Confession 1: I am a football fan. My father took me to Cal games at Memorial Stadium — one of the most beautiful places to watch more or less anything, tucked there against the slope by Strawberry Canyon, gold-and-green hills behind, the Bay, the Bridge and Mt. Tam to the west. We’d go to one or two games a season, rarely victories (my Golden Bears were valiant, but not that good), and as I lost dad when I was ten, those are memories overlaid with power.
I was aware of the ‘Niners then too, but as an East Bay kid with a full sporran* of high school anomie and safe rebellion, the Raiders were the real deal, all felons and left handed QBs and chain-smoking stick-um slathered Fred Biletnekoff. And yeah, Tatum’s embrace of that hit made me sick, but football, you know?
Then I moved to Boston, four years for college and then, after a few seasons away, for good. I still claimed to be a Raiders fan, (Plunkett!), and as a Bay Area kid, I took more pleasure than previous allegiance entitled me to in the Montana across the bay. But I paid attention to the Patriots. I always thought Grogan was cool, and Hannah was such an archetypal football guy and so on. They usually sucked, but they weren’t (mostly) dull. I’ll pass over the Berry years in silence.
Then, of course, we got that other guy named Bill, soon to be followed by the 199th pick in that draft, a hopelessly unathletic kid, Tommy something. You know the rest: it was easy to root for a hopelessly underdoggy team of Patriots in that 9/11 fall, a season capped by a most improbable playoff run. Been high living ever since.
So I’ve been watching a long time and for many of those years Sunday was a pretty well defined ritual, at least one game, sometimes two, and hanging out with folks I enjoyed. I watch a lot less now. Because the Patriots have stayed good and I’m something of a front-runner, I check in for most of their fourth quarters, but it’s rare indeed that I watch a whole game through any more.
Partly I’ve lost patience with the action to hanging around ratio. Partly I’m more jealous of my time than I was when I thought it came in infinite supply. But yeah: partly, increasingly, I’m seeing myself as an accessory to genuinely awful stuff.
Confession 2: I know that football destroys minds and lives. It’s impossible not to know that now, and if you needed any reminder, there’s a story in today’s New York Times** by the wife of a former NFL player to put a face to life after too much grievous bodily harm.
When we married in 2009, I already knew he was an amazing father. He could play dollhouse with my stepdaughter for hours without a hint of boredom. This continued when we had two children of our own. When our son was born and I was focused on taking care of a baby, he would bathe the girls, brush and blow-dry their (tangled!) hair, then put them to bed. Afterward he would wash the dishes. He brought me coffee in bed each morning. I was spoiled rotten.
But since I had known him, he had trouble sleeping, and he has been prone to mood swings and depression. In 2010, things got worrisome, so I arranged for him to be evaluated by neurologists so that he could apply for disability benefits. …
I was right to be concerned.
Over time, I had started to notice changes. But this was different and, around 2013, things had become much more frightening.
He lost weight. It seemed like one day, out of the blue, he stopped being hungry. And often he would forget to eat. I’d find full bowls of cereal left around the house, on bookshelves or the fireplace mantel. The more friends and family commented on his gaunt frame, the more panicked I became. By 2016, he had shrunk to 157 pounds. That’s right, my 6-foot-2 football-player husband weighed 157 pounds (down from around 200 when he was in the N.F.L.). People were visibly shocked when we told them he had played the game professionally.
This is a gut and heart rending tale, made worse by the increasing pile of evidence that Rob Kelly’s is not an isolated case.
It seems to me that such an outcome is intrinsic to the game, not obviously correctable by changing rules or equipment. Yesterday I procrastinated in the face of some early eighteenth century financial asset analysis that was just a little tricky to tease apart, and pulled up some old Super Bowl videos on Youtube. I landed on a couple of Montana highlights and I was genuinely surprised to see how brutal the game seemed. Those games were before the rule changes came in intended to protect the quarterbacks, and Joe Cool was getting whacked on almost every play, as rushers would take one, two, even three steps after he’d released the ball and slam into him at full speed. There’s a reason top quarterbacks are playing longer than they did then, and one of the big ones is that they don’t get turned into hamburger helper by the third quarter of every game. I’m amazed, frankly, that anyone from that age of football can remember their names, and I confess (another one!) I’d forgotten just how thoroughly physical the game was back then.
I’d still say the risks are higher now though, at least plausibly. Another change from then and now is that players at every position are bigger, stronger, more powerful and faster than they were back then. Some hits may have been legislated out of the game, but those that occur are hugely violent, and in the routine, subconcussive zone, all that slugging that goes on in line play gets done by men who are simply huger than their predecessors, and in ridiculous shape. When I was a kid, a 300 pound lineman on either side of the ball was a giant, almost a freak. Now? Well everyone knew that Vince Wilfork, to speak of one Patriots great, was a very big man. But even at 325 pounds he wasn’t seen as off the charts.
All of which to say is that every time I watch a football game I not only know that I’m seeing fit, impeccably trained, incredibly gifted young men hurt themselves for my entertainment, I find myself watching each tackle and wondering, surprisingly often, if that’s the one that turns that gorgeously talented twenty something guy into the forty year old-to-be who can’t remember where his bowl of cereal went.
That is: I can’t suspend my awareness of how the game works anymore. I used to could, but can’t anymore.
Confession 3: I’ll watch the game this evening. I’ve even got a few friends coming over, and we’ll have the Mexican bean dip and some Peruvian chicken thighs (fabulous: I’ll post the recipe soon) and some Dogfish Head IPA and all that. We will root for the Patriots, because d’uh — and y’all hate us ’cause you ain’t us. The rooting thing is real: it’s fun to pick a set of laundry you decide is your flag and cheer for that. The game, played at the highest level, still is amazing to watch — in fact, that’s the dirty secret. Football can be thrilling, a catharsis, and it’s easy to get hooked on the seemingly harmless rush of life-and-death, victory and defeat to be found on the mock-battlefield of a football field. And the social side is real too, hanging with folks on a day when all diets are off and so on. We’ll watch, and we’ll probably have a good time.
But I’m finding it harder and harder to do so. This is how I feel: the right thing to do is obvious, but the long, long habit of not doing it remains hard to break. Eventually, the time comes when that tension turns into a contradiction, and that’s it.
With five decades of reflex to undo, I don’t know if tonight will be the last time I turn on the NFL.
But I hope it is.
*I actually wore a great kilt (with all the trimmings) to my high school in my senior year. Even played badminton in it (not recommended). This guy I’d seen around, kind of intimidating, came up to me at recess or lunch, and asked me what it was. I told him. He just looked at me for a moment, then cracked up and said “you’re brave.” I confess (again): I exhaled.
**Posted 2/2, in print today.
Image: Edmund Blair Leighton, The Gladiator’s Wife, 1884.
Elizabelle
The painting is wonderful. The Gladiator’s Wife. Tell of the toll. For entertainment.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Elizabelle: Couldn’t agree more. It speaks volumes
Sab
@Elizabelle:Did gladiators marry?
Mary G
I was mildly interested in football in college, mostly for social reasons and I liked the card tricks. Shortly after graduation I came down with rheumatoid arthritis and the movie North Dallas Forty with Nick Nolte came out. The opening scene where he wakes up in the morning barely able to get out of bed was too much like my real life.
JPL
Tom, Like you I will cheer for the Patriots but find myself watching fewer and fewer games.
Decades ago a neighbor whose spouse was the Athletic Director at a football school, told me not to let my sons play football until they were in high school. Only then with good helmets, which they could get. Often I wonder what the early years of football did to Hernandez’s brain. Maybe he was simply a cold blooded killer, but that’s something we will never know.
Aleta
http://www.nola.com/living/index.ssf/2018/02/jackie_wallace_ted_jackson.html#incart_2box_nola_river_orleans_news
Story about a 70s player, Jackie Wallace
Also, one football player whose health is affected stands for women, spouses, children, parents whose lives and health have been affected, and maybe the children’s children.
