franchise to outcast is pretty striking.

The troubling possibility I can't escape is that Johnny Manziel, the spectacle, was more useful to football than Johnny Manziel, the football player, at least until he started hitting his girlfriend. Until he invited the ugly spectacle of Ray Rice back into fans' memories, the screwup, the struggle to do anything useful on the field while continuing to be a party boy off it, was a useful storyline. The Browns can't really be any more embarrassed than they usually are, and they get to cut Manziel loose, sign Robert Griffin III, and be in line to draft the aforementioned Carson Wentz, who doesn't initially look like that much of a party boy. The NFL gets to pat itself on the back for maneuvering an abuser out of the way.

The spectacle serves to keep all eyes on the league. A quiet offseason doesn't serve a league that thinks $25 billion (yes, billion) in annual profits is its natural right. Keeping enough eyes bedazzled to sustain a whole network and a daily ESPN show all year long is paramount, not to mention selling jerseys and all that stuff.

In a league where commodification and spectacle and distraction are as paramount as all this, would you really trust the higher-ups to give a damn about the health of your brain, not to mention the rest of your body?

Not if that brain is working, you wouldn't.

Would you also expect the fans who buy all the stuff, who shout obscenities at you before you're even drafted, who spew bile anonymously on sports radio and internet comment sections, to have your back?

Yeah, right.

So if the DeAndre Levys of the world are taking their own health into their own hands, it is only because it has become clear to them that they are the only ones who will.

The number of ways the NFL Draft is a disturbing spectacle would require an entire blog even to begin to express its breadth and depth.

Spectacle and harm

You might have heard that Prince Rogers Nelson, or the artist formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, died today.

The iconic and iconoclastic singer/guitarist/songwriter/cultural lightning rod was found dead today in an elevator (wasn't that somehow part of "Let's Go Crazy"?) at his home/recording studio/complex in Minnesota. In a year with entirely too many musicians slipping off this mortal coil, this one was a cannon shot to the solar plexus for those of us of a particular age.

Prince wasn't without his affections for sports, especially for his Minnesota-based teams. He once wrote a song for the NFL's Minnesota Vikings, took in the NBA's Timberwolves, and threw was has been called an epic concert for the WNBA's Minnesota Lynx after they won their league championship.

But perhaps his most indelible mark in the sporting world was his performance for the halftime show of Super Bowl XLI, in Miami in 2007.* This was the Super Bowl that was unique for more than its particular combination of Roman numerals; it was the one Super Bowl that got rained on, pretty much for the whole game.

*Corrected; originally "2012" -- apparently I can't do Roman numerals anymore.

In this story (from The Weather Channel...well, he did sing about purple rain) the story is told of Prince's reaction when NFL foofs checked the weather that morning and folks in charge of the halftime show reported the rain to Prince. His epic reaction: "Can you make it rain harder?"

He of course proceeded to go out and blow the Super Bowl away, rain-slickened stage and all.

What is interesting, in watching the event all these years later, is how little Prince particularly cares to be part of the NFL's spectacle; Prince was a spectacle all by himself, and that year the NFL was fortunate to tag along with a performer for whom a downpour was just an interesting stage effect.

But Prince at the Super Bowl does raise some interesting points about the spectacle that attaches itself to the Super Bowl and other major sporting events (and indeed, to almost all professional and major-college sporting events to some degree). The very idea of a halftime show at a football game points to the degree to which some kind of spectacle has attached itself to that particular game for a very long time. (It might be worth the recollection that, throughout high school and my first two years of college, I was part of that spectacle -- a band geek.)

If you think about it, that's a little bit different from other sports. Most sporting events anymore begin with the national anthem -- a bit of patriotic spectacle, if you will -- but, unless you're in the playoffs, that's about it for a baseball game (unless you count "Take Me Out To the Ballgame" as a kind of spectacle; I could see it, but I think of it as something different.) Basketball games, on the major-college level at least, are increasingly offering some sort of halftime entertainment, which might vary from some sort of musical performer to a juggler or tumbling act or aerial acrobatics -- what might have been called "sideshow entertainment" in the past. Having not been to an NBA game I can't comment on what happens there.

