Bit late to the party here, but I am no expert on either sports or law, so: Does the settlement really mean the NFL can “lock away” the research on head trauma, as Mr. Pierce says?
… Keeping the truth to yourself is not really lying. This is the way American industries, including the industry of mass entertainment known as the National Football League, work these days. There is nothing you can do to make them change the way they do business unless you hit them so hard that they bleed from the teeth for six months and their leading executives face the imminent probability of an extended survey of institutional dining within the federal penal system. And since that almost never happens, there is no crime against the public safety that ever really gets solved. And that was what the NFL was counting on when it bought its way out of the massive lawsuit brought by thousands of damaged human beings who once had worked for an industry that didn’t care how they lived or, for that matter, how they died. The $765 million that the NFL has agreed to pony up is boutonniere money to these people; they must have had to go through the cushions on the sofa twice.
I understand fully why the players settled. A little money up front is better than the possibility of no money ever, especially if you’re dealing with the kind of staggering medical bills that come with Alzheimer’s or other NFL-related dementias, and the staggered nature of the settlement payouts seems to indicate that the most severely damaged of the retired players will get the most money to help with their care. (There also were some formidable legal hurdles to be overcome regarding the number of plaintiffs, and how the NFL could hide behind … er … seek the protection of collective bargaining agreements that it had negotiated down through the years.)
But the NFL didn’t agree to this settlement to pay anyone’s hospital bills. That $765 million was to buy silence. It was to abort an embarrassing discovery process. It was to bury the evidence of how little the NFL ever has cared about the health of the people who work for it. As part of the settlement, all the files about what the NFL knew, and how it knew it, and even the results of its own research into what the game does to the people who play it (which might have had significant public health benefits far beyond the NFL itself) will remain locked away. The NFL is now a fertilizer plant that doesn’t want the inspectors on the property. ESPN, which owns Grantland, has apparently even conspicuously bowed out on a deal with PBS’s Frontline on the concussion crisis. For the moment, at least, pending other possible lawsuits, the game itself is the ammonium nitrate, building up to another explosion, far from prying eyes…
Baud
No company ever has to share or publicize their research, although a trial may have brought it to light.
different-church-lady
I have no idea what the answer to your question is. I’m just gobsmacked by the fact that someone on the left just questioned Pierce about anything at all.
Comrade Dread
I haven’t read it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that were one of the conditions to the settlement: a big giant gag for everyone.
This head trauma stuff is toxic to the brand, and at least a portion of NFL fans I know were starting to question if they could continue to watch the games or otherwise support the game knowing that it was causing long term damage to the players.
Tommy
My dad was a small town doctor in the 70s. He told my father getting hit in head is not a good thing. I learned this long ago.I was not allowed to play football.
Roger Moore
Pretty much. As Baud says, they aren’t required to publish anything. Discovery as part of a lawsuit is one of the few ways to force a company to divulge information that it really wants to hide. Settling ends discovery, meaning that the data won’t be publicized.
khead
Yes. As long as the check from the NFL cashes.
Mnemosyne
I knew years ago that the NFL didn’t give a shit about players when I read about a former player who had to have his lower leg amputated in his 50s because it had been fractured so many times while he was playing. The team doctors didn’t do much about it except give him steroid injections at the site and clear him to continue playing.
Baud
And I don’t get this:
The NFL has been changing the rules on head shots, to the chagrin of some fans and players.
Anne Laurie
@different-church-lady: You really are a RedState mole, aren’t you.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
The problem is that the big head shots are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to brain trauma. There’s a lot of talk about concussions, but the big research is shows that most of the damage is from repeated blows that don’t rise to the level of a concussion. Many players, especially linemen, get that kind of damage on just about every play, and the league isn’t doing anything to try to cut down on it.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
Thanks. Didn’t know that.
WereBear
There is very little one can do. running a business in America, that will get you thrown in jail. Taxes, that’s about it.
Look at all the terrible food scandals during the Bush administration. How many people died? How many people paid any penalty for flagrant disregard for safety?
eemom
No, and that is fucking ridiculous.
You’d have to look at the actual settlement agreement, which I very much doubt Mr. Pierce has done, to know, you know, what the actual terms are. The player op ed he links to is zero authority on that point — and all that it even says about the matter is that the NFL’s witnesses on who knew what when will never be questioned.
Which means that yes, what the NFL knew and when may never be publicly revealed — but that’s a far cry from “locking away” substantive medical research on head trauma.
WereBear
That is what he’s saying.
scav
It’s a business. The play-by-play is just a little faster than setting up a web-cam next to a fertilizer plant in TX and waiting for injuries. Oh, and I believe the volunteer victims are better paid.
WereBear
@Roger Moore: Many sports writers are speculating that the real pinch point is going to be parents wary of letting their children play the sport.
And rightly so: young people are even more at risk.
eemom
@WereBear:
As I just said, the player op ed he links to does not back up the quoted assertion.
It just mentions one NFL doctor who the author also says didn’t know jack shit about the subject.
The Thin Black Duke
The funny thing is, some hardcore NFL fans like to joke about how “wimpy” baseball players are and how “real men” play football, but this pathetic “hey, grab your ankles and say ‘thank you’ ” joke of a settlement would never happen in MLB because the union wouldn’t allow it to happen. Baseball players don’t get treated like doormats by management because their union is strong and doesn’t back down. Sure, I can understand how NFL athletes thought this was the best deal they could get, but when I see beat-up guys struggling to play on a “Thursday Night Football” game, nothing has really changed, not at all.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
And part of the reason you probably hadn’t heard it is because the NFL has been trying really hard to avoid talking about it. They are very good at steering the conversation away from topics they don’t want to talk about, so you have to make some effort to find out about the big picture. Frankly, the NFL makes the Republicans look like a bunch of amateurs in terms of winning the media battle.
MikeJ
Just last week I saw a web post somewhere about how massive brain trauma in NFL players is really just a liberal plot to destroy American greatness.