(eta Was planning to go to a family watch of the game, for the socializing, but may be recluse instead.)
Elmo
Yeah, to all of this.
Part of me is glad that my beloved Chargers shit all over the San Diego fans in their headlong rush North, to the greater glory of being also-rans in a 20,000 seat stadium. I lived and died with them for nearly forty years, obsessed over them every August through December (rarely into January, but sometimes), but it’s been increasingly hard to ignore the terrible cost of the game.
So now that I have no team, and my beloved Chargers are Dead To Me, there’s little impulse to watch. I still love the game, and highlights in the bar on biz trips will always catch my attention, but this is the first year that I’ve barely thought about football since 1978. And I don’t miss it as much as I thought I would.
WaterGirl
Tom, thanks for the link to that story. It’s very powerful and I read the whole thing.
I have never had an interest in football, so I don’t feel conflicted. My great nephew played football for one season in high school and he got 3 concussions, each one worse than the one before – the effects seemed additive, if not exponential. I asked him at Christmas – now 5 years later – if he feels like any of the effects of the concussion have been permanent, and I wasn’t surprised when he said yes.
It’s crazy that we let kids play this game.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
I for one hope the Super Bowl ends in an Eagles victory, upon which both teams are immediately spirited directly to hell by flaming hearse-busses, reverse-Elijah-style.
Gin & Tonic
I’ve had occasion to be in Australia a couple of times during footie (football) season, and a few of my friends there are fanatical about the game. The players are big, and fast, and strong, but — i think this is critical — they play in, basically, shorts and a t-shirt. I think that limits the damage you can do; and suppose that all the padding and protection in the NFL may actually make things worse. And while I’ve never been an American football fan, nor really an Aussie rules fan, their game is so much more fun to watch.
Haroldo
[x] All of the above (save the Pats craziness, of course).
Growing up in Green Bay in the 60s does things to a person…..
Sab
@Elizabelle: When I first got married about 2000 I dutifully watched football (which I have always hated for the violence). My husband always explained to me that it wasn’t as violent as it looked. At the time my main objection was that these kids would destroy their knees.
Then one weekend we were watching a Penn State game ( my uncle’s Alma Mater, and my grandfather played for them in about 1910.) A rising star on the team got his neck broken in a game! For our entertainment! Haven’t watched a game since.
The injured kid did recover (3% chance of ever walking again). He can walk, he finished college, went to law school, worked as a lawyer, is now a Dem in NJ politics. Adam Taliaferro.
I cannot imagine the hell his family and he went through.
JPL
BTW the Puppy Bowl is on!
eclare
Not a pro fan, but as someone who went to an SEC school, it’s hard not to root for the alma mater. But it is getting more and more difficult with all of the personal stories that have come out, it’s tragic.
Duane
The NFL should adopt the rule where a blow to the head is an automatic ejection. Gronkowski was out of the AFC championship after getting a concussion. Do the Eagles try the same thing? Threat of ejection would stop that, I think.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
I haven’t watched a football game since I was a cheerleader in HS. Even then, I didn’t actually watch the game.
divF
Tom: By my reckoning, you were going to those Cal games when I was an undergraduate at Berkeley (1969-1973). Football did not impinge on the consciousness of many of us at the time. I wasn’t a sportsball guy in HS, and, while I knew that there were a couple of guys on the football team living in my dorm during freshman year, I didn’t realize that football was a major thing until the following year, when I would see mobs of people from my apartment window heading for the stadium on Saturday afternoons.
Berkeley in the early 1970s was more about Vietnam, draft lottery numbers (for us boys), a surprising amount of political activism, as well as the more general sins of the flesh and of the intellect.
OT: from a posting of yours a week or so ago, I realized another way in which we crossed paths, albeit with a displacement in time. Our first house (1980-1989) was on Derby St., right across the street from the tennis courts and Willard Jr. High, where you were had your first middle school exposure to Journalism. I’ve been thinking a lot about such crossings with the passing of Ursula Le Guin. Our current house overlooks Hillside School, which is where I would guess she went to elementary school.
Jager
Tom, your story is mine, change the East Bay to the Midwest ant the Raiders to the Vikings. I went to the first Viking training camp at Bemidji State with my father. I can still remember Norm Van Brocklin standing there with a whistle around his neck and a smirk on his face watching the players struggling to get in shape. BTW, the best line I heard on LA Sports radio coming back from the liquor store, “in Philly they are greasing the light poles, worrying about insane violence in the streets if the Eagles win, in New England, if the Pats win, somebody may run outside and make a snow angel.
Carolina Dave
Great article, thanks for posting.
Tom Levenson
@divF: My brother lives near Hillside still (closer to MLK). Yeah. My dad died in 1969. I did go to a couple of Bears games after that, taken by friends or relatives who tried to step into different gaps his loss created. But that was basically it. And yeah — football wasn’t a big deal in Berkeley then; the Bears both mostly sucked and there was clearly more important stuff going on, ya know…
Watching the NFL in high school was a way to rebel in my defiantly anti-sport, books above all house. With my rock and roll it was a way to piss off mom…;-) My parents knew the Kroebers a bit — Dad started at Berkeley in 1951, and Alfred died in ’60, while Theodora was in town well into the 70s. Sadly, I never met their daughter Ursula — I’d be dining out on that now.
geg6
Totally with you on this, Tom. I grew up watching the Steelers and my most glorious days coincided with theirs. Much of my social and family life has revolved around Steelers football. But the first sour note for me came in watching Mike Webster fall apart. He lived locally and had friends who tried to help him and keep him employed, but his mind was gone and we all watched it happen, knowing that great center was driven mad and mindless to his death by the game. We didn’t know what CTE was but we all knew it was football that killed him. Now we know but I find it really hard to give up my Steelers. I have certainly changed my viewing habits much like you. And I won’t watch any other teams play any more, so no game for us tonight.
I watch a lot more hockey now, which may not be any better. And the Olympics is starting Friday (technically a Thursday-curling and ski jumping!). I’ll be watching a lot of that.
Tenar Arha
@JPL: I’ve never watched anything but highlights before….
Me: Aaahhhh! There’s a Star Spangled Banner playing chicken & at least one #corgi puppy in this year’s #PuppyBowl!
JPL
@Tenar Arha: There’s an illegal, named Mango. Don’t tell the orange one.
Aleta
@Mary G: Thanks for this.
Two older siblings of my partner were high school football stars, nothing beyond that, and are still busted up now with ruined knees and other ‘old football injuries.’ The coach at the time was known for ‘making men’ out of boys, and never took anyone out of play for injury or pain. When my partner (sensitive nerd nearsighted couldn’t run) came of age, he was still required to go to practices.
One day he had severe stomach pain. His father made him go anyway, and the coach made him suit up to go out. At the last minute his mother showed up on the field and took him home despite the coach’s insults. Soon after he was at the hospital with a burst appendix. He says he could have died if she hadn’t stood up to the coach, since the notorious JP always forced them to drill and get knocked around, ‘no excuses, no sissies.’
Karen Potter
@Haroldo: I still haven’t recovered; especially, since back in the 60’s the Packers were real people who had other jobs to make ends meet in the off season
Hungry Joe
Our plumber was a linebacker in high school. He said he’s in pain (his back) every day of his life from the hits he took. At his last high school reunion — the 30th, I think — he and his former teammates talked injuries. Every one of them had something that was still a problem: back, knee (lotta knees), neck, shoulder, hip. And that’s not even counting the brain stuff, which may — probably will — show up later in some of them.
Nicole
As a Pennsylvania native, I grew up in a state with 2 pro teams and a college team and somehow PA managed to obsess over all of them, so football, even for a nerd girl like me, was inescapable (go Stillers).
