The NFL as good guy?

You know things are strange when this blog, retired nine months ago for the sake of my mental health, is resurrected, for one night only, to ... I can barely type it ... praise the NFL?

How in the world did Roger Goodell turn into a good guy?

How did a protest initially scattered among a few NFL players (the primary figure among whom is not in the league at this point) become a movement that has induced even a player in staid, ultra-conservative Major League Baseball to take a knee?

How did bitter on-court NBA rivals end up allies?

How did it come to pass that an NFL owner end up joining his players on the field?

How did players in a game mostly noted for picking off about a third of them with extreme brain damage finally get woke about their status in a league that relies upon them but usually would prefer they shut up, and in a country in which that feeling goes double?

How did one of the less salutary traditions of sport/politics intersection finally get broken?

How did another of sport's less salutary traditions get interrupted for possibly the first time since World War II?

How did a league in which nine of its owners gave money to that guy end up calling him divisive?

How did the great divisions of a country end up playing out on playing fields?

How does this ever work out?

Weekly Reader: Headlines and reflections

Last week's post on this blog was a public regrouping in order to put forward a small part of the Christian ethical foundation underlying this ongoing project. Today's post will be similar, except framed in a reading of some of the recent headlines directly or indirectly pertaining to the subject and seeking to tease out where these ethical concerns may intersect. It is an excercise in developing a methodology, or trying to do so anyway. So, on with it.

ITEM: The NFL is considering dropping or severly curtailing its schedule of Thursday night games in future seasons.
REFLECTION: I see two particular concerns that are revealed by this piece of news.
The NFL is considering this move for one reason, and one reason only: poor ratings. Others connected to the game have certainly raised other concerns about the package -- bad games, over-saturation, and even player safety on occasion. However, these have been the case for a while -- really, is it not clear that playing a game on Sunday and turning around and playing another game four days later could make it difficult to get every body, or everybody, healed even to a minimal degree? Nonetheless, only the middling ratings for the games seems to have gotten the NFL's attention. So...
1. Why are we so confident that a league that has ignored safety concerns so far in inflating the NFL's Thursday presence, from Thanksgiving Day to a few late season weeks to half a season and, this year, to a full season, can truly be trusted to give enough of a damn about player safety in any other context, absent the pressure of losing not making enough money? To presume that a non-ethical actor is suddenly going to act ethically is, well, not very ethical, is it?
2. The flip side of this realization is that FANS DO HAVE POWER to cause the NFL to change its ways. Withhold your money, or even your attention, and look what can happen! This realization makes it a lot more difficult to cling to the notion that an individual's turning away from the game, for example, "won't make a difference." It apparently can effect the league when people don't watch. So fan responsiblity really does matter.
Sidebar: Some of the same concern will need to be directed at college football as well, in which some teams and leagues play some truly bizarre schedules -- Tuesday and Wednesday nights, even -- and Thursday games have been in place for some schools for as much as twenty years.

ITEM: A study from Harvard University recommends, among other things, substantial changes to the structure by which medical personnel are deployed in the league; the league responded with predictable staged outrage (predictable if you've been paying attention to the league for a while).
REFLECTION: Aside from yet another case of academia being out of touch with the real world, this story points to the mania for control that also contributes to the NFL's untrustworthy nature where player health is concerned.
The study proposes that doctors monitoring health not be employed by the league. The logic is simple; doctors who answer to the league or to an individual team are inherently in a position in which the interests of the team or league (i.e. get the star back on the field as quickly as possible) and the interests of the player (don't die, or don't hasten your own death unnecessarily) do not align, despite the NFL's vapid denials of conflict of interest. (The incredibly fatuous statements attributed to NFL spokespeople in the article suggest that the NFL is either unbelievably ignorant of what "conflict of interest" means, or desperately trying to muddy the waters on the subject.)
And as to claims that the proposed system is unworkable? Then are you serious about the health and safety of your players? It really is that simple.