The longstanding tradition of halftime spectacle, though, seems fairly unique to football. This I suppose is fairly sensible, since of the most popular sports going today football has the most in common with the kind of sporting event that used to be called "spectacle."

Yes, kids, it's time to bring in the good ol' Roman Empire and its "spectacles."

I have remarked in previous blog entries on the relative lack of sustained development of theological consideration of the ongoing saga of brain trauma and football; one partial exception is discussed here, and Dr. Hoffman's book is among a rather larger (though still not huge) body of literature that takes on the subject of Christianity and sports more generally. One of the inevitable tropes that appear in such literature is the games and sports of the Roman Empire, events to which are frequently attached the term "spectacle." This emphasizes, beyond the simple physical brutality of the contests (includiating gladiatorial combats and chariot races), the degree to which extra-sporting events accrued around the sporting contests. Of course, in the case of Rome, it might in some cases be that the sporting contests wormed their way into the specacle.

At times the spectacle was overtly religious, in the context of the Roman Empire and its pantheon of deities. Multiple such deities might have been appeased or honored in the ceremonies surrounding the contests, and of course the emperor or any representative of the emperor could expect his own share of adulation as well. (Looking slightly further back in history, much the same would have held true of the Athenian spectacles surrounding the original Olympic Games.)

Of course, the contests themselves were much more immediately harmful to their competitors, and in some cases much more immediately fatal, depending on the whim of the emperor or crowd. Though there are exceptions, we do not expect our competitors to die in front of us at sporting events we attend, and when it does happen the sporting entity in question goes through all manner of soul-searching and procedural review. Even an organization like NASCAR erupts in a paroxysm of new safety measures and guidelines in the wake of a death or major injury on the track (although, with the sometimes highly personal affection for the competitors in that more individual sport, perhaps that's not so surprising).

Nowadays, the adulation of "idols" surrounding our sporting events is rather more discreet as well. While a great deal of adulation seems to be directed at God by some athletes on or immediately off the field, it's not always certain how much that adulation is actually directed at the God revealed in the crucified Christ, the Man of Sorrows, the Prince of Peace. (But that's a discussion for another book, some of which have already been written -- but that's another blog post.) There are plenty of other idols surrounding our sporting events, though, if you look hard enough.

One might think of the corporate sponsors, who now generally have their names spashed on everythign from the stadium itself to the timeouts, not to mention in signs all over the place. (I once went to a minor-league baseball game where the strikeouts were "sponsored by Circle K"; funny, but if Circle K didn't pony up the dough were the pitchers not allowed to strike anybody out?) Perhaps the cheerleaders on the sidelines become objects of, uh, we'll call it "worship" for now although we know darn well it's anything but. The coaches increasingly become figures of a particular kind of adulation. Celebrities who appear in the stands (particularly in Fox baseball broadcasts) might fall in here.

Perhaps even the players themselves, or more specifically the bodies of the players themselves, become these objects of devotion. This is of course particularly ironic in the case of football or other sports in which intense physical damage or harm is the frequent (or possibly inevitable -- yes, that entry again) consequence of the action on the field.

One of the questions that is inevitable is: how much does the spectacle surrounding the game a cover for the destructiveness of the game itself on the bodies of those who play, or how much does the game seek cover in spectacle? Or does the spectacle seek to draw attention to itself by attaching itself to the game?

In this context it's interesting to go back to Prince's halftime show, and to remember why such shows became the norm. In case you don't remember, or you're a little too young to remember, you kinda have to blame Jim Carrey and Damon Wayans for that.

