Another note: The rumination on fun has to go on hold, since the NFL has behaved badly again, or perhaps more accurately, gotten called out for it.
When Congress -- Congress!! -- calls you out, you've messed up.
A congressional study released this week found that the NFL attempted to throw its weight around, using its much-ballyhooed contributions to brain trauma research to control which scientists would be supported by the National Institutes of Health, the intended recipient of those funds. What had been touted as an "unrestricted gift" apparently had strings attached after all.
I don't think anyone is particularly surprised by this revelation. If anything, it merely confirms what has been increasingly clear for some time: the NFL is going to play by the tobacco playbook of the 1950s and 60s, doing everything in its power to muddy the science so it can go on making staggering sums of money. A researcher like Dr. Robert Stern, who previously had the temerity to follow the science in his work at Boston University, whose CTE Center has been at the forefront of such science as has been going on so far on the subject, was unacceptable to the NFL. So, they tried to keep the money from going to BU, and when they failed, they pulled their money.
This is the behavior of an organization with something, a lot of something, to hide.
Side note: I find it fascinating that BU continues to field a football team.
I suppose what is impressive about this congressional report is that part of the NFL strategy for making the concussion issue go away (not so much actual concussions, mind you, not to mention all the other hits that actually add up to CTE for too many players) involves political donations. Evidently they didn't manage to target the right members of Congress yet.
Ethical takeaway: this is the organization you are funding when you buy a ticket or a replica jersey or other bit of NFL merchandise, and probably even when you subscribe to that whole NFL Sunday Ticket deal.
You know this, right? Whatever your old childhood loyalties may have been, do they obligate you to continue to participate in this kind of blatant BSing and irresponsible stewardship of the players in the league's employ, past, present, and future? You might as well have been contributing to Philip Morris or Reynolds back in the day.
Other bits of news around the subject, possibly to be revisited:
1. Bubba Smith had stage 3 CTE when he died five years ago. Some remember him as a fearsome defensive star. Others remember him from the Police Academy movies or other film or TV roles, or maybe even the old Miller Lite "tastes great/less filling" ads. (Current research identifies four stages of CTE.) He would not even be the first NFL-star-turned-actor to be so identified; Alex Karras, of Blazing Saddles and Webster, also was found to have CTE at his death.
2. Thurman Thomas is still living. Last month he gave an account of the toll football took on his brain.
3. Meanwhile, the guys just coming into the NFL from last month's football meat market-palooza are still largely convinced they're invincible.
4. A (probably soon-to-be-former) NFL general manager, Doug Whaley of the Buffalo Bills, suggested that people probably really should not be playing football.
And from other sports:
5. Action sports has its first CTE diagnosis. I confess I had not even considered that sport, though it's certainly believable that its participants suffer plenty of blows to the head.
6. Another sport you don't necessarily think about: auto racing. A few weeks ago one of its bigger stars, Dale Earnhardt Jr., announced he would be donating his brain for CTE research after his death.
7. So will Brandi Chastain, former Women's World Cup champion (the one who scored the winning goal and gave the sportsbra its day in the sun, remember?). This is particularly noteworthy, as very little research on brain trauma and sports so far has involved female athletes.
8. Also from soccer: an MLS player has had to change his game after five documented concussions, cutting down on leading with his head.
9. The National Hockey League's brass was caught in newly released emails speculating about the possible connections between the deaths of three of its players and their primary on-ice occupation: fighting.
10. The NHL won't get off the hook; a class-action lawsuit by former players was allowed to go forward.
ESPN heard you say it, Mr. Whaley; too late to walk it back...
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