ITEM: Zander Diamont, a backup quarterback for the University of Indiana Hoosiers, has decided to forego his final season of eligibility after "a lot" of concussions in his career (dating back to high school), summing up his decision with the pithy and on-point comment "I need my brain."
REFLECTION: As has been noted in previous blogs, not everybody would necessarily agree with that last comment.
Of course, as Diamont openly admits, he didn't have an NFL career ahead of him, and he is set to graduate from IU this spring. The lure of a pro career does often interfere with good judgment, it seems. (He's also the son of a soap-opera star, and perhaps that lessens the financial pressures that may cause some to press on in the game and hope against hope for that pro career.)
Also noteworthy is Diamont's acknowledgment that his particular playing style was such that he was more prone to head shots, and that his relatively small size made it hard to have any success without putting himself at greater risk. What is rare here is Diamont's apparent ability to see through it all and come to a decision to step away from the risk before it becomes harm. Hopefully.
What becomes a concern is the degree to which young men, who have been playing football since elementary school in many cases, are terribly good candidates to come to such conclusions more often than not. And this comes back to the root concern of this blog: just because young men are free to put themselves at such risk and to choose the harm, are we Christians ethically or morally free to participate in it with our dollars or our presence or our adulation? And if you've read much of this blog, you'll know where this blog stands.

ITEM: A lawsuit filed on behalf of 142 former NFL players calls on the league to acknowledge CTE as an occupational hazard that should be covered by worker's compensation.
REFLECTION: As much as I would typically be sympathetic to the plaintiffs, some shifty stuff is going on here.
The article states that the lead plaintiff was "diagnosed with CTE in 2015." Um, what? Since the article also seems to indicate that said plaintiff is also still alive, something is wrong here. If some doctor is "diagnosing" former players with CTE (and naturally, this is in South Florida, or Flori-duh), then either some amazing breakthrough has been made in complete and utter isolation and with absolutely zero publicity, or somebody's scamming somebody. Considering that, despite some progress, CTE cannot be definitively identified except posthumously...yeah, ethical dubiousness isn't acceptable on either side of this struggle.

ITEM: Liberty University has hired Ian McCaw as its athletic director.
REFLECTION: While there are about a million things that can be said about this subject, for this case (sticking with the football/CTE issue) we are again forced to consider the issue of trustworthiness, but this time from an explicitly Christian (or nominally so) perspective.
McCaw, of course, was previously the athletic director at Baylor University, at a time when the institution failed spectacularly at dealing with revelations of sexual assault among its athletes. Apparently Liberty's desire to become the Notre Dame of evangelicalism is not about to be sidetracked by mere concerns about the safety of women on campus.
The Washington Post's headline on the article places the stakes pretty high, but not inaccurately so, I'd say. If the term "evangelicalism" hasn't taken enough abuse as a result of the presidential campaign, items like this should help push that over the top.
Of course, one of the principal evangelical leaders involved in that campaign was none other than Jerry Falwell, Jr., the president of Liberty University. The juxtaposition of those two tidbits is juicy enough to warrant a larger concern about just what evangelicalism means anymore. Can an evangelicalism that wants to portray itself primarily through athletic success -- at any cost, apparently -- be trusted with the health of the players who are supposed to bring that athletic success? And a school that is so little concerned with what happened on McCaw's watch at Baylor is not that likely to care for the long-term health of its athletes, either.
The win-at-all-costs mentality of college football is sad enough among the largely secular universities who enjoy most of the success in it these days. Seeing schools who shout loudly about their "Christian character" be so cavalier about such costs, and prioritizing athletic success to the degree that it calls that character into question, is profoundly hard to swallow. It's hard not to wonder if grappling with football and the harm it does to some percentage of its players is going to have to go forward without much participation from the evangelical wing of Christianity, or whether that wing is capable of forming a Christian ethical response to the harms (as opposed to risks) of football.

Zander Diamont says "a lot" of concussions is enough.

The gamut of player reaction

The subject of sports "curses" and belief systems is a fertile one, and one I hope to follow up on in the future (even if the most notorious of those curses went out the window last week). But there is a primary topic to this blog, and the past week-plus offered some interesting takes on the subject of football and its concussive effects on its players, against the backdrop of a startling, but not surprising, revelation about a deceased former player.

1) It turns out Cam Newton might actually care about his head after all.

It's amazing what having a concussion can do to your opinion on concussions. After a blindside hit that knocked him out of one game and kept him from starting the next, Newton was inclined to be a bit more cautious about exposing himself to unnecessary hits in the future.