In 1992 Fox (not yet privileged to broadcast the Super Bowl, I guess?) went after the NFL's halftime activities (at that point the most frequent performer for SB halftimes was still the Grambling University marching band, I think, and Up With People was another common guest performer), counterprogramming a strange little halftime called "Winter Magic" with an episode of their sketch-comedy program "In Living Color," starring Carrey and Wayans and others. The counterpunch was effective enough to draw more viewers than the Super Bowl halftime show. (This after the previous year's halftime show had been pre-empted, at least on the air, by ABC News coverage of Operation Desert Storm.) The NFL was going to have none of that; the following year's halftime show featured no less than Michael Jackson, and such major acts has been the trend ever since (with a brief detour into former major acts after sister Janet's exposed nipple).

Clearly in that case spectacle became a means of propping up the game. Or is it that clear? After all, the audience that flipped the channel for "In Living Color" did seem to return to the game right afterwards. But incomplete or distracted adulation of idols apparently doesn't cut it; it seems you are required to stay for the whole worship service.

This is far from a complete survey of the relationship of sport and spectacle, and football is far from the only sport to indulge in it to some degree. (At some point we really need an examination or dissection of the crazy ceremonies that precede soccer matches, especially FIFA-sponsored contests.)  We're not far from another round of the modern Olympics, where sport and spectacle are joined at the hip. But the relationship of sport and spectacle in a sport still grappling with its frequently destructive tendencies towards its players can't be neglected in seeking to sort out the allegiances of those who continue to participate (as fans or supporters) in the game, or the spectacle, or in some combination of both.

RIP Prince. Regrettably, the rain was not purple that night.

The latest early retirements and alarming studies

I guess it's not really news any more when a player retires after only one year in the NFL, or I suppose it's less of a shock when the player has a history of four concussions instead of one or two, or if he's a Buffalo Bill instead of a San Francisco 49er, or a special teamer instead of a semi-regular to regular player. At any rate, the retirement of A.J. Tarpley was a more under-the-radar event than that of Chris Borland last year (the event that prodded me into more regular blogging after a bit of a lag).

Tarpley played in 14 of 16 games last season, including starts at linebacker in the season's two final games. In the Instagram post in which Tarpley announced his retirement, he is seen holding up the ball after picking an interception on what would be the last play of his career.

Tarpley is a Stanford grad, which might lead some to argue that his education puts him in a position to have a pretty good career outside of football, even after only one year in the league. Here he might bear some similarly to Borland, with a degree and means to forge ahead without the NFL.

Tarpley was frank about the role his four concussions played in his choice to retire. While Mike DeVito, a defensive end for the Kansas City chiefs, spoke of a more general injury history after nine years in the NFL, the two concussions he suffered this past season were also prominent in his decision to retire. DeVito weighed that injury history in light of being a family man; he spoke openly of the need to be there for his wife and children in future years (echoing a thought already expressed by Hussain Abdullah, another Chief who announced his retirement in March).

For D'Brickashaw Ferguson, the issue was less concussions than Concussion.

Ferguson also weighed his own perception of his lessened effectiveness last season, and also recalled a pretty sorry treatment of a former teammate who was strung along through an offseason only to be cut during the NFL draft -- yes, during the draft -- as soon as the Jets had drafted his replacement. There were certainly other issues at play for him. Nonetheless, Ferguson had also spoken out about the concerns the Will Smith movie raised for him after seeing it last fall. Ferguson's a thoughtful man, and showed enough intelligence not to be fooled by the movie's eye-catching title (more catching than Subconcussive Hit would have been, although to be fair the movie does acknowledge the role those play in CTE), expressing concern for the possibility that his future might be affected even though concussions were not a part (or at least an acknowledged part) of his career. He didn't miss a game and never even showed up on an injury report.

DeVito and Ferguson are less unlikely retirement candidates than Tarpley; each could have played a few more years, even if in lesser roles (though it seems clear that Ferguson wasn't interested in doing so), but it isn't completely unprecedented for players around age thirty (especially this offseason -- we see you, Calvin Johnson) or a little younger (you too, Marshawn Lynch) to retire.