ETA: article at Moyers site that links to the deniers: http://billmoyers.com/2013/09/13/nfl-concussion-deniers-see-a-liberal-sports-media-conspiracy/
eemom
also too, fwiw, this settlement, big as it is, is only the beginning. Head trauma litigation isn’t going anywhere and the indications are it’s going to be huge. And for that reason, presumably among better ones, the published medical research on the topic will be huge as well.
Keith G
All professional sports are a version of rent seeking combined with a variety of other grifts – which is why I smirk when Cole or others carry on so about their dear, dear teams. These are black-hearted economic operations whose only long-term goal is to increase shareholder value.
I was listening to a retired football player talk about getting his hands of the bundle of paperwork that was his official medical record (after he retired – getting it was not easy). He remarked about the info he was given by the team doctors at the time of his various injuries often did not match up to the seriousness of what was shown in the official record.
These guys are fuckers and our tax dollars support them in many, many ways. Morally, are they any better than the the cigarette industry?
Roger Moore
@The Thin Black Duke:
Which says more about the fans than it does about the sports.
scav
Similarly, I’m sure the Catholic hierarchy doesn’t object to research on child abuse in general, but would very much like to lock-down all internal documentation on what was or wasn’t done or known on such matters internally.
Violet
@The Thin Black Duke:
Don’t see them if you don’t watch them. If enough people don’t watch them, advertising revenue falls and the league pays attention. You make the choice with your TV viewing and ticket-buying if you go to the game.
WereBear
Maybe we should start a discussion about major brain shrinkage among American conservatives. There has to be a cause for so much raging cruelty and stupidity.
Roger Moore
@Keith G:
You could make a solid argument that they’re only damaging the lives of a few thousand people rather than many millions, and they’re compensating the people whose lives they’re ruining rather than charging them for the privilege. Bad, yes, but nowhere near as bad as big tobacco.
Roger Moore
@WereBear:
I think it’s a cause rather than an effect. Stupidity causes conservatism much more than conservatism causes stupidity.
The Thin Black Duke
@Roger Moore: Yep. For example, fans love to idolize athletes until those “greedy bastards” start asking for more money.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
Makes it a little surprising that their website and apps suck as much as they do.
geg6
Having been a witness, literally, to the deterioration of Mike Webster, one that led directly to his tragic death, I am a football fan who wants to make the game safer but don’t know what can be done and still keep it American football. All I know is that no one who gave so much to his sport should have had to go through the hell that guy went through. Not to mention his wife and kids. I sure hope that any settlement included them because they deserve it. Wonderful people who went through hell and who came out of it wanting to help others. Don’t know that I would be able to not be bitter, but they have managed it.
Violet
@Roger Moore: Might they also complicit in college football and high school football and even Pee Wee football, since the kids look up to the NFL players as role models? A lot of college football players are hoping to make it to the NFL. If the NFL didn’t exist, would college football exist? Kids’ leagues? If society didn’t make such a big deal out of football and football teams and players, people wouldn’t want to play the game nearly as much, I’d think.
MikeJ
What are the rates of brain injury in rugby or Australian Rules football? Would our injury rates go down if we got rid of all the wimpy pads?
J.W. Hamner
The entire premise is crazy… the NFL doesn’t do research. At most they fund other people to do it and I doubt have any power to gag it, especially if they are funneling money through the NIH or the like.
eemom
fwiw 2, the repeated concussion-long term injury thing is not limited to football.
MattR
@geg6: Nope. The settlement only covers claims from 2006 forward so Webster’s family gets nothing. The NFL wanted to limit it to the past two or three years based on statute of limitations but the plaintiffs and/or NFLPA were partially successful in their fight to extend it to 7ish years.
Baud
@J.W. Hamner:
If they are funding private research, they can require nondisclosure.
The Thin Black Duke
I remember reading a Sports Illustrated article years ago about the awful medical problems ex-football players were struggling with and on the cover of that issue was a photograph of Johnny Unitas holding a football. And the photographer said that Unitas had to painfully manipulate his fingers to grip the football because his hand didn’t work anymore. I like watching football, but I used to like watching boxing, too, and I stopped because it was getting harder and harder to ignore what the sport was doing to the people who engaged in it. Every time I see Muhammad Ali, it breaks my heart. And I feel just as bad when I think about Junior Seau and what happened to him.
WereBear
@Roger Moore: Good point :)
Too bad they don’t believe in mental health treatment. Because they are the walking wounded.
KG
@Violet: the league has signed long term TV deals through 2022… Even if no one tuned in, the league gets money, that ship has sailed
WereBear
@geg6: I read about Mike Webster in this article and it has haunted me since.
Nobody would have signed up for this. Perhaps a lot of it was not known, but there is also a record of team doctors minimizing the damage that was done; I’m sure it contributed.
kc
@eemom:
We need some research on the long term effects of bile on the psyche of pseudonymous Internet commenters.
MattR
@KG: True, but if people stop watching and companies stop paying to advertise during games, the networks will start screaming to the NFL very loudly, very quickly.
JPL
Call me cranky, at this point, it is what it is.
OT..Why doesn’t Reid have the Senate in session all weekend. He needs to get this done. We all know Sunday shows will let the repubs preach their lies on MSM.
kc
@WereBear:
I don’t follow pro football, so I didn’t know that story. Geez, only 50 years old. How awful.
burnspbesq
@eemom:
True enough, but if there is a non-disclosure provision in the settlement agreement, and the court agrees to implement it by sealing the record (which it almost certainly would do if both sides move jointly for a sealing order), then it would be no-fucking-doubt-about-it enforceable.
Elizabelle
@WereBear:
Bookmarked your articles on Mike Webster. Looks tragic and well-written.
Gex
@The Thin Black Duke: Or until said heroes ask their children to own up to their vandalism.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
I know a guy who used to coach football at St. Augustine’s with Andre Waters. Some of the things he’s told me…. It was pretty clear there was neurological damage well before Waters killed himself.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Thin Black Duke:
Yes, and they sympathize with the poor, set upon owners, who are flirting with homelessness and starvation to keep those greedy players happy.
/cue world’s tiniest violin.