Not that Newton is likely to change his style of play. To be blunt, without his mobility and running ability, Newton's just another big-armed quarterback, and being in the pocket isn't always that much safer than being on the run. No, by "unnecessary" hits he refers to, in the case of the hit that knocked him loopy, not doing foolish things like slowing down on the way to the end zone for no good reason.

I suppose such counts as a tiny measure of progress. Newton isn't stupid, and he might actually have the potential to be the kind of athlete who can have an impact after his career is over if he doesn't end up too scrambled to remember his name. But that's just not guaranteed, no matter how big Newton is. And given the (apparently statistically verifiable) tendency of NFL refs not to call illegal hits on him, he really is going to have to take care of himself.

2) You know that sentence above, "It's amazing what having a concussion can do to your opinion on concussions."? Well, maybe not.

At least one NFL player, Nat Berhe of the New York FOOTball GIants, missed four weeks with a concussion, and yet announced to the world that he will do exactly the same things he did that got him that concussion in the first place.

Among the money quotes in the article: "Nobody wants to live forever" (his own quote directly; has he not watched sci-fi movies?), and a description of his opinion stating that Berhe "said it's not his prerogative to think about the consequences." Um, Mr. Berhe, if it's not your prerogative, then whose is it? Player non-responsibility, thy name is Nat Berhe.

I really, really can't help but wonder what his family thinks, and if he's married and has any children.

3) And then there are those who are struggling with two thoughts, both true. Meet Alex Smith.

He's the quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs. Once upon a time he used to be the quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers.

He lost that job because of a concussion.

By the time he recovered from that concussion, his job had been taken by a guy named Colin Kaepernick, who is now famous for different reasons. Smith ended up being shipped off to KC, where things have actually worked out pretty well for him.

But now he's about to miss a start with what might have been a concussion, and the backup who will be getting the start is a guy who Kansas City acquired because their coach liked him so much back in Philadelphia. On a competitive level, yeah, that would be enough to provoke concern. Oh, no, here we go again...

But Smith has a wife and three kids. He has a reason to want to live forever, to use Berhe's crude formulation. And he's not stupid about head trauma and its effects; at minimum he can read headlines.

So he's torn.

If all that wasn't enough to weigh on him...

4) Kevin Turner's post-mortem brain examination came back revealing as bad a case of CTE as there is.

You might remember this story from the New York Times featuring Turner, then a lead plaintiff in the ongoing legal action against the NFL. Turner died back in March, having already been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. The postmortem in this case did not replace that diagnosis with CTE, but verified the presence of both in Turner's brain, and suggests that in this case the CTE may have been the cause of the Alzheimer's. Such a link had been speculated in the past, but Turner's exam was the most concrete evidence yet for such a link.

Turner really didn't know what he was getting into at the time of his playing career, which was over by the time of Mike Webster's death and the subsequent publicity and understanding of CTE.

Newton, Berhe, and Smith can't say that.

Neither can we, which I can only hope affects how we participate in football, or don't.

Kevin Turner in 2014 (from NY Times)

The giving and receiving of hits

Two highly prominent athletes in their respective sports are currently sidelined due to suffering concussions in competition. (That would actually be three if you count Dale Earnhardt, Jr., who is trying to rehabilitate while missing the end of the NASCAR season due to concussion effects from much earlier this year.) One of last year's Super Bowl quarterbacks, Cam Newton of the Carolina Panthers, missed the team's most recent game due to a concussion. For Newton, the season started on a rugged note when he received multiple hits to the head in the season opener against their Super Bowl opponents, the Denver Broncos, and the pattern has continued through the season so far. While the initial reaction after game one was mostly about the dubious hits he has received, of late the conversation has turned to suggestions that Newton will have to change his style of play, relying more on pocket play and getting rid of the ball quickly instead of keeping plays alive with his feet. While this smacks a bit of "blaming the victim," it also seems pretty lame; the notion that any of this will guarantee that further harm does not find Newton is pretty untenable given that concussions don't happen just to running quarterbacks (ask Case Keenum).

