Deacon wrote:Well I don't know much about this corner the cowboys drafted other than he's supposed to be good.

I don't know much about Claiborne either, except that everybody thought the Bucs were going to draft him, he did terribly on that Wonderlic test that all the potential draftees have to take, and on Thursday night the Bucs made a trade seemingly to avoid picking him. Granted, my favorite team finished what felt like 4-75 last year, so maybe they're not a great source of draft decisions.

-What? Tampa Bay picked a safety that is generally known as a hard hitter? Then they drafted an undersized running back that can elude tacklers and catch passes? And on yesterday they traded up (they've either moved up or moved down for all three of their picks so far) to get a speedy outside linebacker that knows how to play pass coverage? Woo hoo! So sure, it'd be a long shot to end up with another John Lynch, another Warrick Dunn, and another Derrick Brooks, but shouldn't they be drafting to find guys like that? I mean, they have never really bothered to replace any of those three guys since they left, and some of them have been gone for a long time now.

-The Patriots actually used their draft picks? I thought Belichick was allergic to actually using his picks instead of trading down.

If you haven't heard, Junior Seau has died, he shot himself in the chest. Listened to Marcellius Wiley, a very close friend and teammate of him with the Chargers, talk about it. It's very painful to listen to. It's very likely he was suffering from the CET symptoms that have effected other football players. Now I hear a study may soon be published that it's the repeated minor hits and not the big boom that causes a concussion that does the most damage, similar to that of the repeated blows in the boxing ring and not the KO that does it.

It will be interesting to see what the fallout from this is, if any.

ampersand wrote:Junior Seau has died

I never really rooted for any teams Seau played for, but I was jarred when I learned about Seau's apparent suicide yesterday. His resume is impeccable. One of the finest linebackers to ever play the game, and...damn.

ampersand wrote:It will be interesting to see what the fallout from this is, if any.

Well, maybe the people from Boston University that keep studying the old NFL players' brains will get a hold of Seau's, and maybe that will show something, but I doubt there will be any NFL "fallout."

Fact is, though, it's pretty irresponsible to just look and say "oh, this is some kind of football thing." Maybe it is. Maybe Seau lived with unbearable pain, and maybe it's common in NFL retirees, and maybe people will stop playing football one of these days because of these stories. But then again, it could be a million other things. Junior Seau was a person who existed outside of football, as well, and lots of people without concussion histories have killed themselves for an assortment of reasons from the depressing to the downright silly. We'll probably never know why Junior Seau did what he did, and honestly it isn't any of our business.

Whatever the reasons, it's a shock and a shame.

By the way, did you know that Seau now makes eight players from the 1994 Chargers team that made it to the Super Bowl that have died before reaching 45? And that the average age of death of NFL player is 54? The NFL has several class-action lawsuits from retired players wanting the NFL to compensating them for their post-career medical bills.

The NFL is really, really, really good at avoiding having to answer for the inheritance dangers of American Football, and to some degree, we like see some degree of violence in sports. But we don't want to see the players end up permanently crippled either. I think the NFL, as we are seeing through the Saints Bounty scandal, are trying to set themselves up to prevent future lawsuits. They will need to answer for their past, however. And by the way, most sports are going to have to answer to this as well. Hockey, International Football, and Basketball may have to answer for this as well.

And one more point to bring up. Suppose some lawyer wanted to curry players who didn't get to play in the NFL, but did get to play in Division I college football, where similar methods are used to treat pain and injuries on players who because of their youth were able to bounce back quicker, into filing lawsuits against their college's athletic programs for similar "post-career" medical injuries that were maybe mistreated, or inducing them into drug dependency because of the treatment for the pain. How many of those players would sign up for that?

ampersand wrote: They will need to answer for their past, however.

Ah, good, it's time for my refrain again: We made our minds up already. It's too damned late.

No. They don't. They didn't have to answer for Hall of Fame athletes dying destitute and homeless in part because of things football had done to them. This was a news story when it happened. We knew about it. We chose not to care.

The NFL never had to answer for steroids. Nope. That was a major problem in baseball, but not the sport where people who seem to get bigger and faster every year and, evidently, intentionally try to injure one another. Think about that--steroids to a defensive lineman could get a quarterback or wide receiver killed. But is it a huge scandal that a team doctor connected with the Steel Curtain of the 1970s was implicated for prescribing steroids to people who did not need them after he left the NFL? Is it a huge scandal when a defensive player gets caught taking PEDs? No, not even close to A story. I mean, when was the last time you heard about this guy? That's a choice. We chose not to care.

