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.

Christian ethics, the human body, and football

Part of my responsibility in purusing this project is to put forth a coherent ethical response to the ongoing concern of football and the traumatic brain injury associated with it. Amidst the gathering of new stories and accounts of the experiences of former and now deceased players, the inability or unwillingness of football leagues or collegiate conferences to take the issue seriously beyond a basic CYA instinct, and possible changing attitudes among fans or players, I occasionally need to drop back and gather up some of the ethical foundation and procedure behind the project, to try to keep myself from getting too far off track.

So bear with me, please.

I have been reminded of two basic concerns underlying an ethical approach to this question; one concerning the possible audience for such concern, and another pointing to a basic reason why Christian ethics must (in my opinion, humble or otherwise) address the issue.

Note the choice of the term "Christian ethics." That is a significant limitation on whatever comes out of this pursuit. In trying to sort out what kind of Christian ethical position I'm coming from I've come to conclude that based on what I hope to be the outcome of such a project, my target audience is limited to what is theologically called the "body of Christ."

It isn't because I think the opinions and actions of those of other faiths are irrelevant or unimportant -- quite the opposite. It is simply that, in my role as a Christian (specifically Presbyterian) pastor, my most basic concern is to in some way provide spiritual guidance and direction so that the members of the body of Christ (we usually call them "Christians" though I am growing less and less fond of that word in its current state every day) are formed and matured into people who live rightly, more so than trying to direct individual actions so that individuals act rightly.* This might not sound like what you've perceived as the role of Christian ethics (or ethics in general), and there are certainly others who will disagree.

*Here one might look into Samuel Wells, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2004), especially his introductory chapters.

Christian ethical thought has at different times emphasized very different outcomes for the body of Christ -- sometimes emphasizing loyalty to the State as a means of guaranteeing the influence of the Church (and yes, quite a few nominally Christian leaders are clearly taking this approach today); sometimes propagating a canon of law or rules, adherence to which demonstrated one's faith; sometimes emphasizing the rationality of the faith, or its suitability to the improvement of the individual vs. the larger body. By staking out the position I have, I am certianly "showing my bias" -- the importance of community and "body of Christ" over individual supremacy, a preference for formation of habits and even "instincts" to respond ethically to situations that haven't necessarily existed before, rather than prescribing a rulebook and then trying to bend current situations to that rulebook (football is, after all, a relatively recent thing in history, though there are other activities that the Christian ethical response to which will be informative), and others I'm sure I'll hear about.

For the moment, though, the big concern that arises from this is that if my primary concern is with the body of Christ, then what I say should not be considered authoritative over those who do not claim membership in said body. It ain't because I don't care. And if a book or some other product eventually does hit the market, my Jewish or Muslim or agnostic friends (or anybody else) should certainly feel free to buy a copy. <grin> But all of this really does come out of a pastoral and theological foundation, and those who do not partake of such a foundation cannot be bound by my arguments from it.

So the language of this project is likely to get more and more faith-specific -- not with intent to offend, but simply trying to do the only job I can do here.


The second reminder to myself comes in a sideways fashion from the first -- specifically from my job being directed toward the "body of Christ," i.e. the Christian (there's that word again) church. Part of the reason is that I don't believe that followers of Christ, professors of an incarnational faith, can be indifferent to those activities in human existence that regularly and routinely cause harm to the physical body.

We are, after all, followers of a victim of torture. The scourging, whipping, imposition of a crown of thorns, and other abuses visited upon Jesus wouldn't even remotely pass muster under the Geneva conventions today, and I'm pretty sure crucifixion would fall under the ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" even for the most zealous defenders of capital punishment (on second thought, maybe not all such defenders). One of the key events in the narrative of Christianity is an act of physical destruction.

Not surprisingly, Christian ethics and doctrine have not typically looked kindly on activities that visit lasting harm on the body (leaving aside for the moment those who hold to soul/body dualisms of some sort, except to say that I'm not one of them). Capital punishment (usually) comes under criticism; abortion is sanctioned; harm to the body through drugs or alcohol or other foreign substances is decried; sports such as boxing have, eventually, fallen out of favor in many Christian circles. It certainly remains possible that football will similarly fall out of favor, although with such virulent attachments to it still in place in some corners of the church that doesn't seem likely any time soon, no matter how much nobodies like me might protest. But it's becoming harder and harder to ignore the degree to which the game produces an awful lot of broken bodies, even if the damage takes five or ten or twenty years to show. That can't be acceptable in an ethic that takes seriously the idea of human beings created in the image of God.  