I stopped watching a few years ago when I really grasped to what lengths the NFL was going to to hide the extent of how bad the sport is for the brain and body. And I really, really miss it. I’d love to shrug and brag about staying home and working on my writing or something during big games, but truth is, I miss it.
Aleta
@Tom Levenson: I was interested to read that her mother Theodora Kroeber wrote “Ishi in Two Worlds.”
JPL
@Karen Potter: That was the Patriots also. Aleta, @6 linked to an article about someone who played in the 70’s. The story is truly about friendship.
catclub
So Levenson is just a transliteration of MacIlvain?
Another Scott
I occasionally watched the Bears when I was in college in Chicago. Refrigerator and Sweetness and McMahon and all those guys. But I always cringed when McMahon and all those guys bashed their heads together like rams when they were happy with a big play. The whole point was to “see stars”.
It was obviously insane, even back then.
A few years ago there was a commercial with him (Priceline? Something like that?) in the background at a white board or something. He was obviously damaged. Of course, he has early onset dementia and all the rest.
I don’t plan on watching the game today, for reasons I’ve mentioned in the past and won’t belabor now.
Cheers,
Scott.
Tom Levenson
@catclub: I claimed the McLevenson clan. And it was a Black Watch kilt. Good thing clueless me wasn’t in one of the Boston neighborhoods where those of Irish descent know that tartan all too well.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
The Brooklyn Dodgers played in Memorial Stadium for a few years, after they left for the west coast. It was a ridiculous place to play baseball, since the left field line was about 57 feet from home plate and right field was 12,000 feet down the line. They had to put up a 900 foot fence in left to stop cheap-ass home runs.
Sab
Fortunately I have flu. I made a big vat of soup I could boil to sterilize, and I told my husband to get him and his kids and his friends the fuck out of the house if they want to watch football today.
Lizzy L
I once loved football. I lived in Cleveland and in Chicago, both serious football towns. I have a signed photograph of Walter Payton on my wall. I lived in San Francisco in the 1970s and early 1980s, and I adored the Niners: I went to Candlestick to watch them play. Proud memory: I once shook Ronnie Lott’s hand. But the recognition of what football does to the people who play it broke my heart. I believe that professional football is immoral. Paying people to entertain knowing that the occupation will destroy their brains is immoral. Watching such entertainment is enabling abuse. I won’t support bullfights, or dog fighting rings, or football. I have not watched a professional game in years, and I will not.
And yeah, it makes me sad.
raven
This is still critical but there are more players in this article.
They were the first Redskins to play in the Super Bowl. Decades later, they’re paying the price.
Ruckus
Tom,
As a youngster I used to watch boxing. I liked the training and that there were classes for not just the giants but for everyone. I liked that there is actually a tremendous level of skill involved. And then I realized that the goal was to really hurt the other person. All that skill and training was about hurting someone. That wrecked it for me. I see football in the same way. But they have pads and helmets and, and……. What I didn’t know was that those pads and helmets didn’t really do much protection and that players were being destroyed, for a game. I know that some like the game a lot, and I understand that, there is a lot to like and we really aren’t all that developed past our actually recent lizard brained past. I worked in professional sports, as a hobby for 20 yrs and as a full time official for 11. Part of my job was the protection gear that was used. And the understanding that for all the gear, destruction of the human body and even death was still a very, very real possibility and probability. Yes it got better, yes risk is part of life, but the closeness of that possibility and the probability has had a toll on me. (Also getting to the point that old is part of my description now takes a toll.) I’ve known a couple of those 40 and older ex pro football players, the ones with artificial joints and epileptic seizures. They like that they played, for one I’ve known, that was the highlight of his life, another has made something else important, but he’s never forgot getting to the top of the game and wearing that super bowl ring that he and his team won and just playing.
But I can’t watch any more. Working in professional sports got me too close to it, the reality of not just the risks but that almost everyone suffers from them, and that takes it out of the risk category and puts it into certainty. It actually could be defined that the risk is that you won’t suffer, and always has been.
I know why we like sports with risk and I don’t fault or blame anyone for enjoying them, it’s actually a hugely human thing, liking to watch highly skilled people working at things we can’t do and doing them well. Of having a team to root for, to feel like you belong to something bigger than ourselves.
I just have a hard time doing this any more. Maybe because I visited a lot of people I know in hospitals, maybe because I went to friends funerals, maybe just because.
divF
@Tom Levenson: Neither Madame nor I are football fans, although all of Madame’s siblings are, including one sister (about your age) who is a rabid Raiders fan. My one fan moment was sometime in the early 80’s sitting next to Lester Hayes on a flight from Dallas to Oakland. I knew he was someone significant, since he was wearing his Superbowl ring. We ended up chatting for a while, mainly about the move of the team to Los Angeles, and the impact on both the players and the Bay Area fan base. Madame met me at the gate, and when I told her who I had been talking to, she chased me back to get his autograph for my SIL, which he very graciously provided.
I used to be able to watch football games with some interest, but at this point, I pretty much can’t. I am just unable to dissociate what I am seeing from the effects downstream.
Aleta
@Tom Levenson:
What’s the connection? (An Scotch Ontario part of my family wore Black Watch.)
raven
@Lizzy L: Oh but NOT PAYING then makes it ok?
Sab
@Tom Levenson: I have heard that it totally sucks to wear a great kilt while riding a wet horse in the rain. Being female, this isn’t an issue that concerns me much.
narya
I don’t much like the game as a game–standing-around-to-things-happening ratio is way too high–and the inherent violence also disturbs me. (I have a friend who is both a Badgers AND Packers fan, so I am in the room when football occurs, sometimes, but I’m just not a fan.) My nephew (senior in high school) got a concussion two years ago, and is also extremely smart; rather than say, hey, you should quit, I asked what he liked about playing, and then I said would you rather play football now, or build airplanes later? Because another bad concussion could make that a real choice. He quit, and has followed in his brother’s footsteps to throw a javelin.
JPL
@raven: Tom Brady obviously agrees with him. Brady would play in his sixties if he could.
Tom Levenson
@narya: Much better than attempting to star in the javelin catch
Tom Levenson
@Aleta: The Black Watch regiment was a notorious player in Northern Ireland’s Troubles.
Redshift
I’ve never been a football fan, though my mom and brother are still fans of the Washington Racial Slurs. If the train doesn’t turn to sleet, I’ll probably be going to a friend’s to watch the commercials and socialize.
This morning, I went to a fundraiser for Steve Bacher, who’s running in the primary for Congress for PA-08. He’s a college friend of a good friend of mine, and he seems like a really good guy. He’s an environmental activist who’s involved with local Indivisible, and unapologetically advocates for universal health care, a living wage, and other solid liberal priorities, and against the horrors Republicans are inflicting on us. He’s running in a primary against a self-funding millionaire who’s backed by the party establishment, and whose campaign theme is restoring bipartisanship and ending “dysfunction in Washington,” and a female Navy veteran who apparently was a Republican until last year.
I encourage everyone to support him!
Tom Levenson
@Sab: Hasn’t been an issue for me either. Not much equestrianism in downtown Berkeley in the 1970s. Nor rain, for that matter.
Aleta
narya
@Tom Levenson: hah! yes. I’ve also been successful getting him into the kitchen. Whenever I visit, we usually collaborate on a meal for everyone, especially the bread & dessert.
Aleta
@Tom Levenson: oh no!! (thanks)
patrick II
Perhaps, but there are two factors that might improve the situation. The helmets and the rules. There are helmets with padded outsides where the trauma is less. The NFL sponsored “research” that claimed the trauma was worse, which further studies found not to be true. The helmets do not look cool (they are larger than the current ones) and the NFL has a large contract with existing helmet makers, so they don’t want to switch.