Violet
@KG: I’m sure some good lawyers could come up with reasons those contracts could be invalidated. NFL did X, which reduced number of viewers, therefore NFL breached contracts. Like, NFL breached contract by downplaying head injuries to players and once viewers discovered it, they left. People and corporations and organizations get out of contracts all the time.
burnspbesq
The players know what they’re giving up in exchange for their salaries. Notice how few children and grandchildren of former NFL players play football. Jake Seau is only the highly visible tip of a pretty big iceberg.
Keith G
@Roger Moore:
With a significant addendum:
There is a relationship between an athlete and his (in this case) team that cannot be replicated in the marketplace of tobacco commerce. That connection is real, is psychologically significant, and is often used by the coach and ownership to manipulate the behavior of the athlete.
It is “Us against them; it is “We are all in this together”; it is, “We are a family” – often to young men who lacked significant family ties.
It’s that betrayal of trust that I cite as so morally corrupt.
kc
@Gex:
Good grief. Those rotten little douchebags . . .
PopeRatzo
Football players have known for years the health risks involved with playing football. But the rewards for the very best are so great that they insist on playing. Violent as it is, it’s a popular, enjoyable game.
If there’s a football player who doesn’t know the risks of concussion he should have his head examined. Oh! See what I dd there?
I don’t know what Pierce (who is one of my favorites) thinks is really going to be exposed by the “locked away” NFL files, but mostly, it will just be a public display of what assholes the owners are, and any football fan already knows that.
Whether kids play football and whether NFL players play football are two completely different discussions. We may start to see more players who only play a year or two of college instead of playing since they were 8 years old. But the pro game will not, and should not, change in order to protect football players from themselves. College football, on the other hand, needs to change drastically. It’s nothing but exploitation all the way down.
Villago Delenda Est
@Keith G:
Frankly, this entire society is infested with this sort of betrayal, because Mammon and Moloch demand it, and they are the twin gods that we, as a society, worship, whether we know it or not.
eric
too lazy to read the whole line but the answer is congressional subpoena….not saying it will happen, but it can happen.
? Martin
@The Thin Black Duke:
Wat? You think the players are doping without knowledge or incentive from the owners? I think it’s pretty clear that there’s a direct relationship to doping and the terms of your next contract.
Villago Delenda Est
@eric:
Unless a politician can make a big splash with voters by doing so, this will not happen.
eemom
@burnspbesq:
What’s enforceable or not is completely beside the point. The point is, first, we have no idea what any nondisclosure provision in the settlement agreement covered, assuming there was such a provision.
Secondly, even if there was such a provision — and yes, I agree there probably was — the MOST it could have done was precluded the parties to the litigation from disclosing any materials they obtained in discovery. And while that could certainly include copies of any in-house medical research the NFL did, it couldn’t stop anyone NOT a party to the litigation who had access to any NFL-related research materials — e.g., as someone alluded to above, any medical parties outside the NFL that conducted such research that the NFL may have funded — from doing exactly whatever they could have done with it in the absence of the settlement.
eemom
@kc:
AL sure does have a cute little lapdog.
eric
@Villago Delenda Est: dont disagree. but it cant be got. Though I think the real issue may be how lawsuits are directed at colleges and high schools and whether the research is exculpatory (though I HIGHLY doubt that it is). The exposure to a state university could be substantial.
J.W. Hamner
@Baud:
I’m having a hard time coming up with a scenario where this is plausible. There were plenty of MD’s and PhDs who were convinced there were no long term effects to concussions, so why fund your own super secret research when you can just give money to those guys? It’s not like the NFL can just go to Craigslist and hire a bunch of labs to do confidential research for them. Regardless, whatever they theoretically might have funded would be an absolute pittance relative to what the DoD and NIH have spent on TBI research in the past decade.
eric
@J.W. Hamner: It might just be the raw data kept by teams and the league and communications not to worry about the problem rather than detailed experiments. there are all sorts of things that would lead one to conclude that they “knew or should have known” without a PhD signing off on research.
Villago Delenda Est
@eric:
There are enough crazy HS and College football fans out there who would punish a politician who exposes the medical consequences of football, and in turn destroying their sport. Because Moloch demands that we sacrifice our children for our entertainment. Which is what this amounts to.
Baud
@J.W. Hamner:
I don’t know what they’ve funded. I’m just saying they can keep it secret if they did.
eric
@Villago Delenda Est: I agree, but all it takes is one or two deaths and the thought there is a class action. I am thinking tobacco style litigation without the state AGs, cause football is god.
Villago Delenda Est
OT, but latest fantasy telepathic crap from drunken twit Peggy Noonan: WH Staffers Call President ‘Obam-Me’
joel hanes
@WereBear:
Look at all the terrible food scandals during the Bush administration. How many people died? How many people paid any penalty for flagrant disregard for safety?
Jack DeCoster, the asshole libertarian Iowa egg producer whose salmonella-contaminated product killed one and sickened 500 in 1987 remains a free man and is still allowed to sell eggs, and again sickened hundreds of people in 2010.
joel hanes
attention moderators: comment with three links to supporting information is awaiting moderation.
lamh36
OT, but:
Shorter Obama to Boehner: “No More F…To Give”
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@J.W. Hamner:
That’s easy. To manage the results.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
That’s not OT. We’re talking about brain damage here.
kc
From one of the other articles Pierce linked to:
Liberty60
OT, but this was amusing, from Greg Sargent:
Hmmm…
J.W. Hamner
@eric:
Well right, I certainly believe they “knew or should have known”… they were denying long after the existence of long term effects was a majority opinion in the field. What I am disputing is that the NFL is in possession of information with “significant public health benefits far beyond the NFL” that they are keeping secret because of this settlement. I just don’t see how they would have gotten the research done or even why they would have paid for it.
kc
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Bingo.
LanceThruster
How long before we’re officially in
“Rollerball” / “Death Race 2000” territory?
They really just need to drop the pretense of caring anything whatsoever for these entertainer/athletes.