Here's a case where our ancestors in the faith have provided some thought that can be applied to the modern case, albeit indirectly at best. The criticisms of Tertullian, Augustine, and the like against the gladiatorial combats and contests of the ancient world don't necessarily transfer directly to modern critiques of football (the spectacle of death is not immediate in the NFL, at least for now), but the concerns both about the aforementioned imago Dei and the impact such spectacles had on those who viewed them should not be dismissed. Augustine's account of his unfortunate friend Alypius at the spectacles sounds pretty mild compared to the total besotted intoxication fans display at the modern spectacles on Saturday afternoons (or nights, or now Thursdays or Fridays), or Sundays (or Mondays, or now Thursdays). That infatuation and saturation with the spectacle becomes an unavoidable part of teasing out a Christian ethical response to the seemingly intractable destructiveness of the game on some sizeable number of its players, and has inevitably to be answered and critiqued as part of the process of ethical inquiry.

In short; the destructive quality of football (which seems more intractable and less fixable than in sports like hockey) has to be addressed, but we're going to have to untangle some seriously dubious entwinement of football and religionesque ritual and worship while doing so. And yes, the "i" word (idolatry) is probably going to have to be invoked at some point.

I...I can't even...

Book Commentary: Unintended Impact

Prebstle, Jim. Unintended Impact: One Athlete's Journey from Concussions in Amateur Football to CTE Dementia. Edina: Beaver's Pond Press, 2015. 265pp. ISBN 978-1-59298-883-9.

I have previously in this blog raised the unsettling spectre that, aside from those former NFL players, known and yet to be known, suffering the lingering effects of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), there might well be numerous players (thousands? tens of thousands?) whose career arc never approached the NFL but yet suffer from the same debilitating effects of their shorter football careers.

This book tells one such story.

Dick Prebstle grew up in the football-crazed precincts of Canton and Massilon, Ohio. Born in 1942, he progressed through what was already a familiar path for a young athlete; beginning to play tackle football at age ten, getting onto the high school team (in his case skipping the "freshman team" that was more common in the 1950s), and as a successful high-school star (and also an excellent student), being recruited to a successful collegiate program, in his case at Michigan State. Prebstle was mostly a backup quarterback at MSU, and a succession of severe injuries, including a now-shocking number of concussions, ultimately ended his career prematurely. (His younger brother, the author of this book, would last longer in football, and was a member of MSU's 1965 national championship team, but neither brother would play in the NFL.)

Dick Prebstle's post-football life seemed destined for success, despite an unsuccessful attempt at law school. He ultimately made his way into business; getting a foothold in the insurance business before  maneuvering his way to the acquisition of a construction equipment company.

Jim Prebstle's story of his big brother's rise and decline has been dropping hints along the way -- frequent migraines, unexpected illnesses suggested as stress-related at the time -- that all was not to be well, but the decline is marked sharply at this point. Without giving away too many details (you are supposed to read the book after all), Jim Prebstle reads Dick's decline in retrospect, armed (as he and Dick's other family members were not at the time) with the understanding of CTE's effect on the afflicted brain. While a CTE diagnosis, which can only be confirmed posthumously, cannot change the suffering its victim and family go through, it can be a means to understand how a seemingly healthy and successful man like Dick Prebstle could be laid low so suddenly. The most marked changes in behavior and cognitive function began to manifest themselves in Dick Prebstle in the early 1980s, according to Jim Prebstle's account.

Dick Prebstle lived until 2012, aged 69.

Think of thirty years in fearsome mental decline, kicking in before age 40.

Jim Prebstle's account is straightforwardly retrospective, reading Dick's life in light of his posthumous diagnosis. Having learned how CTE works, through their experience with the Boston University study that has announced so many such diagnoses, Jim and other relatives of Dick, including wife and children, are calling up painful and baffling memories, and beginning to re-interpret those memories through new information and understanding that was simply not out there in the 1980s. (The book's Forward is by Dr. Robert A. Stern, a member of the BU study group, and is particularly useful to read and digest.)