Check out this hit. How close do you think Pat White came to dying in that moment? A few inches here or there? Make sure to stick around for the replay and see it up close. I bet you forgot about this one entirely. Most people forgot it before the game was over.

We forgive the NFL for these things. We forgive them for caring so little about the players that there's always a solid chance that we could see a man die on a Sunday afternoon. (Thank whatever you wish to thank that it hasn't happened.) We forgive them for caring so little about the fans that they threaten to move teams whenever the league doesn't get its way. (Seriously. Threatening Minnesota with a move to Los Angeles just to get a new stadium built? Shouldn't just about everybody be pissed?) So yeah, sadly, we'll probably forgive them in a matter of days for what happens to people after they retire.

And it's not just the NFL. Sports get away with whatever they want, really. Did the NBA suffer any real trouble from having a referee go to prison for trying to fix games, only for him to get out and point the finger at every other ref he could think of? No, the NBA's getting good ratings. The NHL canceled an entire season and fans now act like it's one of the best things that could have happened to the league. Over in Europe, check out the racism around pitch football. I mean really, check it out. It's a problem. It's a huge problem. Does the Champions League suffer? Of course it doesn't! If anything, the PGA gets more attention now that Tiger Woods turns out to be the golfing version of Don Draper.

Met fans will never fault Darryl Strawberry and Doc Gooden for redefining "blowing away all your talent," even though who knows how good that team could have been without the cocaine? Did we care that Ray Lewis had friends who killed a couple of guys? Well, he's the face of the fucking league now, so no. Did it matter--in San Francisco--that Terrell Owens once tried to badmouth a 49er teammate with vaguely homophobic comments? Well, it looked like a duck and quacked like a duck, but no.

People still watch college sports. I still watch some of them (mostly hockey, mostly because it's the one sport my alma mater is occasionally decent at). The NCAA mistreats athletes in just about every way it can think to screw 'em. But we want more. Football playoffs. Expanded March Madness. Damn the expense, even if the expense is pretty horrible. We will forgive anything. Anything at all. It just has to stay entertaining.

Charlie Sheen will get new television shows whenever he wants them. Robert Downey Junior was given a legal pad of free passes until he got his act together. Mel Gibson still finds consistent work. Lots of people pay good money to see films directed by Roman Polanski. The moment Michael Jackson died, we went right back to talking about how much people loved his music and nothing else. Watch how quickly Penn State starts putting the name "Joe Paterno" all over campus again. It's too late. It's just too damned late.

See, I look at that huge list, and see no real problems.

Concussions and other injuries from the violence of sports.

If you were stupid enough to believe that there was no risk to the violent sport you chose to play, then a concussion might be an improvement. Knock some sense into you. I mean, really. Could the NFL do more? Probably. And should the fans be upset if they don't? Yes, absolutely. But as long as players are willing to play, despite the risk, there's nothing explicitly wrong going on.

Threatening Minnesota with a move to Los Angeles just to get a new stadium built? Shouldn't just about everybody be pissed?

Depends. Are they trying to force the city/state to build the stadium with its stolen protection money? Because I'd be far more pissed about that than any threats that a voluntary organization might move to another town.

Over in Europe, check out the racism around pitch football. I mean really, check it out. It's a problem. It's a huge problem.

It is? Everything I've seen indicates that it is the fans that are the problem there. And, at least with the English clubs that I'm more familiar with, I've not seen any such instances, although I would admit I don't really go looking for this sort of thing.

collegestudent22 wrote:If you were stupid enough to believe that there was no risk to the violent sport you chose to play, then a concussion might be an improvement.

This is the point though. Now that all of this is happening, we're starting to realize how violent football can really be. It will be interesting to see if people start to shy away from letting their kids play football anytime soon, which could eventually impact the product itself. Right now, one of the NFL's top selling points is that many of the best athletes in America are professional football players. What if the kind of strong-armed kid that is often pushed toward becoming a quarterback starts being led toward a pitcher's mound? What if the tall and fast wide receivers of today become the faster power forwards of tomorrow? What if guys who would otherwise end up strong safeties or small linebackers ended up playing hockey? What if "the next Adrian Peterson" chooses the other football, goes to Europe, and becomes one of the finest players in the world?

Violent sports? Is what what we're calling contact sports now?

collegestudent22 wrote:Depends. Are they trying to force the city/state to build the stadium with its stolen protection money? Because I'd be far more pissed about that than any threats that a voluntary organization might move to another town.