The other striking news in the last couple of weeks involves another couple of new studies, focusing on the thing the NFL absolutely doesn't want to hear and more than absolutely doesn't want you to hear. A study out of Boston University specifically took as its focus the role not of concussions, but repeated hits over years of playing football. You can be certain that the NFL will do everything it can to distort whatever result it eventually comes out with (and the initial results, while not yet conclusive, don't look good). The study also doesn't specifically address CTE, the hot-button that the NFL doesn't want to talk about; rather, the study focuses more broadly on brain trauma of many kinds. (Reminder: CTE can only be diagnosed after death.)

Another study was released last week, prior to its presentation at a medical conference this week, concerning former NFL players and traumatic brain injury (TBI) -- again, living retired players, so CTE not a subject of discussion). The study, from Francis X. Conidi of the Florida Center for Headache and Sports Neurology and the Florida State University College of Medicine, tested forty retired NFL players both through sensitive MRI exams and tests of thinking and memory. (Full disclosure: I have a graduate degree from FSU, though obviously not in medicine.)

The results are fairly troubling; in those scans and tests, a full 40% of those players tested showed significant evidence of TBI, by a rate with less than one percent margin of error. That's a rate well beyond that in the general population. The article goes into more specifics on the rates of difficulty in the different mental functions measured by the memory, reasoning, and other tests; take a look for yourself.

That's disturbing enough. But here's the sentence I find most chilling. I'm just gonna quote it directly:

The more years a player spent in the NFL, the more likely he was to have the signs of traumatic brain injury on the advanced MRI. However, there was no relationship between the number of concussions a player had and whether he had traumatic brain injury based on the advanced MRI. 

No correlation to the number of concussions.

Again, this is going to be truly disturbing. Even if one assumes that one can do something about the number of concussions connected to playing football at whatever age or for however many years, it's going to be rather difficult to take hits out of football. Even the very idea is going to prompt the spewing forth of lame blather about putting players in skirts and other derogatory (and misogynistic, if you think about it) remarks from the mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers (hint: if you make such remarks, or even think about making such remarks, you are by definition a mouth-breathing knuckle-dragger even if you have a damn Ph.D).

And yet, as much as the media keeps not noticing, again and again things keep reminding us of something I've been saying for a while now (even about other sports).

It's not just concussions.

Repeat:

It's not just concussions.

Way to go out on a high note, A.J. Tarpley.

A tale of two coaches, speaking unwisely

I have, in discussing the ongoing challenge of brain trauma in football, I have largely, if hopelessly, tried to speak a challenge to fan participation, from a Christian ethical point of view, based on the increasingly evident harm suffered by a non-majority but significant percentage of players who play football over a significant number of years. The Christian ethical question, naturally, is whether or not football is an activity that is worthy of "participation" (not as an athlete, but as a supporter, financial or otherwise -- what charitable organizations or non-profits might call a "sustainer") on the part of those who identify themselves as followers of the Prince of Peace.

Beside the basic question of the harm (as opposed to simple injury or risk, "harm" here indicating some form of damage that will not be repairable in the player's lifetime; permanent, life-affecting damage) to those who play and the possible resultant moral harm that "sustainers" thus inflict on theirselves, there are also other questions around the issue such as how much can one trust those who might be regarded as the "guardians" or "stewards" of the game. In previous weeks, particularly among NFL owners, the occasional bout of loose lips has called into question just how much or how little those owners can be trusted when the overall health of their players, including brain health, is at stake. For every John Mara who expresses concern (or at least manages to sound as if he's expressing concern), there appears a Jerry Jones or a Jim Irsay for whom the kindest possible term is "tone-deaf," and for whom "brutalist exploiter" is probably more accurate.

Coaches, though, haven't come into the spotlight quite in the same way. Perhaps more than owners, coaches are generally proficient in the double-talk necessary to get through weekly press conferences and interviews without saying too much (one even hears the term "coach speak" for such), surviving and advancing from week to week by concealing more than they reveal.

Then came Bruce Arians.