It never stopped them from trotting Evel Knievel out there every time his bones would knit sufficiently to get back on his ride (though Evel himself certainly had some say in the matter as well)
eemom
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Which demonstrates that the NFL’s “research” is essentially worthless, so this whole argument about what it can and can’t keep secret is pointless, if the concern is that it’s somehow inhibiting medical knowledge about traumatic head injury.
Seanly
While it is regretable that the NFL is hiding away their own research, there are several universities and medical research facilities studying the issue. Also regretably, this isn’t the first time that industry unfriendly research has disappeared down the memory hole. Name almost any industry & I’m sure one can find the same problem of the science being trumped by profit and/or CYA.
eric
@J.W. Hamner: clearly in possession of information related to public health because the number of high school football players dwarfs the professional level. there may not be studies (or valid ones) but there is data that can be used in the studies
J.W. Hamner
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Ah, but that research wasn’t secret, which is my point. It may have been shoddy, questionable, and possibly even fraudulent, but they published the results in peer reviewed journals.
? Martin
@PopeRatzo:
You think anyone will want to watch the NFL when the players are arriving with only 2 years of league experience? If <18 football is ended, the game will end. The NFL will have to adapt to the <18 rules.
Villago Delenda Est
@LanceThruster:
Death Race 2000 (the original) is, frankly, a brilliant satire on the role of sports (and sports broadcasting) in our society. Rollerball (the original, not the shitty remake) was a film that sportswriters took seriously why film reviewers missed the point.
Anniecat45
@burnspbesq:
I did personal injury law for some years and I suspect what the NFL wants to keep secret is its own internal research and memos on this issue, and reports from doctors working for the league, which would disclose what the league knew about head trauma and when versus what it told the players. Which is more than bad enough.
But most of the doctors who work on this issue don’t work for the NFL; IIRC, many of them have faculty positions at universities. I don’t believe there’s anything the NFL can do to stop them from continuing to treat patients, do research — and publish their findings.
But paying out this sum of money to cover the 4,500 players in this suit is a huge victory for the league, and not enough for the players; I think it works out to about $200K per player. Not very much for long-term treatment of progressively-worsening brain trauma, especially if it sets in at a relatively young age.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Seanly: The NFL is funding a lot of the research at the universities.
@J.W. Hamner: The research we’ve seen wasn’t secret. We have no way of knowing what might have been in private reports that could have led to the decisions on what to include in the published datasets.
Have we already forgotten the big tobacco lawsuits?
We’re speculating on this because we know it happens in other industries.
J.W. Hamner
@eric:
Certainly it would be nice if they released all the data they have, but even publicly funded researchers don’t do that… and in actuality high school and college sports provide a much better opportunity to understand the effects of head injury than the NFL… which is why those of us studying TBI look there.
dollared
@eemom: True, but what’s being locked away here is a privately funded study the NFL and NFLPA did. It’s gone, locked away, and will never be seen. Pierce is right.
? Martin
@eric:
There’s certainly a ton of internal emails to and from the team owners every time one of these guys killed themselves or there was some study released.
More interesting will be what happens when a UCLA players sues the university, since UCLA is also where much of the TBI research is coming out of. The university won’t be able to hide their results nor claim they couldn’t have known.
Eric
@? Martin: that is exactly my point and since it is a state school if info was hidden here comes the state AG and all bets are off
eemom
@J.W. Hamner:
Once again, the whole sky-is-falling premise of this post is that the NFL is “locking away” research that could have “significant public health benefits.” Shit “research” doesn’t.
Chief
Mr. Walt Sweeney. As a high school senior in the fall of 1957, I played football against Mr. Sweeney. He was a giant among high school football players. He was an All-American at Syracuse and had a long career with the San Diego team in the NFL. I saw him on TV, maybe 20 years ago, and he was suffering from too much brain damage. It was sad to see him try and respond, trying to form sentences.
I do NOT watch any football and Mrs. Chief & I did not let our son play football in high school.
Suzanne
@Violet: I have been told by numerous commenters on this very blog that a viewer boycott of football will have no effect. This comes from people who won’t go to Walmart or Chick-Fil-A, but they assure me that professional football is somehow unlike any other consumer product. No one has adequately explained to me why this is so.
I think the critical difference is that these people like football more than they like Walmart or Chick-Fil-A and want to enjoy the Hunger Games guilt-free, personally.
scav
Research will survive, the battle is over liability, that even more than culpability and sleek PR glow over the macho ‘mercaness of the spheroid-based head-smashing.
khead
Boxes of NFL documents = boxes of cigarette company documents.
Same closet.
Edit – Not just same closet. Same future too.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Suzanne: It’s a matter of direct vs indirect impact. Dunno if you’re old enough to remember the Nielsen Families, but I learned very early that my viewing habits had absolutely no impact on ratings. That’s a hard lesson to shake even though I know that the cable companies are recording every channel change.
People cancelling their NFL Sunday Ticket, that’s a direct impact. Letter writing campaigns announcing a boycott, not so much, especially since most of us here are not in the target demographic.
MikeJ
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/destroying_football_the_lefts_endgame.html
Suzanne
@KG:
It’s typical when writing the contracts for media buys to have a clause saying the the deal can be voided and broadcast interrupted/canceled at the network’s discretion if the viewer ratings fall below a certain threshold.
To say nothing of a boycott of merchandise, season and single-game tickets, and concessions.
Violet
@Suzanne: Yep. It would be impossible to sustain any type of business without customers. You don’t like how the NFL treats its players? Don’t be a customer. If enough people agree with you, the NFL will take notice.
A boycott may not work, since boycotts do not have the best track record, but a long term push against the NFL and its treatment of players, including media coverage, more research, parents not letting their kids play and so forth will eventually have an effect.
Mike with a Mic
@Suzanne:
Here is what will happen to it, and it will happen like boxing.
Middle/upper middle class educated professionals will stop letting their kids play it. It will be nothing more than a sport of lower class losers with no other chance at life, and nobody who’s kid has a remote chance of being anything but a burger flipper will risk the chance of their child playing the sport. This will start to suck some of the life blood out of it when it’s almost completely minorities or ethnic whites from hard backgrounds. It will start to be looked down on more and more as human cock fighting of the lower classes and abused minorities for the enrichment of a view rich assholes, and people won’t have fond memories of playing it as a child. And then, like boxing and other sports, it will be marginalized. The money will start to evaporate, and it won’t have the power it does.