And second, as many people here and other places say, make the rules stricter or at least enforce the ones you have. Teams and their fans don’t like it when a ref ejects a player, so it takes some courage by the ref to call a deliberate head shot, but I see them at a high frequency on the few occasions I still watch football. It seems to me headhunting may be worse now with the concussion protocols because players can force the other team’s best players to leave the game at least for a while with a deliberate blow to the head. The more important players get hit high most often.
If the NFL really cared about their players they could at least diminish the carnage we see now with an equipment change and change and stricter enforcement of the rules — but they don’t.
Hungry Joe
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I saw one Dodger game there. It was 1961. Wally Moon hit one of his “Moon shot” home runs — a high fly to what should have been medium-depth left field. I was just a little kid, but even then I knew it was ridiculous.
Lizzy L
@raven: Of course not. But I was thinking of the Super Bowl, and of the NFL. I don’t know much about college football, I never watched it. However, even in college football, someone’s making money. It may not be the players, but someone’s getting paid.
With regard to Tillman’s comment: it doesn’t surprise me that he said that. He was young and strong, doing a thing he loved. I understand completely. It doesn’t change my position.
Sab
@narya: My husband has a close friend whose nephew is a star in peewee football. The kid is ten years old and has been playing tackle football since he was six. No man in his family has ever been taller than 5’9″. He has no professional future.
What the phuck is wrong with this kid’s parents? Why would they expose him to such risks for no purpose? I know them, and they are just idiots. That’s all I can say. For many generations, their synapses just didn’t click.
Sab
@Aleta: Saw that Jackie Wallace story. Yikes!
trollhattan
Something about the memory of those fall tussles in enormous college football stadiums drill into our young minds–mine at Husky Stadium, which I’ll compare favorably to Cal Stadium, because I must. Lake Washington and (if you’re lucky) Mt. Rainier as a backdrop, boats moored within walking distance and occasionally a competitive team. Also, too, history’s best quarterback name–Sonny Sixkiller.
Unlike Cal it does lack a major fault running directly beneath and has never to my knowledge had a major wildfire near, so well behind in the spectacle potential. All that said, I can’t raise my pulse for today’s game. But there is Puppy Bowl.
efgoldman
@ Tom Levenson: I’m older than you and I grew up locally (Brookline). I went to the Pats first exhibition game (at BU Field) in 1960. I’ve been a fan since, although finances and time make it impossible to go physically to any games. But I’ve been with them for all the ups and (mostly) downs. They were hiseouslu awful for large stretches of time pre-Kraft and Belichick.
John Hannah, probably the greatest {at before Brady, played guard. He was listed at 240, but played most of the end of the sseaso at around 200.
marv
I haven’t watched football for years and then, to spite Trump basically, I started tuning in again this year, despite having the same reservations so many others have expressed here. What strikes me the most, even more than the athleticism, is what an amazing team sport it is now, really sophisticated levels of cooperation, etc. That’s what it looks like to me, anyhow. One thing I wonder about in regard to CTE crisis is how much it might be related to the way youth football has changed in recent decades. I taught at a small rural school where no one ever got a college scholarship and kids were taking steroids and lifting year-round 15 years ago. I actually posted online on a blog once a modest proposal to save sports – ban weightlifting. And off-season training programs in college. I have family connections to Ohio State going back almost a century and they managed to fill the horseshoe on Saturdays with basically that kind of program. Of course, a lot of people went mainly to hear the band. Those were the days
Jerzy Russian
I call them the “Washington Foreskins”, and that way no one is offended.
efgoldman
@Elmo: In the early 60s, I went to a couple of Chargers-Pats games (at Fenway Park!) Ernie Ladd and Earl Faison were the terrifying defensive linemen. The both played at under 250, and they were HUGE!
Duane
@patrick II</ Make a blow to the head an automatic ejection. No exceptions. The players will adapt, like they do with other rule changes.
raven
@marv: Yea, the didn’t go to see Cornelius, Pete, Brian and Archie. Uh huh.
divF
@trollhattan:
Oh, come on. Two major wildfires in just under a century (1923, 1991) is only enough to add a slight frisson of risk.
ETA: I’ll grant you the seismic hazard, though. After all, we know what it is like to have a serious earthquake during a major sporting event.
Suzanne
@Sab:
I don’t get sports parents. I used to work with this horrible woman who was married to a very well-off dude. They had a huge house, expensive cars, spendy vacations, etc. And yet they were planning—PLANNING—for both of their sons to be pro baseball players and to get scholarships and that was how college would be paid for and how they would have careers. I should note that when I worked with her, the older one was eight (and neither showed any exceptional prowess for baseball). They weren’t setting aside anything for their educations. It was just gonna be baseball.
I don’t get it.
raven
@Lizzy L: No, just like you he stands by his position.
Sab
I have flu. I feel like crap. My spouse is off to watch young men cripple each other for other people’s entertainment. I am going to bed. I hope nobody brains him with a beer bottle if he roots for the wrong side. My last surviving dog is staying home with me, as is my dad’s cat. Hopefully they will be reunited midweek (dad and cat).
Amaranthine RBG
Anyone who watches the disgusting spectacle of grown men crippling their minds and bodies for entertainment should watch this first: https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/02/01/video-compilation-reported-concussion-season
Tom Levenson
@divF: The 1991 fire missed the house I grew up in (north side of Claremont Canyon) by a few hundred yards.
raven
@Suzanne: I spent over 20 years running kids sports programs and it was a constant battle to get people to treat their kids like kids. You know what parents were best at it? The one who played high level athletics.
raven
Oh boy, the know-it all-is here.
lowtechcyclist
I had been a football fan since the mid-1960s, and a Redskins fan since George Allen brought half the good Rams players east in 1971.
Then in 2012, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote several blog posts about CTE. I watched a few games that season, then couldn’t watch any more. It was one thing for grown men to risk long-term damage to their bodies for their glory and my entertainment. But to be knowingly be entertained by watching people destroy each other’s brains, and their very selves with it – that’s fucking barbaric. Watching Christians be fed to the lions is a more wholesome way to spend an afternoon, AFAIAC.
Ruckus
@Sab:
I think you explained it in your comment. Look at the families physical stats. They have never been even average height. For some that is a major issue. It was for me for a long time. I was big until the 4th grade, then I mostly stopped growing. As a freshman in HS my classmates tried to get me to go up on stage for a hugely offensive thing the school did every year. Send the smallest kid in each class to the stage to be made fun of for being so short. I told them to fuck off and said if I get out of my seat it is to walk the other fucking way, out the door. I grew well over 3 inches in HS and continued to grow. I grew 3 inches between 18 and about 22 as well. I’m almost 5’11” now. And shrinking of course. Notice that I’m almost 5’11”, not 5’10 3/4″. That’s an important distinction. This kid has done something that no one else in his family has done, played football and done it well. That’s a big deal to them. A very big deal. Is it a good thing? Probably not, but it’s a big thing.
Lizzy L
@raven: I would expect that. But I wonder what he would say to Rob Kelly’s wife.
divF
@Tom Levenson: Sigh. Yes, I remember. I have several colleagues who lost their houses in that fire.
My current house is in the area that was destroyed by the 1923 fire. Everything around here was built in the late 1920’s – early 1930’s.
And did I mention that the Hayward fault runs underneath my kitchen ?
Sab
@Amaranthine RBG: I don ‘t often agree with you, and everyone says you are a troll, but you have been pushing this for weeks, I must say I agree.
Sab
@Ruckus:
debbie
Hate the Pats, but great pick on the art!
Suzanne
@raven: I don’t get it. Like, even if you kid is REALLY good, the odds of playing pro are slim to none. Why would you possibly count on that as an income source?
Bill Arnold
Re football, I was 73 inches and lean and acceptably fast and strong in high school; a nerd but not at all uncoordinated, and the football coach suggested trying out for the team. Firm no (team sportsball? no way). Whew, in retrospect.
If Trump and the Republicans manage to significantly damage (American) football by making it partisan in an evenly divided two party system, then they should get credit for it, like GW Bush gets credit for the do-not-call list.