Arians, for whom football seems to be his religion based on his behavior, apparently decided that somebody needed to stand up to all those namby-pamby wussy mothers who are hesitating about letting their boys play football. And he decided it might as well be him, so he loudly and angrily branded those moms as "fools." His word. Also, he seemed to be trying to set dads against moms. I'm neither, and I know that was the actual foolish thing to do. Arians had no cause to get dads in that kind of trouble.

Calling any mom a "fool" is not all that wise, particularly when there are millions of them potentially involved. The backlash was as fierce as it was predictable, so Arians had to try to talk himself down from the branch he had already sawed off.

(Rather than actually give Arians the credit of linking directly to stories covering his brutalistic drivel, I'm going to link to this rant on espnW, which administers to Arians the proper and needed bitch-slapping and also challenges him and his fellow Cro-Magnon types some basic instruction on how to deal with the supposed "war" on football such moms were waging. ["War on Christmas," "War on Christianity," "War on Football." So disagreeing is now declaring war?] I do find it interesting that such could only be found on espnW, where nobody on the "regular" ESPN.com had the, er, intestinal fortitude to do so. The Sporting News, on the other hand, did find someone to dissect the particular nature of Arians's foolishness pretty effectively. In short, he's scared.)

Arians's attempt to backtrack partly included the claim that coaches have to get the word out that football is "safe." Never mind the number of players for whom the game apparently was not "safe" over the last who-knows-how-many decades so far; even leaving out large numbers of players who seem to have suffered brain trauma of various kinds, calling football a "safe" sport is bizarre by a long stretch.

To testify to this, I call Bret Bielema to the stand.

Bielema is coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks, a more-or-less professional franchise in the more-or-less professional Southeastern Conference of the NCAA. Kody Walker, one of the team's more proficient running backs, suffered a broken foot in spring football (now there's a topic for further discussion in some future blog) a few days ago.

In discussing the injury in a statement to the press, Bielema said the following (I'm just gonna quote it all as well as link to it):

“Unfortunately Kody suffered a broken foot during yesterday’s practice. It required surgery that went well today and doctors expect a full recovery. It’s a pretty standard foot injury that we’ve dealt with in the past and we expect him to be full-go by June. If anyone knows how to battle adversity it’s Kody Walker.”

Wow. A broken foot is a 'standard' injury. Am I the only person who finds that a ... fascinating statement?

Kids break bones (although I never did, and still never have, despite playing about as much as a normal kid). Even so, I still have to insist that a sport that accepts a broken foot as "standard" is not really a sport that has a lot of leeway to call itself "safe." The two don't go together.

And again, we're not even getting into what happens to at least some of the brains of those guys on the field.

Please spare me your self-righteous chastising about your brother-in-law or some other person you or someone you know knows who is the ultimate saint of a coach and molder of men and all that pseudo-religious crap. A game that frankly acknowledges, and sometimes even brags about, breaking the Temple (remember 1 Corinthians 6:19, kids?) or wreaking irreparable harm on the bearer of the Imago Dei doesn't really qualify as "safe" by any sane definition. Are we so far gone as to be unable to see this? And any coach, no matter how much a Builder of Men or whatever, who is participating in this system is at least as much a Breaker of Men as a Builder of Men. At the absolute minimum, suddenly trying to apply the word "safe" to a game that has for decades gloated in not being a "safe" game is pretty hypocritical, yes?

At minimum, players clearly aren't buying it from coaches any more than from NFL owners. Another round of early or early-ish retirements kicked in over the last couple of weeks (more on that next time), including one player who was all of 23 years old.

Panic isn't pretty, especially when it expresses itself in what can only be called lashing out. We're seeing an awful lot of such lashing out from football types of late. It looks an awful lot like the kind of lashing out we saw in previous decades from people involved in the tobacco industry, and more recently from those dependent upon the fossil-fuel industry. It's the kind of thing you see when the disinformation campaigns show signs of not working.

Like NFL owners, if NFL or NCAA coaches can't do better than this, and if they can't at least pretend to give a damn about those players in their charge, they really should shut up. They're doing no one any good, and doing many people (not least themselves) lots of harm. And harm is the reason we're even having this conversation in the first place.