This trend has already started, it’s been going on for a while. I’m sure that in my life football will be one of those things stuck in the confederate states full of gun toting conservatives and NASCAR.
I’ll note I don’t object to rough and tumble sports, I was hockey and rugby growing up and boxed a bit in the Navy. But football is way out of hand compared to those, and those are usually run outside of the official education system before the collegiate level with a shit ton of forms to sign away, and extremely stigmatized.
WereBear
Na ga happen.
20 years from now there will be an impact. I’m convinced it’s going to have to come from the parents nudging their sports-minded children into some other sport.
But now? Too many people hooked on it. Too many people (and some on this very thread!) saying stuff like “that’s what they get paid for.”
Too many people making too much money.
Right now it’s begging for a class action suit, but there’s enough money to make it get dragged out for a long time.
Suzanne
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: That’s how it goes with every boycott, though. No single person’s individual behavior will be enough to compel change. The question is when a company’s behavior is so reprehensible that enough people of conscience decide to no longer participate. I think too many people, even those who believe the NFL is in the wrong here, enjoy football too much to stop watching it. I just wish they’d be honest about it rather than trying to say that a boycott would absolutely be ineffective.
dollared
@khead: What does that mean? That it will be disclosed? Probably, about 30 years from now, after the league has saved $10B in liability, another 200,000 college and pro players are fully or partially disabled, and justice is denied for a generation.
You may have already meant all that, but I’m being more explicit. That’s why Pierce is pissed.
Suzanne
@Mike with a Mic: I can buy that. But what sport will take its place? What’s going to be the rich white sport? I am not deluded enough to think that our culture will get over the taste for gladiators in one generation.
kc
@eemom:
The post says “I’m not an expert” and asks a question. Instead of answering it in a lucid manner, you immediately go apeshit, as is your wont. I think ultimately you did sort of answer, but it’s swamped by all the spew.
Roger Moore
@Suzanne:
Hunting the poor.
Eric U.
i’m glad I was too much of a wimp to play organized football. I probably would have been a mediocre player at best, and suffered some damage in the process
I went out for 8th grade football, but they worked us really hard in high heat and humidity and the sight of everyone around me puking after some running drill just made me not want to show up the next day.
WereBear
My money’s on lacrosse. Already popular and growing (our esteemed bloghost used to play, I understand) plus fast-paced and fun to watch.
Not injury free, like any sport, but injury is not the point.
Which is what I always hated about football.
dollared
@eemom: Right. And on what planet did those non-NFL people NOT sign NDAs? Because on my planet they signed NDAs.
dollared
@WereBear: This. Definitely the rich asshole sport of choice these days.
Keith G
@Mike with a Mic: Let me suggest a slightly different narrative:
At some point in the future, football will become an activity non grata in most public schools..
Yes there are few groups more vocal in school districts than the parents of athletes. They can put a lot of pressure on school boards. But often the final say goes to a much smaller and much quieter group – the accountants, lawyers and insurers.
Once tort attorneys find a reliable way to use information about brain injury to remove money from the bank accounts of school districts and their insurers, the jig is up.
Gex
@Suzanne: It was really hard for me to quit football, I will admit. I hate the salary cap, which artificially limits the compensation players receive for their services. I hate the public funding of stadia, especially with taxes that don’t go away when the team moves or demands a new stadium.(Here in MN the Vikings are going on their 3rd stadium in about 60 years, for crying out loud.) I hate the injuries. But I really enjoyed watching it.
I’ve finally quit and stayed off football long enough that it no longer pulls me back in. (I sound like an addict. Maybe I was.)
I am definitely seeing among my parents my age and younger more of a refusal to allow their sons to play or even watch football. Similar to the NRA/gun situation, I think it is a cultural thing. Change will be slow, until it reaches critical mass.
Suzanne
@WereBear: I thought that, too, because it’s really popular in the northeast and with the snooty set. But I don’t think it has the mass/nationwide appeal. My university had a lax team, but none of the high schools out here do, and any leagues are very small. Hell, there are more kids playing ice hockey out here than lacrosse.
Gex
@Suzanne: In the burbs it has been lacrosse. That’s what I see in the school fields around my suburb.
ETA: I am seeing teams in these schools and I’m in the upper midwest.
Mike with a Mic
@Suzanne:
I grew up in an upper 5%+ area of the DC suburbs. Even back in the 90’s (when I was in high school) “Football Schools” were either schools from the worst parts of DC or rural VA. Soccer was starting to pick up (and still is), tennis was on the rise, basketball, all sorts of things. Now there is a soccer team in DC. Sure the schools had “teams”, but they were abysmal and full the school idiots or kids dragged in from lower income areas, and there was an explicit effort made not to play the better schools because of the risk of injury.
What’s more is that wasn’t just the upper class, same thing was true in any school that wasn’t an inner city crime scene or full of rednecks. Professionals in the area now don’t really watch football the same way either, they pay attention to the sports they played growing up, which more and more is baseball, basketball, soccer. Football is sort of a low brow item. The building janitors and custodial staff have a fantasy football pool, nobody above knows or cares about it one iota. The big ticket items is stuff like the World Cup, club soccer, or NCAA basketball. Hockey has made a bit of a come back, and while it’s dangerous it’s not as fucked up as football.
Sports have to sell ads, when the people with disposable income are watching another sport because their parents didn’t let them play football you don’t have that attachment to it. And keep in mind that as we become more diverse, a lot of those coming over like other sports. This helps with soccer.
I’m pretty sure within a few decades the football and fans of it today will be viewed along the lines we view animal fighting now.
Hell there used to be a fair amount of flag football leagues here (work run and for part time), those have almost all been consumed by soccer and kickball of all things. The crazies are all rugby now.
dollared
@Suzanne: @Gex: It’s following exactly the adoption pattern of soccer – first the Northeast and prep schools, then universities, now it’s in all the upper class suburbs (at least I’ve seen clubs in the rich suburbs of Seattle and Minneapolis), and then it moves to the striver suburbs. That last part is already underway in Seattle.