As Jim Prebstle's account unfolds, a plethora of related issues float, sometimes unintentionally, to the surface -- the relationship between brothers, particularly the overachieving older brother and the younger brother constantly judged by his elder's accomplishments; the "warrior codes" and implicit assumptions about manhood attached to football; the sheer lack of understanding of brain injury and the harrowingly outdated and ultimately deadly way young football players were taught to hit head-first; the sheer idolatry (my word, not Prebstle's) of football in certain parts of American culture; the "steel mill mentality" of the upper Midwest; the bitterness and rancor that result from disputes over care of dementia patients; the staggering physical deterioration of a CTE-afflicted brain; and many more.

The one significant disappointment of the book is the Epilogue, in which football idolatry still demands an Affirmation of Faith in the sport despite its destruction of some percentage of those who play it. The insistence that there has to be a way to make the sport safer still rings out, despite the lack of any evidence that this is so. Preserving football still comes first.

Nonetheless, read the book as a kind of personal counterbalance to a more broad-based account such as that in League of Denial. I suspect more such stories are going to begin to appear, as more former players or their family members try to understand what they or their loved ones have suffered, and how it could all be a result of the game they loved.

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)

Sports "curses" and sports belief systems

I could easily move on from last week's post, but since the two most "cursed" teams in the playoffs are the ones who made it to the World Series that starts tonight, it seems worth the effort to break down how the idea of cursed teams functions within the belief systems of sports that were the subject of last week's post.

In case you've been under a rock for the last few days, the Chicago Cubs are in the World Series for the first time since 1945, and looking to win their first Series since 1908 (not a misprint), which is, of course, a drought of 108 years. Their counterparts in Cleveland, in the meantime, have not won a World Series since 1948, and though they have been to the World Series a few times since then, those trips to the Series were painful enough to suggest "cursedness" for some more than long-term absence from the Series (a la the Cubs). They were the victims of Willie Mays's catch (i.e. "The Catch") in 1954, they were on the wrong end of Atlanta's only World Series win in that run during the 1990s, and were within an inning of winning it all in 1997 only to watch Jose Mesa blow a save to the then-Florida Marlins. It seems fair to say that Cleveland fans have known their share of baseball-propelled grief.

Popular culture has in fact used both of these long droughts for movie fodder. It takes a kid with a surgery-enhanced arm to rescue Chicago in Rookie of the Year, while Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, Corbin Bernsen and others did the trick in Major League and its lesser sequel. So that part's a draw, I guess. The celebrity-endorsement battle goes decisively to Chicago, however, as the likes of Bill Murray and Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam have been regular presences in Wrigley Field, and the ancient stadium (which still didn't exist when last the Cubs won the Series) and the long lack of success have become oddly fashionable in recent years.

So anyway, back to the idea of curses. The story goes that in that 1945 Series the Cubs declined admission to a man's billy goat, supposedly prompting said man to pronounce a curse on the team, which either said the Cubs would never get to the Series again (in which case it is now broken), or would never win again (yet to be determined). The incident happened in game four of that series, and though the Cubs lost that game, they did win one more game in the Series, so it doesn't seem as though the curse was effective immediately.

Ridiculous as the whole thing sounds (and is), it persisted as good newspaper fodder, although "persisted" might not be the best word. The team went 82-71 in 1946, but didn't have another winning record until 1963. Is that cursed, or just bad? It seems the "curse" language didn't really kick in until 1969, when the team got out to a big lead in the National League East only to collapse and lose the division to the New York "Miracle Mets." Their next actual playoff appearance was not until 1984, when the team achieved the then-unprecedented feat of blowing a 2-0 lead in the National League Championship Series, losing three straight to the San Diego Padres (with a misplay by Leon Durham being magnified in the malaise).

A handful of other unsuccessful playoff appearances followed, with the next major flareup of curse talk coming in 2003. Holding a 3-1 lead against the Marlins, and with lots of talk about curse-busting in the air, the Cubs lost to Josh Beckett but still came home needing only one win to get to the Series.

*Full disclosure: I was at game four in Miami in 2003, which the Cubs won handily to take that 3-1 lead. On my way out of the park with my father-in-law, we were passed by numerous Cubs fans chanting "bring on the Yankees!" At that point I lost all respect for Cubs fans and would have been happy had they never made it to the Series again, and would not be bothered if they didn't win. Don't presume, or you deserve whatever sports suffering you get. (See, even I have my belief systems about sports.)

Game six offered for many the ultimate "curse event": a foul ball into the stands, which Cubs OF Moises Alou attempted to catch, instead glanced off an unfortunate fan. How that explains how the team suddenly gave up eight runs in the inning is beyond me.