I'm talking abut this, right now, entirely from the perspective of how it makes me feel as someone who supports the NFL. Couldn't care less about the real world outside of football as it pertains to this. Here's my line of thinking:

I'm a football fan. I watch games on TV, I own some merchandise with my favorite team's logo on it (such as my martini shaker), I watch ESPN when they're showing news about football, and maybe every now and then I go to a game. In essence, I'm an average customer of the NFL. While I am not naive enough to expect that the people who run teams and the league itself are in it to put a smile on my face, I recognize that it is the support of all the people like me that makes the NFL close to a ten billion dollar per year industry.

Well, Minnesota does support the Vikings. They sell out the Metrodome, even when the team is crappy and every game they play from about October on is meaningless in terms of playoff races. Vikings gear sells relatively well. I don't know exactly what their TV situation is, but I'd imagine it's probably on par with the rest of the country, and the rest of the country watches enough football to make networks pay the league billions of dollars for broadcast rights. Yet, in the eyes of the NFL, that's not enough to warrant even pretending to give a shit about the team's fans. The Vikings aren't exactly dragging the NFL down, but their support in a tough economy isn't enough for the league, so build a new stadium or kiss 'em goodbye.

Sure, the movie studios don't really care about the people who go out and see their films. (Some of the people who work on the films do, but it's fair to assume that the studio heads don't.) I doubt the TV networks care any more than the movie studios. The other sports leagues probably don't care, and in some cases make the same moves. (Anyone remember the Seattle Supersonics? The well-supported basketball team that the NBA allowed to move to Oklahoma City because the Sonics played in an arena built in like 1995, so clearly they needed a new one.) But moments like threatening to move the Vikings make me kind of regret that I support this league.

But they were rumored to move them to San Antonio, which I wouldn't have minded. Give me someone other than the Cowboys to root for.

Deacon wrote:Violent sports? Is what what we're calling contact sports now?

I was attempting to differentiate between something like basketball and sports where some of the strongest grown men on the planet charge into each other at full speed repeatedly for hours.

But moments like threatening to move the Vikings make me kind of regret that I support this league.

Oh, I understand. 'Tis a dick move.

Deacon wrote:But they were rumored to move them to San Antonio, which I wouldn't have minded.

Well why would you have? I don't fault people who live somewhere for celebrating a newly-acquired team, it just leaves such a bad taste in my mouth that the NFL works that way.

And there's a lot to add to the "the NFL hates its fans" category: the DirecTV package (whereas, for about a hundred dollars, you can pay to watch every single baseball game online regardless of cable carrier, and the NHL and NBA have similar deals), blackout rules ("buy our expensive tickets or you don't get to watch your team from home"), the London game ("buy our expensive tickets or lose a home game to a city that couldn't possibly care less about our sport or our league"), the draft rules (I've never been able to see the logic in "worst team gets the first pick," especially since it means that teams actively try to lose in order to get it), and network broadcast rules (why can't we get two games at 1:00 and two games at 4:00?), just to name a few.

collegestudent22 wrote:'Tis a dick move.

Exactly. I know that entertainment is a business and football is certainly no different, but aren't customers a pretty important part of the business model? At times I feel like Microsoft cares more about me as a customer than the NFL does. The NFL's level of customer appreciation is somewhere between "cable and internet providers" and "air carriers based in the United States" as far as I'm concerned. That's a low mark, in case you haven't dealt with either of those categories in a while.

Part of the reason I defend baseball for all its boring moments and consolidated power is that I never feel quite this angry at Major League Baseball. Part of that is that baseball teams have a lot of autonomy while football teams have very little, and I root for a baseball team that would rank somewhere around "beloved local restaurant" in terms of customer appreciation. The NHL comes in around "well-known hotel under new management after years of neglect," which is a pretty good mark. The NBA, sadly, falls somewhere near "cellular provider," and the NCAA is so low on the scale that I can only compare them to the RIAA in how much they seem to openly detest the people who pay money for their entertainment.

Deacon wrote:Violent sports? Is what what we're calling contact sports now?

"Kowalski! Get out there and walk off that major concussion and neck injury delivered by a juiced-up, three hundred plus pound defender who gets a secret bonus for rendering you unable to play football! Don't be such a wuss about somebody twice your size trying to injure you by any means necessary, be a man and take the unnaturally fast and unnaturally strong hits that get harder every single year!"

Maybe we need to "man up" and wait for somebody to literally die as a result of one of these hits before we're allowed to talk about it without something like "oh, it's a contact sport, people know what they're getting into."