Why the Rockefeller and Bush boys don't play pro football

Of course, it takes skill to play sports; I know it all too well.  But, there is more than mere skill:

[college athletes] who don’t come from dire poverty will in greater and greater numbers choose to do something else with their minds and bodies. Many NFL players began their lives in destitute situations defined by hardship, but many others come to the league from stable, middle-class backgrounds as well. That middle-class player, especially those like Russell Wilson and Colin Kaepernick who played multiple sports, will become scarce. Meanwhile, as ticket prices rise, we are facing a sport ready to go “full gladiator” as poor people, disproportionately black, damage one another’s brains for wealthy, disproportionately white crowds.

Yep, when I blog like this, you can see that the old commie, leftist, me is very much alive and well.  Tell you what, I am always glad that part of me is alive and well.  If I didn't think about the race and class and gender implications, then I will worry about me.  It is just that I don't like the idea of always, always, viewing the world through a race or class or gender issue.

Anyway, that excerpt is from that old commie rag, for which I always have a soft spot--The Nation.  It is in the context of San Francisco 49er linebacker Chris Borland walking away from gazillions of dollars.

source

He is only 24, and has some years left banging his helmeted head against other plays.  But, that is exactly why he called it quits.

Untold legions suffer from CTE, a brain ailment that affects motor skills, memory and impulse control. Early onset dementia and ALS can result from the kinds of repeated blows to the head that happen on every play of every game. The ignominious history of head injury casualties includes high-profile suicides of Hall of Famers Mike Webster and Junior Seau. It includes Dave Duerson who like Seau put a bullet in his chest instead of his head so his CTE-wracked brain could be studied. It also includes icons of the 1980s like Jim McMahon and Tony Dorsett struggling with basic life-functions. History shows that playing NFL-level-football is like playing Russian Roulette with your future, and Chris Borland decided to do what so few have done and put the gun down. “I just honestly want to do what’s best for my health,” Borland told ESPN’s Outside the Lines. “From what I’ve researched and what I’ve experienced, I don’t think it’s worth the risk.”

When the NFL fights a very good fight downplaying the long-term health issues of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE,) Borland makes this compelling point even when talking about "his passion for the “visceral” violence of the sport":

That doesn’t mean football players are pieces of meat. I think the most important people to convey that message to is the football player himself. You’re not a commodity, you’re a person.

I hope that this madness that is called a "sport" is sent to a dark corner as was that other brain-damaging sport of the past--boxing.  The sooner the better.

Kill the college. Now.

Over the past decades, the push for collegiate education has systematically led to a marginalization of career and technical education (CTE) programs in schools. More than a marginalization, there has been an unhealthy shift in attitudes that view college-preparatory programs as being superior to CTE programs. This atrocious attitude has resulted in many students at colleges and universities to attend college only because they fear being labeled a “loser” otherwise.

The existence of such a view about those who do not attend college is a tragic reflection of our own selves—us elders—who have cultivated and propagated such a grossly distorted view. These contrasting attitudes towards college-prep and CTE programs, with the latter suffering the proverbial stepchild treatment, do not serve the students and society well.

Thus, it was heart-warming to read that throughout Oregon “there has been an effort to expand CTE programs in middle and high schools.” It was even more encouraging to read that Oregon’s efforts to expand CTE has inspired Rep. Kurt Schrader to introduce a bill in Congress to expand funding for such programs throughout the country.  We need a lot more coverage of these programs, and a lot more public support for them as well.

But, at the same time, I hope we are promoting CTE for all the correct reasons of introducing children to the phenomenal range of opportunities that they can choose from and not because we want to track them on a vocational path. Because, more than anything else, we live in a world where careers are increasingly volatile, and this volatility can easily make a mockery of the decisions we make, especially when young.