Kelly
I’ll watch the game with Mom. As a child we’d go over to my maternal grandparents house and watch the game with Granddad. He loved football. He’d have one game on the color set, another on the old black and white while listening to a third game with headphones on the radio. We grandchildren were an early version of remote control. I spent some afternoons in his last few years reading the scores and such for him after his eyesight declined.
I never played competitive sports. My younger brother was captain of the high school football and wrestling teams. He came out OK in spite of being knocked cold once in football collision. Two of our good friends have spent their entire lives nursing bad knees from football.
Ruckus
@Sab:
Yes?
Tom Levenson
@raven: My career as a sports parent ended when my son was about four or five. We signed him up for mites soccer, as all his friends from day care were playing. He spent the first several games wandering where he would on the field, well away from the noisy, crowded and clearly unnecessary hoo-hawing around the ball. He became famous for his habit, whenever the ball emerged from the crowd and rolled anywhere near him, for walking (absolutely not running) right on his merry way, never once deigning even to notice the impertinent sphereoid in the vicinity.
Finally, near the end of the season, the ball came to him, fifteen yards or so away from anyone else, and he paused…looked down at it…and very carefully bent his knee back and then swung forward, sending the ball quite correctly in the broad direction of the other team’s goal. On the sideline, I watched in wonder, and then cracked up. Everything about it was hilarious, or rather, beautifully absurd, from the act’s implausibility to his utterly thought-through decision to — this once — apply toe to ball.
Alas! He saw me. He thought I was laughing at him. I really wasn’t, but he was dead certain. He came off the field (as play was going on); would listen to no compliments or encouragement; absolutely refused to get back into the game; and never, ever, ever again suffered himself to be translated onto a sporting field.
Which, among other implications, meant that I never had to do that driving thing sports parents do. One of the many reasons I love my boy. Though I really do wish I’d muffled my laughter that day; he deserved one unalloyed moment of atheletic triumph.
Sab
@Ruckus: Actually, no. The whole family is athletically gifted and very short. They are all stars in elementary and high school and physically damaged as adults.
Sab
@Sab: @Ruckus:
catclub
OT: where is Adam Silverman and what are his (and other BJers) thoughts on Turkey and the Syrian incursion, with massive nationalism giving Erdogan a boost there?
Is the next war US versus Turkey, played out in Syria?
I suspect it will end in massive losses for the Kurds ( this is not a hard prediction there), and the US deciding that NOT going to war with Turkey is more important than any erstwhile support we may have offered to the Kurds. Kurds make up about 14M of the population of 80M in Turkey.
Sab
@Ruckus: Inept on computer. Comment below.
Sab
@Sab: @Sab: Actually, comment above. Very inept on computer.
Sab
@Sab: As said before, inept on computer. Beer cheese soup I made spouse was amazing. I’ll comment the recipe on next food thread. Even with flu I can taste it.
raven
@Suzanne: It often has nothing to do with money, people live vicariously through their kids.
Ruckus
@Sab:
OK I misunderstood your comment. Sorry. But you may have noticed that it struck a cord with me. I was made fun of for years for being small. That HS thing was just one of those times and the most openly asinine. It did teach me though that everyone has a place and size isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Size, color, gender, money, hair color, place of birth, and….. All of these are limits we place upon each other to boost ourselves, while it actually does the opposite. We are what we are, we do what we do, we have value for being alive and respecting others. Limiting that respect when it’s earned by existing is wrong. Although one can lose that respect by being a douchebag, even after obtaining the highest positions in government, as some have done over the years. Or by just being ones self.
trollhattan
@Tom Levenson:
We let our kiddo try anything that interested her even vaguely–ballet, gymnastics, volleyball, swim and yeah, soccer, which proved to be the only one to gain her passion. So now with every HS and league match I root, take photos and keep my dad fingers crossed that the highest-incidence for concussions and blown knees girls sport does not claim her as a victim. We do love our kids so but if my mythical son asked to play American football I would say “yes” to flag and “nope” to tackle. You wanna knock somebody on his arse, there’s always rugby.
Ruckus
@Sab:
I hope I’m laughing with you, your last series of comments is great.
patrick II
My son did not like organized sports, but he played soccer in early grade school before he gave up on them entirely. He was never first to the ball and barely got a foot on it during the game. His grandmother was amazed however when, after the game, the coach offered a free treat and he ran past everyone on his way to the ice cream truck.
raven
@Tom Levenson: As it should be, he was exposed and it wasn’t for him. My old man was a coach and an English teacher. He drilled me on fundamentals as a kid but I think he knew I was going to be a late developer so I played Pop Warner my freshman year, hs as a sophomore and then the juvenile delinquency set in and I was a goner. I picked sports back up after I got out of the Army and became someone who loved to played despite my limitations.
randy khan
I’ve always been more of a baseball fan than a football fan, and have said for years that I liked high school football better than college, and college better than pro. I watch some pro games here and there, but a combination of finding them less and less interesting and the news about CTE makes me less interested every year. I imagine that eventually I will become one of those people who watches only the Super Bowl and only because it’s a social event, and I’m not sure I will miss it much. (And living in a town where the obsession with a thoroughly mediocre team is in play year round, I often think my sports life would be better if pro football didn’t exist. Just one example for those who don’t live here – local sports radio has been obsessing about Kirk Cousins and his contract status for two full years. Nearly every show has talked about it at least once a week. It’s going to be a relief when he signs somewhere else and I don’t have to hear about it anymore. There’s more talk about his contract status than Bryce Harper’s, and Harper is a bona fide star on a team that is much better, not to mention that there’s at least some chance the team actually will offer him what he’s worth.)
Sab
@Ruckus: Thanks for your tolerance. Just kept pushing the wrong buttons.
Probably shouldn’t sneer at other peoples synapses failing to click.
Jager
My nephew was a high school football star, a 6-3 220 lb receiver who was fast as lightning. In his junior year 10 or more D I schools were looking at him. He dislocated his shoulder in a state championship game at the end of his junior year, then three games into his senior year he dislocated it again, by that time he had more than 15 D I schools on his trail. He came back from his dislocation and it popped again. The D I schools went away, so did the bigger D 2 schools. He ended up having a great year despite his shoulder problems, He went to a NAIA school (no scholarships) played ball, had a great time and graduated with honors and his senior year they won the NAIA National Championship. He wouldn’t change his experience for the world. One of his HS classmates played D I ball had two concussions and at 34 has constant headaches and tremors in his left hand.
Corner Stone
@Tom Levenson:
Not even close to the same situation, but the story reminds me. My son was playing basketball in a 10 and under co-ed league. One girl on our team kept dominating a boy she was matched with from the other team. She had no particular talent or size differential, etc, she just outhustled every other person on the court, never quit and was tougher than nails down low. Upshot is the boy on the other team refused to go back on the court next rotation and cried his eyes out when his dad stopped the game to try and force him.
Reformed Panty Sniffer
This hits a lot of the spots with my history. Football watching was a given with my dad and I spent plenty of time doing that on Sat/Sun afternoons. We would have a weekly phonecall to discuss ND on Saturday, perhaps the Giants later. I been to Philly for games both old (Veterans) and new (Lincoln) and I’ve made it to Foxboro a few times as well (good stadium to see a game). I will pull for Philly to upset but I ‘ve largely stopped watching football because of the time issue, CTE questions, the Kaepernick treatment, and the larger issue of allowing billionaires to profit off of public monies for stadiums. I stick to baseball and hockey for the most part. Sunday is a day of chores and cooking. I find you can still drink beer while doing yard work or cooking so it works out. Cheers. Go Eagles.
Corner Stone
@Suzanne: My best friend played a few years in pro baseball. When we were growing up (High School and pre-HS) he would always bitterly relate to me that if he had gone 3 for 4 with a HR in a game his dad would focus on the ride home about the one time he got an out and tell him for an hour what he had done wrong.