Meantime, in the National Hockey League, possibly its best player is sidelined again. Sidney Crosby, center for the Pittsburgh Penguins, is day-to-day (such a thoroughly existential phrase) after a collision in practice on Friday. Any such concern for Crosby is magnified by his previous experience. Crosby missed nearly two seasons after suffering a concussion in 2011 (though he was hardly the first NHL player to have significant time lost due to concussion), leaving his sport missing one of its brightest lights and amplifying the concern about concussions in hockey during a time when a number of its former players were being revealed to have suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The end of that period also marked the start of legal action against the NHL over head trauma. It may be coincidental that the NHL just announced new policies adding "spotters" at matches -- certified athletic trainers with hockey experience -- who can call for players to be removed from the game when a concussion is suspected.

In the current climate around both sports, such losses draw heightened attention from fans of these sports, or even sports fans generally. This is, of course, a far cry from past years in which the word "concussion" might not have entered the discussion at all, and neither Newton nor Crosbly would have missed any action until neither one of them was able to walk. That only began to change after a number of deaths, mostly of football players at first, who were found to have suffered from CTE. This is of course well-established now, but I find it worthwhile and even needful to reach back in memory and try to remember how it was when we didn't know or understand what was going on, and to try to figure out how I came to the position I currentled y occupy, one in which watching football at all just isn't something I can stomach anymore.

In doing so, I find that the turn started many years ago, with the death of Andre Waters.


Andre Waters played twelve seasons in the NFL, mostly with the Philadelphia Eagles. His reputation, and it was a pervasive one, was as one of the hardest hitters in the league among its defensive backs, or frankly from any position. On occasion Waters would draw fines for the severity of his hits, and that in an age when the league was cranking out videos like "NFL's Greatest Hits" and other such similarly themed titles.

After his playing career ended Waters began to get into collegiate coaching, working at Morgan State University, the University of South Florida, and Alabama State University before ending up at Fort Valley State College, an HBCU in central Georgia not far from my hometown. Between that and the fact that Waters was a native of Belle Glade, Florida (not far from West Palm Beach, where I was living in 2006), the story caught my attention. It's not as though Waters was a favorite player, by any means -- he was usually causing harm to whatever team I was following. But his was a familiar name, and the report of suicide was naturally shocking.

And he wasn't a Pittsburgh Steeler.

Mike Webster had died in 2002. He had been diagnosed with brain damage during his life, but his diagnosis of CTE was not of course known until after his death. Another former Steeler, Justin Strzelczyk, died in an automotive accident in 2004, and the following year onetime teammate Terry Long committed suicide by drinking antifreeze. Both were also found to have CTE in postmortem examination.

As bizarre as it sounds, one could at that point rationalize such stories by wondering damn, what are the Steelers doing to their players? After all, the three had all played for them. Maybe they were just too abusive in practice or something. Also, all three of these players had been offensive linemen. They were in position to get hit a lot, and on every play. If you don't want to think there's a real problem, you look for anything that can be used to limit the scope of that problem. So no, it wasn't crazy-sounding to posit that the Steelers somehow abused their offensive linemen in some way.

Andre Waters's death and diagnosis messed with that.

For one thing, obviously Waters didn't play for the Steelers. He spent the last couple of years of his career with the Arizona Cardinals after his time with the Eagles.

Also, Waters wasn't an offensive lineman. He was a defensive back.

He wasn't the one being hit. He was the hitter.

He was famous for delivering punishing hits. One might even say he was notorious, though such terms are usually reserved for the likes of Jack Tatum (the one who paralyzed Daryl Stingley) or Lester Hayes. To learn that Waters had suffered from this condition messed with a lot of the mythology about football, perhaps the most pervasive of such being a gratuitous perversion of a well-known scripture: when it comes to hits in football, it is better to get than to receive.

If a ferocious hitter like Andre Waters could end up dead at age 44, with a brain likened to that of an 85-year-old Alzheimer's sufferer, clearly hitting was not a lot better than being hit.

I would actually go so far as to say that the death of Andre Waters was the first one to cause me to pay attention to football and CTE and the deaths of players -- not in any systematic way, and not nearly to the point of even thinking about giving up watching football (though I had lost a lot of interest in the NFL by this time), but enough to wonder about what effect the game might have on some number of its players.