Kody Walker suffered a standard injury in Arkansas spring football...it involved something breaking.

A burden sports can't always bear

Stepping away from football and its damage for one evening (even though there's plenty to talk about there) is solely an opportunity for reflection on Jackie Robinson, the Ken Burns mini-series that has aired on PBS the past two nights. It's a sobering reflection, of necessity, on how little we get history right, and how difficult it is for sports to bear the burdens society sometimes places upon it.

We don't always remember the history as well as we claim to. Burns has always done better in my opinion with shorter series like this one; having to focus seems to be beneficial for his narrative style, while the longer series can get pretty windy and repetitive at times. Here Burns has done, if nothing else, the great service of disabusing us of the myth that once Jackie Robinson made it to the majors and made it through a year without fighting back, all was well.

That kind of myth was pretty well established for a long time. The movie 42 exemplifies how the myth works, mostly by dint of the story ending after Robinson's rookie season in 1947. The virulent hate Robinson faced in 1947 might have been very slightly lessened in 1948 or 1949 or other later years, but it never went away. One could argue that, while it has probably softened somewhat (freely tossing around the "n-word" isn't acceptable in MLB any more), that racism never has gone away. Hank Aaron certainly felt it in the barrage of hate mail and death threats he received in his progress towards the all-time home run record in 1973 and 1974. Is it still out there, lurking in more coded language? Quite likely.

One can argue that such a burden as Robinson faced, prepared somewhat by Branch Rickey, was in some ways more than an athlete can bear. It's entirely possible, even likely, that the experience broke Robinson in ways even he probably didn't understand or realize. Not in spirit, mind you; if anything, Robinson only became more steadfast in his refusal to accept second-class citizenship merely over his skin color both during and especially after his playing career. But physically? Robinson had a pretty short career and health problems not always characteristic of baseball. I hate to speculate but it's hard not to wonder. The man was only 53 when he died.

At the same time, it's virtually impossible to imagine such a breakthrough happening in any other sport, then or now. Basketball might have established itself as the most racially progressive of current professional leagues, and the coming-out of Jason Collins was absorbed reasonably well, but it's still an uncertain league on some issues. The NFL, naturally, shows no signs of being capable of making progress on social issues as long as it's irreparably damaging some substantial number of its players.

The problem, though, is more accurately located in our fanciful hope that somehow any sport can be a vehicle for solving the hatreds and conflicts of society. Sports isn't cut out for that. It's a game. Whether it's the expectation of baseball fixing racism or sporting events being a megaphone for hyper-patriotism, it's not up to the task. There aren't that many Jackie Robinsons out there in any sport, or in most of life for that matter, who can handle the burdens that come with being an object or a cultural icon more than a human being. The degree to which we wish for sports to "fix" society is the degree to which we admit our failure to be a civilized society, to do, in the most basic sense, the right thing.

No sport can fix us. Don't ask it to try. Maybe it can be a piece of the puzzle (see: Tampa Bay Rays 4, Cuba 1), but it's never going to be a solution.

Meanwhile, baseball continues to cling to Robinson even as the sport seems to lose more and more traction among black athletes and fans, in a way the following picture seems to capture oddly well:

Robinson's jersey number 42 is retired in all of Major League Baseball, and on one day of the season every player in the league wears the number, in tribute or desperation I'm not sure. Among those who made the recent trip to Cuba with President Obama (and the Tampa Bay Rays) was Robinson's widow Rachel. 

Baseball is still placing a large burden on Jackie Robinson.

Sacking the Temple (A book chapter commentary)

You think I'm extreme? Let me introduce you to Shirl J. Hoffman.