As a veteran of the rise of soccer, I’ve been telling them that they haven’t really arrived until they have two state sanctioning bodies that sue each other twice a year over ref certification, field access, rights of publicity, libel, etc.
EthylEster
@Roger Moore wrote
Yeah, I’m not a fan (too violent, duh) but I’ve peaked at the two Seahawks games and a couple of the “commercials” for the NFL made me think it was a religion. Creepy. And directed toward women. Fashion angle, doncha know.
Keith G
@Suzanne:
I think there will be increasing pressure to “outsource” athletic participation to community and club teams. This will be due to budgetary and academic considerations as much as the safety issue raised here.
See this article in The Atlantic.
Suzanne
@Gex: out here, swimming is huge. Also soccer, tennis, and racquetball. I spent the first half of kid-dom on Long Island, and we played lacrosse, but out here in AZ, never. I’d like to see it become a thing here.
WereBear
You got that right! They’re all “pop that limb back in the socket, I’ve got to get back.”
I was a teen in the football crazy ’70’s, and never did like it. I was unaware of the erosion.
But there are places in the South where it is a religion. People suffering and dying will not matter one bit.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Suzanne: I think you missed the reason my immediate reaction is that it makes no difference if I, personally, decide to never watch football again.
Yes, the networks very likely have an out if ratings drop.
What you have to consider is how the ratings are calculated.
That’s why I think that “stop watching” is a useless effort. Unless you’re lucky enough to get the Nielsen Families involved, you won’t impact the ratings.
You will have to take it directly to the advertisers, just like with Limbaugh.
Mike with a Mic
@Keith G:
Except it is a class based issue, and that’s the same reason boxing really tanked. Avoiding that it’s a class issue serves no point, might as well come right out and say it. When upper class yuppies pull their kids out of it those kids grow up not caring about it. As adults they have the purchasing power. Without that purchasing power and money it will shrivel and rot.
EthylEster
@Baud: Dude, nobody knows what they funded. But that doesn’t keep lots of folks here from shooting off their mouths. It’s the inter-tubes.
Mike with a Mic
@WereBear:
So it will be a lower class thing in that region much like cock fighting and NASCAR. It won’t die out, boxing didn’t, but it will shrivel.
Even in high school the “crazy crowd” didn’t play football, it was all rugby and hockey. Which are really expensive (it’s run through the county because most schools won’t touch them). While dislocations, lost teeth, and broken bones do happen, the brain damage risk isn’t as bad. That’s the big one, they don’t want to risk their kids shot at a top school on a freak accident, nor do they want to use their legacy and cash to put a kid through grad school only to have them scramble their brain. Plus, it’s not really “respectable”. It’s a bunch of roided up poors, great looking adonis man gods play soccer (see David Becham or whatever his name is).
It’s just a matter of time now, the question is how many dead enders are going to hang on before the pressure and disdain gets too much for them.
Mnemosyne
@Mike with a Mic:
It’s a class-based issue, but not in the way that you say. Even in the heyday of boxing, you didn’t have a lot of middle- and upper-class kids becoming boxers. It was always a sport that drew from the ranks of the lower classes.
What changed was that middle- and upper-class people stopped watching, and I don’t think your analysis is really explaining why or how that happened.
WereBear
What happened was that white people stopped being boxers.
master c
TAX FREE wtf?????
Football really is America’s church.
Villago Delenda Est
@WereBear:
Moloch must be fed.
Mike with a Mic
@WereBear:
No they still are, it’s just more ethnic whites from eastern Europe or crazy hicks. Not the sort of whites the higher income classes identify with at all, not western Europeans. I was pretty much the only white kid who wasn’t Polish, Slavic, or Russian who did it. It was strictly not for proper white people.
MMA has picked up because it’s more universal. One of the reasons is the martial arts used in it are taken by upper income kids. You can get busted up something vicious in judo or jujitsu, and Muay Thai can do a number as well, but it doesn’t rack up brain damage the way boxing does. Along the same lines MMA may rack up a much higher record for various injuries, but it doesn’t scramble your brain like boxing.
Once brain damage that ruins the chances at a proper education and proper societal life gets involved the upper class bolt, then something is branded for “those people” and loses it’s grip on society. Dislocating a shoulder or a few broken bones though is just “boys will be boys” level territory.
There’s a lot to be said for combat type sports, and injuries are just part of life. Right up till your brain turns to soup.
Suzanne
@master c: I have said something similar WRT guns. If we could somehow just brand guns as low-class, trashy, and shameful, that would do more than any legislation.
Mike with a Mic
@Suzanne:
You’re issue with that is you’d have to tar federal agents, military, cops, farmers, as that as well. You’d be making their professions trash. Which is why guns is a war that the left will never win. You should spend more time trying to outlaw pitbulls for all the effort, certain animal breeds are already on that level.
khead
@dollared:
200K? The closet is WAY bigger than that.
Just pointing out how the NFL might as well be Altria, er, Philip Morris. Same corporate MO. See Keith G in earlier posts. Those documents might be disclosed. Someday.
Suzanne
@Mike with a Mic: I don’t think it would take tarring those careers to cast guns in a less attractive light. But casting the use of guns in those contexts as a necessary evil, or something that isn’t to be talked about because it’s unseemly. Like performing autopsies or cleaning bedpans. Certainly not COOL or MANLY or HEROIC.
Mike with a Mic
@Suzanne:
Yeah here is the gripe. I still own a gun, two actually. I have a beretta 92f, known in the military as your M9. I also own a SIG. Funny thing about this, I purchased these years ago when I was… still in the military. Shooting at the range on base isn’t always when you want it, so owning your own is a fairly common practice. I do not keep ammunition in my apartment, they are in a safe. They don’t really come out other than up keep and other fairly mundane shit.