At that point it was hard to imagine the numbers of former players who would be found to have suffered from CTE, or that such big names as Junior Seau or Ken Stabler would be among their number. It was certainly not imaginable that a movie would be made on the subject or that a book like League of Denial would come along.

In short, it was not imaginable that we'd end up where we are now, where football -- not just the NFL but football at every age -- would have to think about change, would have to face the possibility that people might decide it wasn't worth the risk for their kids. It was hard to imagine that players who never played beyond college would be diagnosed with this condition.

And yet here we are.

Weekly Reader: Well, what do you expect?

So on Sunday afternoon, before heading off for a couple of meetings, I was busy watching football (or futbol, to be more precise) when my Twitter feed apparently felt compelled to alert me that a football (American style) player had gotten hurt.

In this case New Orleans Saints defensive back P.J. Williams had to be carted off the field after sustaining not one, but two hits to the head on one play. Due to the uncertainty about Williams's injuries and their extent he was immobilized on a backboard and his head/helmet was strapped down to prevent any further injury. In the end, though, the diagnosis was a concussion, and while Williams stayed overnight at a hospital for precautionary reasons, he was expected to be discharged on Monday and enter the NFL's concussion protocol.

Quite a Sunday for your second-ever game in the NFL. He was even a hashtag for a little while.

Now time for this blog to get callous.

There are injuries by which you are allowed to be shocked. When Kevin Ware's leg snapped like a cheap pencil in the NCAA Final Four, shock was appropriate. It was horrifying, grotesque, and completely not typical for a basketball game.

Then there are injuries you really have no business being shocked by.

You really have no business being shocked when your favorite baseball team's best pitcher goes down with a torn rotator cuff. It's pretty much an epidemic, and while it generally isn't life-threatening, it still happens way more than it should.

It's a bit silly to be shocked when a hockey player loses a tooth. It's a stereotype, for pete's sake.

On the more farcical end of things, there's no point in being shocked when a soccer player acts as if he's in the throes of mortal agony after a non-contact play (I say "he" here because this really doesn't seem to happen so often in the women's game).

And football? I'm not sure there's any kind of injury on a football field that should really be shocking anymore. We've seen too many. And frankly, at this point it might be that those who suffer obvious injuries that require them to be removed from the game are fortunate, in that they don't stick around for two or three or a dozen more hits to their stunned cranial matter.

This is what the sport does to its players. And you know that going in, if you're a rational adult.

So spare me the hashtags. You've made the bargain; live with it.


Other things to read and think about:

*If you wondered why the NFL had become such a prolific contributor to select members of Congress, now you know why.

*From the "Waiting on Science Our Savior" department: The NFL is gonna throw gobs of cash at the pursuit of a "magic helmet," and some for concussion research too.

*Former NFL placekicker Cary Blanchard died earlier this month. He was one of the 4,500 former players who was a plaintiff in that settlement reached a couple of years ago. Yes, placekicker. Even I didn't think that was terribly possible. Shows what I know.

*From earlier this year: you might remember an experiemental study from a few years ago, when a number of former players like Tony Dorsett were judged to show signs of CTE while still alive? The first former player to be a part of that study, Fred McNeill, has died, and...he has been posthumously confirmed to have had CTE. This could be a very big deal in the effort to diagnose the disease in the living and try to find some way to combat it. The bad part, of course, is that more players will have to die to confirm this -- the great ethical conundrum of CTE research.

*A former NFL great suffering from possibly football-related dementia has become the subject of an ugly custody battle.  He's regrettably unlikely to be the last such story.

Outside concussionball:

*A group of NHL players hit Capitol Hill (figuratively) to lobby for tigher rules for younger players.

*Political activism among athletes is not limited to NFL players during national anthems.

Scary, but not shocking.

Trust

The NFL would like you to believe you can trust it on the subject of concussions and head trauma among its players. To that end (among other things), the league, in concert with the NFL Players Association, announced today that stricter guidelines and harsher punishments would be applied to teams that failed to follow the league's and NFLPA's agreed concussion protocols on game day. The case of Case Keenum, referenced here, was apparently the impetus for this toughening. Additionally commissioner Roger Goodell announced the NFL would be appointing a new chief medical officer.