They actually had plans for their two boys to be able to attend college but both ended up getting full rides off baseball.
Fair Economist
@Suzanne:
My brother was a bodybuilder and star on his high school team, but even so when he tried out for college football he felt dwarfed. He never went back. And even a good college player has a very slim chance of being good enough for pro. Most people just don’t understand how high the odds against success are. Part of it, I’m sure, is that odds are low enough that well-known human cognitive biases kick in and cause people to overestimate the odds by orders of magnitude.
TV bias affects things too. Somebody who watches football sees, proportionately, far more successful players than exist in real life. Human minds are really bad at correcting for the effect of bad selection bias like that.
raven
@Jager: My friends kid played at D-3 Wisconsin Whitewater and won three National Championships while he was there. I think the size was the key to fewer injuries.
Corner Stone
@Amaranthine RBG: Ahhhh, like slipping into a warm soapy bathtub…
Amaranthine RBG
@Sab:
The great thing about being absolutely right, is that it doesn’t matter whether people agree with your or not. I’ve been speaking out about this for years. Heck just a year or two ago there were many Balloon Juice commenters who defended the NFL. Now it is just a few knuckleheads – less than 27%.
Brain damage is not merely a chance that NFL players face – it is a virtual certainty: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/09/researchers-find-brain-damage-in-96-percent-of-former-nfl-players/406462/
And, no, its not something that can be solved by rigorous concussion protocols – it is the contact itself – NOT JUST CONCUSSIONS – that cause brain damage; https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2018/01/18/a-new-study-shows-that-hits-to-the-head-not-concussions-cause-cte/?utm_term=.55ff34b8c61f
NCSteve
I never had much interest in football, but I used to at least catch the semis and the Superbowl and could enjoy a game when trapped in a situation where I had to watch it. But now I’m out. I don’t watch football anymore because of the the things that make people stop watching football and the things that don’t.
Things that don’t make people stop watching football:
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy was found in 99 of 100 of deceased football players whose brains were examined.
Things that do make people stop watching football:
Some black players started taking a position of reverent protest during the playing of the national anthem to bring attention to police killings of unarmed black men.
Yeah, fuck football.
Adria McDowell
@marv: Weightlifting makes you stronger, and ergo, faster. In more than just football. They will never stop doing that.
Amaranthine RBG
@raven:
Hey Raven, try this – see if you can find someone who supported school segregation in the 60s – or who campaigned against Gay Marriage in the 90s or afterwards – or someone who did PR work for Phillip Morris in the 70, 80s, or 90s.
As them how they have coped with the realization that they made profoundly immoral choices and made the world a worse place.
Maybe they’ll have some tips that you will find useful in the coming years.
SiubhanDuinne
You want to see some athleticism? Do what I did this afternoon and watch a fine professional ballet company. The Bolshoi transmits eight performances a season, captured live in performance and transmitted to cinemas around the world. They’ve been doing this for seven or eight seasons now, and I think I’ve gone to nearly every one (including multiple encore performances of some of my favorites).
Today was La Dame aux Camellias, set to music of Chopin, and it was exquisite. And — as I say — athletic. It takes enormous strength, stamina, balance, and control of one’s body to do what these dancers do every day. And concussions and broken necks are rare.*
*Friends of mine who are or have been dancers admit that constant pain is a given during the career. And I do have one acquaintance who was injured and sidelined for a few months after a sword fight in a performance of Romeo and Juliet went wrong many years ago. But it’s hardly comparable to the kinds of injuries in aggressive sports.
Jager
@raven: My nephew’s NAIA team had an OT who weighed 330 or so, after they won the championship all the seniors went out drinking. The big tackle drank 28 beers, nephew said it was a son of a bitch getting out of the cab and into the hotel. The tackle went on to play in the CFL for a few years, until his knees went to hell.
danielx
Disclaimer: I am a Colts fan and hope the Iggles beat the Pats like a rented mule because, the Pats.
That being said, I do feel like I watching a form of human sacrifice and it makes me feel dirty. Grown men, freedom of choice, all that, yes, of course. But I will guess that within ten years, organized full contact football for kids under 16 years of age (to pick a number) will be classified as child abuse.
The head is basically a pottery vessel full of jelly. Barring an advance in physics suspending the laws of physics on a small scale basis, there’s no complete protection of that vessel with any type of protective gear.
Edit: Interview with the ‘Concussion’ doctor, who is still being crapped upon.
Corner Stone
@Adria McDowell:
This seems like a strange blanket statement.
efgoldman
@Ruckus:
The Friday night (later Saturday night) “Gillette Cavalcade of Sports” was one of the few sports things my dad and I watched together. He grew up in the depression (graduated high school 1933-ish) when boxing was the king of sports. He also took me to a couple of amateur Army golden gloves evenings in Germany when I was a kid. He took me to my first game at Fenway, but unlike his younger brothers his heart wasn’t in it; he never listened to games on the radio.
He and his brothers would go to the annual Boston Latin-Boston English high school game on Thanksgiving (a storied rivalry then) at Fenway Park) because all of them graduated one or the other
zhena gogolia
@Elizabelle:
Leighton is fab.
catclub
@danielx:
and I have my doubts about the Rugby or Aussie rules guys being any more immune to head injury with lack of heavy protective gear.
Yutsano
John Blunt was quite the crafty devil eh?
danielx
@catclub:
What I’ve heard, the only hard and fast rule about Aussie rugby is that no weapons are allowed.
Tom Levenson
@Yutsano: He was, though I was (and am today) poring through Archibald Hutcheson’s tracts exposing in grim mathematically logical arguments just how absurd the Bubble pricing was.
Tom Levenson
@danielx: Sarcasm, however, is welcomed.
SiubhanDuinne
@divF:
Makes one rethink the whole idea of Quaker Oats.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
Yes dad and I watched a few boxing matches. But other than that he really wasn’t much of a sports fan. He did buy a yearly box at Dodger stadium at least one year, I don’t think he ever went, he gave away the seats to customers, and I went, once. That was in the late 70s, early 80s. The next time I went to a game was last year, my buddy bought tickets to both afternoon home games and his real sports loving buddy was unable to go. I went, so as not to have the seat go to waste. It was actually fun. But didn’t make me have any desire to go back.
Adria McDowell
@Corner Stone: Well, speaking from experience, in track and field, anyway- once our team started lifting in the off season, our times dramatically dropped. It could be anecdotal, and probably is, but there is so much benefit to weightlifting (and not just for athletes) banning it seems pointless. But I’m not a doctor, so everyone’s mileage may vary.
Jager
@efgoldman: A guy I worked with, Dad started the boxing program at the Colorado State Pen. (Ron Lyle boxed there) my pal started boxing inmates when he was in Jr. High. He won the SW Golden Gloves when he was a freshman at the University of Colorado. He went to the nationals and got his ass kicked by a middleweight who turned pro and fought Sugar Ray Leonard, fight went the distance and Sugar Ray won on points. My friend said the guy hit so hard he wanted to drop his gloves in the first round and give up. The other thing he said was he was the only blonde, blue-eyed guy in the locker room. Great guy and he got out of boxing with just a little scar tissue around his eyes.
Adria McDowell
@Corner Stone: Here’s an article that might explain the concept better than I can: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34089451
Sab
@Ruckus: My nephew’s elementary school wanted to delay his admission to first grade because he was so small. Seriously. They said he would never be able to compete in high school sports. My sister said his dad was 5’5″ they could hold him back until senior year and he would still not be competitive. His dad’s family is quite athletic, but his dad grew up in China during the Great Leap Forward, and didn’t get enough to eat as a child. His son (my nephew) grew up to be tall, but he is slender and klutzy like his mother’s family. So holding him back wouldn’t have helped an athletic carreer, and would certainly have damaged his academic career.