Meanwhile, in Cleveland, bad teams were frequently the norm as well, with that 1954 WS loss followed by its own stretch of bad teams, with occasional winning records and no playoffs until that 1995 event.

Based on this admittedly limited survey, curse talk (in these baseball cases at least) seem to serve a few functions:

1) covering for a long stretch of losing baseball, although not necessarily immediately. It seems to kick in only when said sad-sack team comes close to winning. The Cleveland version of a curse didn't even get invented until after 1960, when the team traded popular and successful Rocky Colavito. While the talk might have local currency, it takes the approach of success for it to go national.

2) somehow filling an apparent need for a better story than "this team was bad for a really long time and now they're good but still can't win it all."

3) avoiding blaming the team for its failures.

This is the vexing part to me. The Kansas City Royals weren't thought of as "cursed" in their thirty-year gap between World Series wins; they were just bad. Nobody has invented curses for the Padres (established 1969) or Houston Astros (1962), who have never won the World Series, or the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals (1969) or Seattle Mariners (1977), who have never even been. Yet a colorful if highly anecdotal story about a goat gets to explain a century of un-success in Chicago.

I wonder if curses are just a particularly maddening manifestation of the "my team, right or wrong" mentality. My team can't be this bad; something else must be to blame. If my team is this bad, does that mean I'm bad too? If you are forced to accept that your team is bad, or that it plays badly when it gets to the playoffs, then your sports belief system is challenged, and that's the one unacceptable thing for a sports fan to contemplate.

Really, I promise you, rational people, people who act and think intelligently and rationally and ethically in every other part of their lives, absolutely fall into this mindset when it comes to their team. It's beyond the similar mindset of blaming umpires or referees for bad calls; it starts to veer into talk of conspiracy theories and "rigged" contests at worst (the NBA seems most prone to the latter talk, though). (And in case you're wondering, yes, I do speak from experience.)

It gets a little ugly, and is bad enough to witness in sports. Just imagine how nasty it would be if that mindset crept into our lives outside baseball, or sports in general. Like, say, in religion. Or politics.

Just imagine, indeed.

At least one cycle of curse-talk will end with this series, thank the Lord.

Sports and belief systems

You might recall the basis for the name of this blog. Imagine the scene as a befuddled outsider (a yankee, probably) observes how southerners lose their minds over college football and comments on the passions being (for good or ill, quite possibly) like religion, only to have a native respond (a grizzled veteran, preferably) with something along the lines of "son, down here football ain't a religion, it's way more important than that."

Leaving aside the evident truth of the statement (more often than I as a pastor like to think about), and a previous and somewhat jocular blog entry to the contrary, I wouldn't necessarily argue that football, or any other sport for that matter, is a religion. I would easily and quickly argue, though, that sports share many things with religion. Possibly one of the chief similarities is that partisanship to most sports, or to individual teams in particular, seems to involve something like a belief system.

I'm thinking of more than the obvious "my team > your team" sentiment expressed with varying degrees of passion and/or vulgarity by fans, or sometimes with humor as by the t-shirt below, or in the song from Weird Al Yankovic's most recent album (your tolerance for which may be determined by your tolerance for an s-word that rhymes with "ducks").

Nota bene: I do acknowledge that there are plenty of fans who in fact know that such a claim is absolutely untrue for their team, and that in fact theirs is the team Weird Al is making fun of. They're the ones who are absoluely floored by a 6-6 season and a trip to the Independence Bowl, or not actually being mathematically eliminated from the playoffs before Labor Day. Those teams are not that common, and their fans tend to be looked down on by fans whose belief system is governed by one of the few close-to-universal claims, "if you're not a winner, you're a loser." But they do exist, and they are perhaps less verging on literal insanity than most.

No, I'm suggesting that there are somewhat more subtle, and usually unconscious, attitudes or assumptions or beliefs that underlie the fanship of an awful lot of sports followers.

I have no intention of trying to claim these beliefs as universal across sports, aside from the above winner/loser dictum. I'd say that many of the beliefs are particular to their sports, possibly to individual teams or the cities in which they play, and in a few cases to the league (or conference, in college) in which a fan's team plays. So instead I'll point out a few specific cases as best as possible.

Since I'm watching a baseball playoff game right now, its particular character as a very organized belief system jumps out at me, with the particular distinguishing characteristic that much of the game's belief system seems to originate with not fans or coaches, but the players themselves. This claim derives mostly from the particular canon of law, practically Talmudic in its scope, usually known as The Right Way to Play the Game (or in some cases The Unwritten Rules). 