The latter announcement, ironically enough, points to one of the most significant reasons why the NFL hasn't been and can't be trusted on the subject. The new officer will be in effect replacing Elliott Pellman, a rheumatologist who became for all practical purposes the face of the NFL's denial on brain trauma and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and as much of a villain in the process as anybody connected to the NFL. Indeed Pellman's stony-faced "no" in the face of questions that threatened to cause the NFL trouble is as much a representation of how the NFL became something of a modern moral equivalent to the tobacco industry.

Pellman, however, is not the only doctor associated with the NFL to come under scrutiny for his professional conduct in that role. Dr. Richard Ellenboegen, a member of the NFL's health committee, is under investigation by his own school (the University of Washington). Ellenboegen, co-chair of the league's Head, Neck, and Spine Committee, is also chair of U-Dub's Department of Neurological Surgery. UW is investigating Ellenboegen over his alleged attempts to influence the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to pull CTE research funding away from Boston University's program (one which has carried out some of the foremost research in the field so far) towards doctors who were more sympathetic to the NFL's position, including possibly some funded by the NFL.
In the meantime, the more new information comes out, the less the NFL looks like anything you want holding your life in its hands, and those who have been associated with the NFL are starting to feel the effects of that taint. Green Bay Packers great Paul Hornung has sued the league's primary helmet manufacturer, Riddell, over the ineffectualness of their helmets (Hornung now suffers from dementia). Also, another former NFL player, Haruki Nakamura, is now suing Lloyd's of London for failing to honor a policy he purchased from them. The policy was independent of the NFL in this case, but the NFL has declared Nakamura physically unfit to play in the league, which Lloyd's is contesting. Nakamura's wife describes how her husband changed after the injury, in a litany becoming all too familiar.

In the meantime, Calvin Johnson has talked about the many concussins of his career, none of which ever made it to an NFL injury report (not to mention the proliferation of painkillers dispensed to deal with them and other injuries); the player who has emerged as the primary advocate of marijuana use to deal with such injuries (and cut back on the painkillers) has decided to retire; a new NFL coach has apparently decided to have players hit in practice like it's 1999 (i.e. the age before brain trauma awareness);  and, in probably the most SMH development of all, a former NCAA and NFL running back avoided prison time for a drug offense by claiming he was being treated for CTE. You can't be "treated for CTE," since CTE can't be diagnosed until after death, and cadavers (as far as I know) don't receive medical treatment. Oh, and it's really looking like 30 is the new 40 where NFL retirement is concerned.

Perhaps the saddest or strangest part of the story is that the degree to which the NFL has managed to lose the public's trust, the NFL itself is not the entity most likely to suffer from that lack of trust. Instead, that "honor" probably falls to youth sports organizations (Pop Warner football and the like, but not just in football), ill-prepared for the scrutiny, which are now seeing folks conclude that tackle football (or, for example, heading the ball in soccer) just isn't appropriate anymore for children or even younger teenagers. Now in theory, this could eventually have an effect on the "pipeline" of talent into the NFL, but probably not soon and not as much as you might expect; the NFL (and the NCAA for that matter) will simply find different sources of talent, and there will always be plenty of young men who are convinced they are invulnerable. It's a macho thing, you know, even if they don't call it that anymore.

As NFL training camps and NCAA practices gear up in the coming weeks, I'm guessing more such stories will start to flow freely through the media. Summer vacation is over for Big Football, and scrutiny is only going to re-intensify. How much that matters? I'm not optimistic. There are actual fan groups that do seek to shine a spotlight on these abuses, but I fear they're a drop in the bucket compared to the literally obscene amounts of money the league rakes in. Popularity has never equalled ethical legitimacy, though, so the question of how we can justify an entertainment that sure as Hell looks like it irreparably damages about a third of its participants must and will continue to be asked, at least in this blog anyway.

At least Case Keenum's inglorious moment wasn't totally blown off, I guess...

Weekly Reader: Hockey takes its hits

A way to touch on multiple stories before they go cold: the Weekly Reader (or am I the only one who remembers that from elementary school?)

Two stories from the world of hockey came to my attention this week. One was inescapable if you follow the sports world much, the other less so, but both serve as reminders that there are other sports besides football that face a reckoning over how they damage their participants beyond repair.