Hoffman (that's a "he," right there with renowned sportswriter Shirley Povich and renowned theologian Shirley Guthrie) is Professor Emeritus of Exercise and Sport Science at the University of North Carolina - Greensboro. He has served as the Executive Director of the American Kinesiology Association, and the editor of a notable text in that field, as well as the author of Sport and Religion and the particular object of interest for today's blog, Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sport. Prior to his entry into academia he worked as a basketball coach. Hoffman also describes himself as an evangelical of long standing, son of a Baptist minister in western Pennsylvania,

Between all of these elements, Hoffman has become a man with major questions about the current state of sport, and evangelical enmeshment in it.

Good Game is a pretty thick volume, so I'm not going to try to discuss it all in one fell swoop. I will, however, offer up some description and commentary on Chapter 7 of that book, one which (although Hoffman doesn't draw it out as explicitly as possible) has great relevance to the frequent subject of this blog, the destructiveness of football to, in particular, the brains of several people who play it.

Chapter title: "Building and Sacking the Temple."

The chapter, as does the book in general, touches on and reaches across many different fields of encounter between sport culture and evangelical culture (Hoffman is quite specific about his own experience and his audience as a result). Among the topics in the chapter are the fad for "Christian" workout videos and proliferation of elaborate gymnasia in certain large churches; the tendency towards glorification of six-pack abs and such as somehow especially "Christian" as a reversal of long-standing suspicion of the body in Christian culture across the centuries; and the meat of the chapter, the proffering of sport as a way of building the body in such a "Christian" fashion flying in the face of prolific demonstration of sport (particularly highly competitive sports, including on the pro level) as having instead a destructive effect on the body, i.e. "sacking" the temple (the body) instead of building it up.

Those who have followed sports for some time will recognize some of Hoffman's examples; a fourteen-year-old Little Leaguer whose arm broke in two places in delivering a pitch (shades of major leaguer Dave Dravecky, whose own arm-snap was a lot more public when it happened and who also gets a mention in the chapter); the damage of boxing; Mike Webster, Terry Long, and Andre Waters; a litany of bodily injuries as described by former major-league catcher Bob Brenly, not atypical of what many ex-catchers describe; the romanticism of injury (both receiving and inflicting) by former pro footballers like Don Meredith, Michael Strahan (yes, the guy next to Kelly Ripa each weekday morning), and Lawrence Taylor (the guy who broke Joe Theismann); the frequent concussions of the likes of Al Toon, Steve Young and Troy Aikman (who is quoted as incredulously wondering "How in the world could anybody endure this for 10 years?") and former athletes, especially devout evangelicals like Orel Hershiser and Kevin Seitzer (as well as Dravecky) citing their faith as the explicit reason they were eager to push themselves to return from injury (multiple beanings in Seitzer's case).

Football, perhaps the most exalted sport in the evangelical culture Hoffman addresses, doesn't come in for particular exaltation in Hoffman's view. To Hoffman, in particular because of its far more widespread participation and its hold on American culture, football is a "greater threat to health than boxing" (178). Hoffman cites the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research and its implication of football in the greatest number of catastrophic injuries, notes football's responsibility for 68% of the 62,000 high school sports injuries reported annually, and also cites former San Diego Chargers staff psychiatrist Arnold Mandell's experience with the "carnage" up-close.

In short, in Hoffman's words, "[I]t is impossible to overstate football's assault on the dignity of the human body" (179).

This is a serious charge to come from Hoffman, who is quite interested in a theology of the body as a cite of the Imago Dei. The Incarnation, that mystery in which the Divine took on human flesh not as a cheap suit but as a real and concrete identity, is a major source of Hoffman's distress at the destructive nature of modern sport. Frankly, it's hard to argue against the thought. One doesn't need to slip into undue body adulation to find it hard to stomach how much modern sports (not just football, but certainly it stands out) wreaks harm and not help on the human bodies that throw themselves into it.

Though Hoffman does not expand on his concerns about football greatly here (his net is wide enough to cover all sports), his concerns are highly informative when considering the ethical implications of participation in football as a fan/supporter/consumer of sports. He has plenty to say about that too, but that will wait for another time.

Hoffman, Shirl James. Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sports. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2010.