It is possible that there is a renewed attention on CTE because of the anemic economic recovery with respect to the persistent unemployment rate. Here, we should keep in mind that the “jobless” recovery is not really about “skills mismatch”—the claim that we don’t have people with the skills needed for the jobs that are out there. While economists disagree on this as they always do on any topic, there is a strong evidence-based argument, such as the one from the Economic Policy Institute, that “the weak labor market recovery is not due to skills mismatch (or any other structural factors).” Instead, it is due to weakness in the aggregate demand in the economy.

CTE programs ought to be considered as important as college-prep programs for all the right reasons. My neighbors are successful self-employed business owners, who did not attend college, and are living the American Dream. They exemplify the old Mark Twain quip that he never let schooling get in the way of his education.

Whether it is via college-prep or career and technical education programs, I hope that teenagers are developing an understanding that the world is their oyster.

This is a slightly edited version of an op-ed that will soon be published in the Statesman Journal

Super Bowl question: Does Football Have a Future?

Why this question?  All because of one word: concussions.

It is no longer tackle football, but collision football, writes Ben McGrath in the New Yorker..  Collision that involves, and increasingly so, players fast for a big person and unusually big for a fast person. 

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., is the name for a condition that is believed to result from major collisions—or from the accumulation of subconcussions that are nowhere near as noticeable, including those incurred in practice. It was first diagnosed, in 2002, in the brain of the Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Fame center Mike Webster, who died of a heart attack after living out of his truck for a time. It was next diagnosed in one of Webster’s old teammates on the Steelers’ offensive line, Terry Long, who killed himself by drinking antifreeze. Long overlapped, at the end of his career, with Justin Strzelczyk, who was also found to have C.T.E. after he crashed, fatally, into a tanker truck, while driving the wrong way down the New York Thruway.

 Even though the harsh impacts on the health and well being have been known for long, Alan Scwarz of the NY Times is credited as the guy who relentlessly followed up with reports that has forced the NFL, and other sports too, to investigate this issue.  So much so that apparently he is sometimes sarcastically referred to as Alan Brockovich by those who don't like what he is doing.  Here is an example of the long-term effects:

retired N.F.L. players are five to nineteen times as likely as the general population to have received a dementia-related diagnosis; that the helmet-manufacturing industry is overseen by a volunteer consortium funded largely by helmet manufacturers; and that Lou Gehrig may not actually have had the disease that bears his name but suffered from concussion-related trauma instead. (Since 1960, fourteen N.F.L. players have had a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is about twelve more than you would expect from a random population sample.)

And, remember that other sports too have the concussion crisis:

“Hockey, by the way, has a higher incidence of concussions than football,” Dr. Maroon told me. This is true of women’s college hockey, at least, which doesn’t even allow body-checking. (Women, in general, seem substantially more prone to concussions, and explanations vary, from weaker necks to a greater honesty in self-diagnosis.) And in December, 2009, Reggie Fleming, a New York Rangers defenseman in the nineteen-sixties who was known more for his fighting than for his scoring, became the first pro hockey player to be given a diagnosis of C.T.E. Hockey may now have a concussion crisis on its hands, with the N.H.L.’s best and most marketable player, Sidney Crosby, having been blindsided during the sport’s annual Winter Classic; attempting to play again, four days later, he was drilled into the boards, and he hasn’t played since.

So, what are we looking at?  Over at Slate, John Culhane writes:

At least two class action lawsuits by recent players against the league are in preparation. These suits are expected to allege that the league knew, but suppressed, knowledge of the long-term neurological risks of playing football.

There is a good chance, according to Culhane, that the suits will be tossed out.  But, 

Football isn't tennis; it isn't even basketball. It's violent by design. But that doesn't mean the violence and injuries must escalate without end. If the NFL accelerates the proactive approach it's demonstrated lately, the results won't just redound to the benefit of current and former pros. Given the league's prominence and influence, its safety stance could cause a safety dance to break out: Everyone from college and high-school football players to athletes in other contact sports will begin to get the message.

Think about these when you watch two players colliding at the Super Bowl.