Now, I live in a really upscale area and “gun ownership” here, is virtually all various government types or ex government types who happened to pick them up as part of their job. Part of my job still requires an overseas carry at times even though I’m no longer in the military or DOD related. And by upscale I mean Georgetown DC and Arlington VA. It’s as high end and liberal as you can get, yet guns are just a thing that’s around because so many of us either work in that sort of system or used to.
The kicker is nobody here would walk into a Starbucks with an open carry because it’s fucking moronic, it’s just provoking a reaction. But if you see a concealed carry (and it’s fucking obvious if you know what to look for) the assumption is their either FBI, Secret Service, off duty POLICE, something like that.
So trying to trash that, and make it seem uneemly, is pretty much an attack on government workers. If you want to do that, it’s fine. But call a duck a duck, you’re out to slander all of us in those fields or who were in those fields as bedpan cleaners and the unseemly. Though congrats, I deal in health training and specifically maternal and infant mortality in Africa, we work in Gaza, glad to know that’s unseemly and bedpan cleaning.
Like it or not the jobs that require the use of a weapon are often noble, often people working for the greater good, and often involve a ton of self sacrifice. Which is why going after guns is a failure. To stigmatize them you must stigmatize those of us who wear/wore a uniform or who continue to work for the state. There are better ways to fight this. For starters engage those of us who have had to bear arms or still do. We all know the reality of what these weapons do, none of us take them lightly, and all of us would lose our jobs if we fucked up. Advocate bringing up the standards.
But calling soldiers, FBI, cops, fire marshals, and state security bedpan cleaners…. that’s how the “liberals fucking hate real Americans” shit keeps ringing true till today. And it’s why people in the social stations around here tolerate Tea Party shit and scream “both sides, both sides” at the top of their lungs.
Suzanne
@Mike with a Mic: See, here’s where I think your complaint breaks down: Nursing is freaking IMPORTANT to society. It is one of the most important, thankless, difficult, honorable professions that there is. As with any job, there are parts that suck, parts that they don’t talk about. Specifically, most nurses won’t talk about cleaning up poop and washing out bedpans. That doesn’t make their profession shameful, but neither would they say that that activity is Why They Went Into Nursing. I’m not “going after them” by saying that that part of the job is unromantic and unappealing.
I have NO problem with military and police and government officials or farmers having guns. NONE. But having guns shouldn’t be the FUN and AWESOME part of the job. It should be the part that sucks. As it stands, guns have enough of a romance to them that a fair number of people are attracted to those careers BECAUSE they get to handle weapons. Handling a weapon should be seen as an act of self-sacrifice, akin to rushing into a burning building.
Gian
@Mike with a Mic:
Policeman put on his uniform
Like to have a gun just to keep him warm
Cause violence here is a social norm
Mike with a Mic
@Suzanne:
It still is. I only enlisted because my father is a holocaust survivor, and gained his full citizenship by fighting in the Korean War. All my other siblings had Harvard and other legacies to use. So did I, but one of the males had to make the sacrifice. I did. But out of all the things that happened the “gun” hardly ranks as the dirty part of the job.
There is still a strong sense of service and “we are damn lucky to live like we do” among the non batshit libertarian members of the elite. And that sacrifice often means the bearing of arms. Shit McCain’s son is an enlisted Marine, so is ex senator Webb’s.
And I’ll note that most military professionals will not talk to people outside of the military about what they have done. They will in general terms, but you won’t hear people talking about the act of taking a life. You don’t really see combat vets running around bragging about the macho factor of killing, that’s as much of a myth as “hippies spitting on veterans”, neither really happened.
You are very seriously wrong in what you are proposing.
@Gian
I have my own gripes with the “police”, and having grown up in DC during the crack epidemic I know it’s bad. This is an issue of the drug war though. Which has killed classic policing where the cop lived down the street, and was a member of your community and a trusted figured to be asked for help. I don’t know how to fix it though, but the “guns” are not the issue. I can tell you what is though. When I returned I went into IT contracting, LE also had offers. Recruiting the military to police civilians in the drug war isn’t productive. There’s a difference, and it can’t be untrained. However DC and Arlington PD are both fairly good, and not the sort of shit show that’s running rampant in the NYPD.
Suzanne
@Mike with a Mic: If what you say were universally true, guns wouldn’t be seen as the dick substitutes they are today. “Consider your man card reissued” was not chosen as the tag line for that Bushmaster rifle because it doesn’t resonate. Like it or not, there are LOTS of people who are loud and proud about their weaponry. Gun racks on the car, lots of talk about trips to the range and hunting. I work with a dude who lamented the fact that our company has a “no weapons” policy because he’d love to bring his gun to the office. Not to mention the “second amendment guarantees all the others” bumper sticker people. Gun ownership has considerable cachet, and that needs to change. It CAN change without slandering people that use guns for their jobs, for Christ’s sake, but neither should gun ownership be correlated culturally with strength or manliness. They should be seen more like the dirty bedpan and not like the awesome sportscar.
Mike with a Mic
@Suzanne:
I’m fine with that, just be aware you’re getting into “damn video games glorifying violence” and issues with Hollywood here. Both are liberal groups and the cost will be high.
Suzanne
@Mike with a Mic: FWIW, I do think that cultural representations of violence, including in video games, are glorified to an inappropriate extent. All of it contributes to a violent patriarchy. No one has ever demonstrated a causative link between violent video games/movies and any specific shootings that I know of, and I don’t believe in censorship, but I do wish that there was more cultural pressure to not produce media that portrays violence in a positive light.
badjim
Back to football: Los Angeles hasn’t had a pro football team for a long time, and it doesn’t seem to be a problem. We’ve got two basketball teams, two baseball teams and two soccer teams, so it’s not a lack of interest in sports. If Southern California can live without pro football, perhaps the rest of the country can as well.
Wally Ballou
@Suzanne: Careful, you never want to underestimate the power of reverse-snobbery populism in this country. Having educated liberal SWPL elites brand anything as trashy and low-class is an excellent way to get that thing valorized as something all true-blue Real Americans should love.
Mike with a Mic
@Suzanne:
Suzanne,
First thanks for the intelligent and good conversation.