One such story: the death of Gordie Howe.

The stories flew fast and think about Howe, a legendary figure in the sport who played professional hockey (at least once) in six decades, a feat normally the province of baseball players like Minnie Miñoso. Unlike Miñoso, Howe was an active, full-time player for most of those decades. Howe played into the 1979-80 season as a Hartford Whaler, alongside his sons, after having made his NHL debut in 1946. A one-shift stint with a minor-league team in 1997, when Howe was freakin' 69 years old, completed the six-decade trifecta.

Of course, one can't talk about such a long career, one marked by Howe's willingness to duke it out on the ice, without acknowedging that Howe had been diagnosed with dementia four years before his death.

The obvious, if disturbing, question is whether Howe's brain will be given for research to determine if he possibly had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE); given how determinedly his sons pushed back against reports of Howe's dementia at the time, I'm not optimistic -- not only because of the loss of understanding of the condition, but also because the supposition, or even the assumption that Howe actually had that disease will be a cloud both lingering and being ignored in hockey, which has plenty of trouble dealing with its own brain-trauma crisis.

Stephen Peat's story made it into the New York Times a couple of weeks ago, offering up a reminder that this sport has its own walking wounded. It still remains true that CTE can only be diagnosed after death, but if you were going to draw up a list of symptoms and conditions you would look for in a living person with CTE, based on accounts of those persons who lived with the condition, you would basically end up describing Peat's current life.

[Here is where I could use some help from someone who follows hockey much more than I ever have. Peat, like a number of those former players felled by CTE, was an "enforcer," one whose job (at the risk of oversimplifying) was to get in fights on the ice. Was this in part to "protect" star players, the likes of Wayne Gretzky or Sidney Crosby (who, given his concussion history, evidently wasn't protected very well if that was the case)? I'm seriously asking. Unlike football, with which I grew up and can still remember very well even without actually watching games any more, I have never spent much time being exposed to hockey and don't pretend to get the culture at all, even as it seems to be trying to change at least on the NHL level. So anyone who can explain: were the likes of Stephen Peat getting into fights so the likes of Gretzky wouldn't get caught up in them? If that's the case, then the NHL is really going to have hell to pay where the likes of Peat are concerned. Sacrificial lambs indeed. That would be a serious abdication of stewardship, particularly if it really does turn out that NHL higher-ups were more aware of concussion risks than they let on for years.]

And just in case you missed it in that link, Peat is 36.

Other sports stories of concern and note:

*Another former women's soccer national-team stalwart announced that she would be donating her brain for CTE research. As noted before, very little of the CTE research out there has included women, even though they've played games with contact involved for some time now. Unlike Brandi Chastain, Briana Scurry has had a noted and non-minor history of concussions that ended her career. At the same time, a family history of Alzheimer's is also present. Scurry also devotes a part of her website to such issues and has testified before congressional committees on the subject (and was scheduled to do so again today).

*The sudden death of a once-popular MMA fighter may well spark its own set of rumors about whether brain trauma was involved, but good grief, in that sport there are so many other possibilities...

*At least for now, the only way for a Cuban ballplayer to get into MLB is by defection. Another defector was cleared by MLB today to sign with a team.

In football:

*CTE research marches on, NFL support or not.

*From the "waiting on science our savior" department: while helmet development continues, this article explains why pretty much no helmet ever (at least one in which one could practically play football) will ever be able to prevent concussions.

*More "science our savior": a new research project based in Pittsburgh (the unfortunate "birthplace" of CTE) aimed at seeking actual therapeutic options.

Not sports-related, but sort of:

*As brain trauma was becoming a concern in sports, much of the early research involved both sports leagues and the military, under the observation that similar symptoms could be observed between, say, football players and soldiers who had been injured in action in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Now new research suggests that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as found in soldiers may well be a physical injury, not just a psychological one -- and not quite the same as CTE.

And this is just potentially deeply disturbing:

*Is Russia trying to disrupt Euro 2016? Their team is on a "suspended disqualification" in the tournament after fracases between fans of England and Russia, both inside the stands and outside. Yes, it's England's fans that have the reputation for hooliganism, but that was years ago, and Russia looks much more like the aggressor in this case. And apparently it happened again today, with fans of Wales also getting drawn into the action this time.