This usually ends up being boiled down to "don't show me up." Anything that the offended party takes as embarrassing to the offended party comes under the ban here -- watching your home run ball leave the yard, flipping your bat after hitting it, any kind of gesture by a pitcher after striking out a hitter, a particularly showboat-ish catch in the outfield, you name it and it can be considered offensive by somebody, and you get condemned as not knowing The Right Way to Play the Game. And then somebody throws at your head, which is somehow construed as The Right Way to Play the Game.

Baseball also seems more prone to particular beliefs about curses than other sports. The lodestar example of this curse obsession is in this postseason, currently tied with the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series. The Chicago Cubs haven't won a World Series since 1908, and rather than chalking it up to having a lot of bad teams and then having good teams not play well when they did get to the playoffs, a curse about a billy goat became the (ha!) scapegoat. Varying events such as a collapse in the NLCS agains the San Diego Padres in 1984 and the so-called "Bartman game" in 2003 (seriously, people, Bartman didn't choke away eight freaking runs to the Florida Marlins -- who, bitterly to Cubs fans, went on to win the World Series that season), are of course blamed on the Curse of the Billy Goat. I'm guessing that lots of Cubs fans are invoking that curse after being beaten last night by Clayton Kershaw, who is only one of the best pitchers in baseball.

Meanwhile, tonight there are probably Cleveland fans who are wondering about the Curse of Rocky Colavito after tonight's starting pitcher, Trevor Bauer, lasted only 2/3 of an inning after suffering a cut on a finger a few days ago. Since Mike Napoli just hit a home run to give his team the lead against the Toronto Blue Jays, perhaps they're calming down for a moment.

You can read about a whole bunch of other sports-related "curses" here. Other sports do get invoked, and in some cases cities are somehow regarded as being "cursed" across all sports teams.With the Cleveland Cavaliers' NBA championship, the supposed "Cleveland curse" would seem to be gone, with Buffalo and/or San Diego (which has never experienced a major-sport championship for any of its teams) most likely to be regarded as "cursed" even if no specific cause of a curse can be noted.

Most such sports beliefs aren't that elaborate or overtly stated, though. So much of the "belief system" around a sport or team is much more likely to go unspoken, and perhaps to claim much more power for its unspokenness. 

Sometimes that belief is tied up with beliefs outside of sports, such as nationalism. Here football is most prominent, though baseball certainly tries with its "national pastime" nickname. Football has certianly wrapped itself in the flag, both on the pro and college levels, and particularly since 9/11. It has also shown a propensity for direct military display, sometimes funded by the Department of Defense (although NASCAR and MLB also score heavily there).

But perhaps the most insidious unspoken belief in sports, and likely the most unspoken and most powerful, is simple but sinister, and one shared with nationalism at its most base.

My team, right or wrong.

It may have adaptations; my conference, right or wrong (fans of the Southeastern Conference, particularly in football, are Exhibit A here); my league, right or wrong; maybe my sport, right or wrong?

It's the impulse that turns Baylor University and its fans into particularly horrid victim-blamers in the face of accusations of sexual assault against its football players (and Baylor is hardly the only example here, though probably the most egregious of late). My school, right or wrong.

It's the impulse that (along with gobs of cash) makes FIFA one of the most corrupt organizations on earth. My sport, right or wrong. 

It's what allows Atlanta or Cleveland baseball fans, or fans of a whole heap of college teams (Florida State, for example), or Chicago hockey fans, to ignore the inherent insult in making mascots out of fellow human beings (even those who have enough ethical understanding to know better). My team, my school, right or wrong.

And (you knew I was going here) it makes football fans, teams, collegiate conferences, and the NFL unwilling to face just what playing the game has most likely been doing to players for more than a century, even if we only noticed it when Mike Webster died.

And this is why it will be virtually impossible to "fix" football. 

Because my game, right or wrong. 

It has to be the players' fault. Something must be wrong with them. Or the coaches are doing it wrong. Or the helmets are wrong, or the artificial turf is wrong, or anything other than the basic and hard-to-escape observation that when very large and very strong men run into each other at very high speeds and over and over and over and over and over again, the miracle is that such brain trauma doesn't happen to more players. 

It can't be that. My game, right or wrong. 

And thus the game will go on, and people will keep on getting damaged beyond repair, and nobody in the stands will be able to tell. 

And, I guess, nobody will care.

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.