I’m of the opinion that art both influences and is influenced by culture. People love to say “but the Japanese play video games”, I was there for a while. Sure, they do. But they don’t play first person shooters. It’s mostly fighting games and RPGS. On the other hand they have rape, groping, and dating simulators left and right. And groping, sexual issues, and other things are far more common there than here.
Again, I’m not blaming. In my opinion our (America’s) love of violence influences our art and media, and that comes back to influence us. Combined with the fact that we are constantly at war, America exceptionalism, and easy access to fire arms we’ve created a horrible situation. This is even leaving out the mental health issues, income inequality, and other stuff that is really driving most of the insanity we see today.
Also, while I own two guns, I support strong gun controls. I’d be fine being in a database (I have been since I joined the military, even more so since my security clearance, my rights have not been violated) as a pure civilian. I don’t think you or Obama want to take my guns. That’s fucking insane. I’m not an NRA member. Again I don’t even own ammo at home. Frankly I wouldn’t even give a shit if the government told me I could only have one gun. I’ll go one further, provided I could keep that one gun at a range close by and change the gun depending on my job needs, and retrieve it on the rare instances work required (which is laughably rare) I’d be OK with that as well. Frankly I only keep them because it’s cheaper this way to keep current on them, and as long as I have them stored away sans ammo and in the condition I do I know nobody else will cause problems with them.
I do think I’d object if I was told I couldn’t have them at all. Simply because as a veteran and someone who’s job off and on (again extremely rarely) requires having one I feel the government charged me with using one, and the contract I have with the government now does again. So it’s insane to say I can’t be trusted with one… and I do agree with 2nd amendment rights. But if a law came down that it was only revolvers and shotguns in my area… I’d try to make the work based case and if that failed just not own guns at all. I don’t think I’m going to get robbed here, and even if I was guns in a safe with no ammo are worthless. Plus I’ve been mugged downtown and you can’t really pull a gun when one is already trained on you, I just gave up the goods and walked on.
I’m probably vastly more on your side than you know, as are most of the people in similar situations or with similar backgrounds to mine. It’s just that guns are shamefull, or like bedpan changing slanders a lot of public servants and contractors. I mean hell, what kind of horrible person calls a nurse a bed changer? Sure I’ve known some crazy fucks over the years in the military or through contracting who actually wanted to be Rambo. The funny thing is those types are often the first to crack up and are generally viewed as completely unstable lunatics by others and then processed out rapidly. The ones who aren’t make the news in spectacular fashion. But keep in mind that if a cop kills someone they’re taken off the force instantly and thrown into pschiatric treatment and a full investigation is launched. That’s not just to make sure the kill was legit, it’s also because it causes intense psychological issues and damage to the cop who did it. Outside of true sciopaths, you’re not going to find the armed professions basking in the glory of pumping people full of lead.
Mike with a Mic
@Wally Ballou:
That depends duder. Those commercials with the ex generals, ex special forces who now work in private equity, talking on TV about rational gun control… those guys are elites and that did a lot of good and helped change opinions. And they were all rich and very well off elites. Largely because they worked with people from those areas in the military, know the terms, know about guns, and didn’t talk down to them.
On the other hand… fucking soda hating, fat hating, smoke hating, never had a rough day in his life Bloomberg using his Wall Street fortune to fuck around in fly over states he’d never even visit going on a crusade just riles people the fuck up. Because he’s the evil urban elite trying to run peoples lives that Rush keeps claiming exists. It was the avatar of rich blue state urban elites run rampant trying to money his agenda through while lecturing people they were too stupid for their own good.
The message counts, as does the messanger. Most people generally like the liberal ideas and solutions, but we really fuck up on the talking points and who we put forward. The Republican congress shamefully (and will be judged by history on this) blocked rational control. But gun owning Giffords and her and gun owning Navy Captain and Astronaut husband are really effective point people for this. Outside of the truly insane their words carry water and reach people. Even though a Congress Woman and an Astronaut are rather elite. A military officer and his wife are not the sort of prim and proper, I will make the people do what I say because I know better, country club jackass Bloomberg is.
Sadly I think Bloomberg is going to do a ton of damage and set back fights for rational gun control for decades. Because he’s really the cartoon character of the wrong person to do it. Fucking get Wes Clark, Colin Powell, and Giffords Husband back on TV talking about their service, their fights, the guns they own, and why this is needed. Not Mr. Stop and Frisk you for violating a Soda Ban, richer than Romney, bought himself a third term Bloomberg lecturing flyover country about how he knows better.
George Visger
The NFL’s settlement, which has not been accepted yet by us old, beaten down players yet, amounts to .000000004% of what they will gross over the 20 year payout period. That’s if their $9.5 Billion they grossed last year stays static. They expect it to hit $25 Billion/yr by the end of the payout period, so you can slap 3 or 4 more zeros in front of that 4.
I played for the 49ers, suffered a major concussion against the Cowboys in 1980 and was given over 20 smelling salts to keep me on the field. Never missed a play or practice. A few months later I developed hydrocephalus from concussions and underwent emergency VP shunt brain surgery. Two more 4 months after our Super Bowl XVI win, given last rites and the hospital bills and forced to sue for Work Comp just to get my bills paid. Now on brain surgery # 9, 32 years of gran mal seizures and I still don’t qualify for NFL benefits.
Due to my brain trauma, frontal lobe dementia and lack of short term memory I lost my business and our home 2 years ago. Last year I was forced to file for SSDI. Now the tax payers get to foot my bill instead of the NFL.
And they don’t have to open their books????
What about all the young Pop Warner and High School kids who could avoid damage like mine if they only knew.
KVIE Channel 6 Sidelined: Concussions In Sports 12/19/12
http://vids.kvie.org/video/2318744182
George Visger
Wildlife Biologist/Traumatic Brain Injury Consultant
The Visger Group
http://www.thevisgergroup.org
SF 49ers 80 & 81
Survivor of 9 NFL Caused Emergency VP Shunt Brain Surgeries
Benefactor of ZERO NFL Benefits
KVIE Channel 6 Sidelined: Concussions In Sports 12/19/12
http://vids.kvie.org/video/2318744182