Gin & Tonic
@Adria McDowell: Did I miss the part where somebody was proposing a ban on weightlifting?
JPL
@Tom Levenson: I hope that you understand that you might have to post an open thread for the game. Seems like everyone else bailed.
Also the president wants us all to stand for the anthem. I do find it ironic that some folks are sitting one their asses watching the anthem, and bitching about players not standing.
Slightly_peeved
@danielx:
head hits are severely penalised in both rugby and Australian rules football. Also in both games there are stronger limits on blocking players who aren’t carrying the ball.
There are cases of CTE coming out, but if it was as ubiquitous as in gridiron, we would have seen more evidence by now.
Baud
The Guardian
JPL
@Sab: lol My youngest son was taller than his brother who was two years older, and the school still had that discussion. The older one is now 5’11 and the younger closer to 6’4.
JPL
@Baud: That’s assuming that South Korea and the rest of the world isn’t familiar with our own president.
Sab
@Sab: Trivial aside, my husband’s friend’s bad knees kept him out of Vietnam. On the other hand, he hasbren on disability since his late 50s . Probably an okaytradeoff for him. Notso much for his athletic nephews and great nephews.
Villago Delenda Est
@danielx: And that is the difference. American football helmets are used as weapons.
Sab
@Sab: Trivial aside, my husband’s friend’s bad knees (destroyed in High School football) kept him out of Vietnam. On the other hand, he has been on disability since his late 50s . Probably an okay tradeoff for him. Not so much for his athletic nephews and great nephews.
Villago Delenda Est
@JPL: DING DING DING DING DING
Dominionist fuck is a dominionist fuck. Film at 11.
Ruckus
@Sab:
Some times I want to scream, what a lot of schools/people think might be better for someone because of size or some other supposedly debilitating thing always turns out to be bullshit. Left handed comes to mind, size like what you write about or I experienced. Not everyone will be a sports star, not everyone will be a doctor or a whatever, no matter how badly one wants it. And as @raven: said, so many parents live vicariously through their kids, demanding things that the kid has no desire or skills for. I got lucky, I seemingly have enough of the skills for the career that my parents wanted for me and while I wanted different ones, I got used to very early not having them fulfilled. When I was 7 I wanted to be an astronaut explore space and that career didn’t even actually exist then. But life and glasses got in the way and I had to choose something else. My somethings else didn’t pan out either and here I am, over 60 yrs later with declining skills and a desire to eat. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
ETA One of my heroes (heroine actually!) was a girl I went to school with. She had polio and she said, at least figuratively, fuck it I’m going to succeed. And she worked at that and did.
Litlebritdifrnt
DH and I are holding a mini Superb Owl party, Sis and Bro in Law are coming over in a few minutes. I made a 7 layer dip and stromboli and french fries for dinner. BIL loves American Football but not enough to pay for the special channel every month, whereas I of course couldn’t deny my DH being able to get it. Sis will probably stay for one beer and then leave and then after I have cooked the stromboli I will be going to bed and leaving DH and BIL to it. I will stay awake just about until they get here and it takes for dinner to cook and then I will be almost comatose, considering that my normal bedtime is about 10pm I simply can’t hang. (I am in the UK in case anyone is wondering).
JPL
That Mass Mutual ad had me teary ad. fk the orange one..
Baud
I just want to see who kneels.
Adria McDowell
@Gin & Tonic: marv at comment 58.
debbie
Brady just ran in. Is his helmet too heavy?
Baud
Advertisers who use dogs in their ads are smart.
Corner Stone
@Adria McDowell: No, I would agree that for most of the world’s top sprinters that some sport specific strength training is definitely beneficial. But I have a contention in that weightlifting for the purpose of getting stronger may not all by itself do anything for relative speed or explosiveness.
There are all kinds of freaks of nature like Deion Sanders that famously laughed at lifting one rep max but ran a 4.2-something in the 40 yard dash.
debbie
@JPL:
Wait til you see the one with a kid named Joshua Williams. I feel like a total shit.
danielx
A wise investment: Ozzy Osbourne probably got paid about a million dollars for the Patriots using his music for thirty seconds during their intro.
lowtechcyclist
@Tom Levenson:
Yep, that was my kid at that age. After that one season, we cheerfully agreed that team sports in general just weren’t his thing, and he feels the same today (5th grade).
He loves doing active stuff outdoors – we’ve been going on hikes together since he was 3 years old – but just not team sports, and I don’t feel any need to push him in that direction.
JPL
@Baud: I think we all kneel in solidarity.
Ruckus
@Adria McDowell:
Some do think that weight lifting is only power lifting.
But weight lifting doesn’t have to be heavy weights, maybe it’s better to call it… resistance training.
Corner Stone
JJ says Watt?
joel hanes
I was knocked unconscious in a backyard football game at age 8.
In middle school I lost my two upper front teeth in a going-out-for-a-pass collision while playing mandatory flag football in PE.
The cult of football has distorted and corrupted most large American universities.
I can recognize the moments of grace, and power, and even beauty that come out of it, but probably the same could be said of the Aztec priests cutting the hearts out of living victims, most of whom seemed to be players for the losing team. The ceremonial regalia and the pomp were no doubt impressive, and the crowd roared.
Fuck football.
Baud
@JPL: I’m sitting on my ass on my couch.
Baud
I’d stand for Pink.
JPL
lol just drop her gum on the ground. Hope she doesn’t step on it on the way out. I guess she has the flu so all is forgiven.
Baud
@JPL: Pink has he flu? I’m impressed.
Adria McDowell
@Corner Stone: Of course, lifting by itself won’t do it- it’s amazing just how much training sprinters put in into the start, middle, and finish of a sprint. People tend to think they just go out and run, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Lifting also tends to help prevent injuries, so doing it for the sake of just speed/explosiveness kind of misses the point.
Calling for a ban for it at the college level misses the many benefits of the exercises.
And Deion Sanders was certainly and exception to the rule.
opiejeanne
Oh God, Pink. why was the gum in your mouth when you stepped onto the field.?
Maybe that was really a cough drop, I hope.
JPL
@Baud: Sab: Must be jealous. I’m jealous and I don’t have the flu.
RobertDSC-Mac Mini
Just hoping for a Pats win.
Adria McDowell
@Ruckus: I like that designation better. I wouldn’t call what I do power lifting! I think Olympic lifting when I think power lifting.
Sab
@Ruckus: Hear you.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Baud: There are a series of ads in the UK for a credit score monitoring thingy featuring a guy and his boxer dog called Moose. Anyhoo Moose is always asking his owner “what doin?” (for some strange reason Moose has a German accent, not sure why). In one ad owner tells him and he says “okay throw squeaky” owner reaches down to take it and throw it and Moose says “no take just throw”. It cracks me the hell up every time I see it and I will stop what I am doing to watch any of the Moose ads. (The most recent one has owner saying “just checking my credit card compatibility Moose I am thinking of popping the question” and Moose puts his paw on owners knee and goes “but I love you!”)
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Corner Stone: Sports research over the past couple of decades disagrees with you. Weightlifting is beneficial at all levels of athletics, and for the non-athlete as well.
JPL
@opiejeanne: I’m hoping the orange asshole tweets about the disrespect.
Corner Stone
My son and I were discussing various prop bets earlier. I’m just glad Al Michaels is calling the game. No one does betting line allusions better.
debbie
@opiejeanne:
Either way, dry mouth.
Sab
@JPL: I am never jealous of Baud. Just waiting to vote.
Baud
I just hope the referees play a pivotal role in the outcome.
Corner Stone
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Ok.
Villago Delenda Est
@JPL: You mean the draft dodging shithole coward?
opiejeanne
@debbie: yeah, but you palm it smoothly if you get out on the field/stage with it. Showmanship.