While English courts have acted quickly to punish their offenders, the same cannot be said for Russian authorities. If this Reuters report is even the tiniest bit accurate, these incidents are not merely sports-related; they come little short of acts of war. I mean, trained hooligans? Is this how far Vladimir Putin has sunk?

And oh, yeah, guess who hosts the World Cup in two years?

Stephen Peat in his enforcer days

Irresponsible

Note: Once-a-week blogging for the time being. Need to do more organizational work now.

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...

A settlement, but (maybe) not an escape

I'm still recovering, to some degree, from watching that first round of the NFL draft, and I will get back to some observations on that before too long. In the meantime, though, a couple of pieces of news that are of interest in understanding what the NFL knew and when it knew it have passed through in the past couple of weeks, and they're worth a quick comment.

It did not pass the notice of this blog that the long-disputed settlement between the NFL and a large number of retired players was approved by an appellate court about two weeks ago.

Nobody involved considers the settlement perfect (even the NFL, I suspect, but for different reasons), but the judge ruling on the case opined that it was not warranted to hold out for anything better. About 20,000 former players will potentially be covered by the settlement, al though a small handful of players did not participate in the settlement and are likely to continue action against the league. (Additionally, a number of families of players who were not diagnosed with CTE until after the settlement cutoff date -- Ken Stabler comes to mind -- are unlikely to accept being cut off from financial restitution.)

You can read the article for the gory legal details as you wish. For a great many people, the most damning result of that settlement was this: because of the acceptance of the settlement, there were two possible results caught up in these two quotes from the ESPN article above:

...thereby potentially ending a troubled chapter in league history.

and:

The settlement deal means the NFL might never have to disclose what and when it knew about the risks and treatment of concussions.

Now for many, this was the most damaging part of the settlement; the NFL was able to get off the hook without any admission of guilt, and there would be nothing in the settlement to hold the NFL accountable for what it knew, and when, and what it did to obscure it. In the eyes of too many, this was a poor result, even if a number of former players were able to receive funds within three to four months, possibly.

In the words of a TV foof associated with college football, not the NFL: not so fast, my friend.

Those initial reports were leaving out one party with quite an interest in the settlement, and in particular its distribution, as well as any other monies that might be disbursed for medical treatment for those former players: the insurance industry.

A New York state judge ruled that NFL officials and doctors had to be made available for questions, and in fact to answer questions, from insurers who want no part of paying up to a billion dollars* in potential settlement money if the NFL was not being honest about its knowledge of concussions and brain trauma and their effects. As well, documents pertinent to that knowledge and informaiton were also required to be made available.

*While the official amount of the settlement is $765 million, the actual compensation fund in the settlement (estimated at $675 million) is in fact uncapped; a separate $75 million medical monitoring fund was also uncapped as part of the settlement. Therefore, the actual amount of money spent could be much higher. The NFL estimates in court documents that they expect to disburse no more than $900 million, but the amount could be higher. 

When or how this will happen is yet to be determined, but (if anybody actually pays attention) this could be a significant development in getting at the truth of the NFL's involvement with (potentially) covering up what it knew of the damage the game was doing to its players. This could be damning in any future cases of litigation against the league (while 20,000 players may be expected to be covered, such information may well draw others out of the woodwork), and will potentially just look bad for the league. Bad enough to finally shake its stranglehold on its fan base? I'm not holding my breath. Bad enough to make the whole enterprise look less appealing to athletes with any other sports options? Sure. Bad enough to raise, at long last, enough ethical doubt about the game for something to give in this society? Who knows?

One point that has been wondered about in the past: what about current players? As much as I may not respect or trust the league, I don't think current players need to be included. Heartless? I don't think so. Whatever might yet be revealed about how long and how much the NFL knew, you don't need the NFL's acknowledgment to know what the risks are now. At some point, it's a player's responsibility to protect his own health now. You don't want to take that risk? Don't play. At least a few players are making that choice, as recent headlines have shown.

Anyway, this potential questioning, and its potential results ... something to watch.

You never know where important information will turn up.

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.