Corner Stone
Can we finally just agree to kill off these GMO dinosaurs once and for all?
jl
Just my opinion, but I think the Warriors will thrash the Giants. Giants’ batters can’t hit three pointers for shit, and their pitchers can’t rebound.
lgerard
Come on Pats…..Putin wants another Super Bowl ring
Barbara
My parents had Steelers season tickets from around 1971 to 1983. But the games I have the fondest memories of are baseball and hockey games, oh, and high school bball games (the pro team left pgh in the late 60s and I remember those games too). My dad liked every kind of sport. I still watch some football but I like the spectacle less and less. My son does not play the game and has no interest in the super bowl. I might watch a little but I suspect we are on the leading edge of the decline.
eclare
@Corner Stone: There is also the great quote by Bum Phillips about RB Earl Campbell’s inability to run one mile: the next time it’s first and a mile, I won’t put him in.
Corner Stone
@jl: I think what is more important is who handles the power plays better.
Baud
Nice pass.
JPL
@Sab: I am. I can’t carry a note. May both of you feel better tomorrow.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
I saw Leslie Odom Jr. That’s all I was at the TV for. Back to beta testing.
jl
As for football, they could change the game to limit injuries and long term disability from the game. The game has changed drastically from something that resembled rugby in the late 19th century. Teddy Roosevelt threatened to ban the game when 19 players were killed in one season.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_football#History
If more evidence shows that merely playing the game maims its players and produces long term and devastating disability, fewer and fewer people will watch, the talent pool for players will dry up and it will have to change. so it will Or it will go the way of heavy weight boxing and slowly disappear.
lowtechcyclist
@NCSteve:
About this, I’d say fuck the football fans who kept watching after knowing about CTE, but turned the NFL off due to black players kneeling.
Except I’m enjoying the opportunity to ridicule conservatives about how they’re upset that the NFL is no longer a ‘safe space’ for them. Poor dear snowflakes!
Aleta
Who decides the (minor) sequencing of commercials? (Not certain most expensive slots)
Baud
Wow.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
I’m going out on the limb here, but mark my words, one day the Super Bowl will as big as Wrestle Mania.
Corner Stone
Don’t think they can overturn that catch,
Corner Stone
No good!
Aleta
beautiful leap and curl
Baud
I thought they were making Shawshank Redemption II for a second.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
I had hopes for Jimmy Fallon. But his show is pablum.
Meanwhile, Kimmel and Seth Meyers are fearless..
debbie
Anyone know what the spread is?
debbie
@Baud:
Does every movie have to be terror filled?
Baud
@debbie: I don’t do horror movies.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@debbie: The spread? They’re using vinegar chips and chickpeas hummus this year.
eclare
@debbie: OMG, a movie called Skyscraper? That would terrify me as I hate heights.
Corner Stone
The Football Gods are not having any business with these two teams.
debbie
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Any reason you’re not including Colbert?
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@debbie: I loved him, but I found the new show boring.
JPL
Helmet to helmet hit and no call. They e.xplained why but still doesn’t make sense
Aleta
Hard to explain but I get a little uncomfortable lately about the amount of laughing, as though it’s a laugh track, on Colbert. Just worried whether making fun of Trump could outweigh how Colbert conveys outrage. Whether it could affect the engagement of those who already feel detached from ms politics. John Stewart did the balance well I thought.
Mr Stagger Lee
@Suzanne: What’s wrong with Stage parents or Dance parents? They couldn’t make it on their own so they live through their kids. I knew a friend who did some work in the classical music world and sometimes,dreads, the competitions in music because if the parents.
mapaghimagsik
I don’t watch football in general, and at this game under duress. The whole militarization of the whole thing is appalling, like there are only two great thing in America: football and bombs.
JPL
uhoh.. I just found this tweet
cheerleaders always come first for him.
debbie
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
He’s pretty much gone all Trump. Very different from when the show began.
debbie
@JPL:
Thought he was skipping the game.
Gemina13
First: I love Leighton. His works include lovely intimate touches in the midst of gorgeous pageantry and scenery.
Second: I became a football fan in 1986 (hello, Bears!), but stopped watching around 2007 – mostly because my mother needed more attention from me, and I was also working part-time jobs to help pay for her eye surgeries and medications. (Fuck the whole Congress that voted for the 2003 Medicare bill). Mom died from multi-organ failure in 2009, after suffering for years from Alzheimer’s. Even back then, I remember hearing murmurs about how football players were suffering the effects of brutal hits and tackles, and found I’d lost my taste for the sport overall. Now, as we learn more about CTE and how devastating the game is for its young players, I look at how the NFL and NCAA are responding, and despair that anything will be done until we start carting corpses off the playing field.
Third: Any organization that donated money to Donald Trump is one I hold in contempt. Jeff Lurie, owner of the Eagles, donated to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Robert Kraft, owner of the Patriots, gave Trump over $1 million. Fuck the Patriots.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Gemina13
@trollhattan: My love’s parents live just a stone’s throw from the Husky stadium. His mother is a huge sports fan. She’s asked me a couple of times if I’d like to join her at a Husky game. I love the woman dearly, but I can’t. I’d almost rather sit through one of those old gladiatorial contests; at least it was upfront about the fact that men were expected to be maimed or die. But damn, I love that area. The cut to Lake Washington, the view of Mt. Rainier, the Arboretum just a few miles away and the whole UW campus with Red Square equally near . . . if not for the fact that the traffic can choke a horse and rents are through the roof, I’d urge my boy to consider moving closer to his parents.
Gemina13
@Mr Stagger Lee: Mama Rose wasn’t make-believe.
I volunteer for a local theater. One year we put on a production that called for a large number of “young” (read: 8-15 years old) actors. We had a 13-year-old girl who was quite photogenic, sang well, and could perform the choreography without tripping over her feet. During rehearsals, her mother threw a hissy fit because her daughter wasn’t front-and-center. The director had to explain to her that the smaller kids were in the front, where they could be seen, and her daughter was a tall drink of water that could easily be seen from the back rows. It cut no ice with this woman. She protested until she finally threatened to pull the girl from the production unless she was not only put in front, but given one of the lesser (but more demanding) roles. The casting director told her, “We’ll miss her.” The woman was actually gobsmacked.
The kid auditioned for the next year’s show. We warned the casting director about her mother, and because there were other, equally talented kids who auditioned, that girl was passed up for any role. We didn’t see her when we held auditions for last year’s production, so maybe Mom wised up. Or maybe she’s now tormenting some other Seattle-area director.
Corner Stone
@Gemina13:
Seems like bullshit.
The Dangerman
Wow. Patriots have a call go against them. Shocking.
jk
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
You left Samantha Bee, John Oliver and Trevor Noah. Plus Conan O’Brien deserves kudos for his visit to Haiti.
Colbert boring? No fucking way. The guy is absolutely priceless.
No Drought No More
“..partly, increasingly, I’m seeing myself as an accessory to genuinely awful stuff”.
Ditto. After a half century of being a die-hard NFL (and 49ers) fan, I scarcely watch any games nowadays. I do watch the playoffs and Super Bowl, however (and the national college championship game). I liken myself to an ancient Roman who comprehends the barbarity of the gladiator games and denounces them, but still treats himself to a day at the Coliseum on special occasions, like a birthday or some such…
Kayla Rudbek
Yeah, it’s hard for me as well, being a second-generation Notre Dame alum with many memories of watching football with family and fellow alums. If it weren’t for football, my alma mater wouldn’t be on the national map — heck, I probably wouldn’t exist as my parents met in college and dad was not local to mom.
On the other hand, I grew up as a Robert Heinlein fan and he had a great vignette in Time Enough For Love explaining football to a man of the year 4272 CE: “Death was not supposed to result from this activity but sometimes did. Injuries short of death were commonplace.” So The Man Who Was Too Lazy To Fail went out for fencing instead of football…
On a personal level, I think it unlikely that football as we know it will last much longer than 20 years. It will be interesting to see what that does to colleges/universities and pro sports.
catclub
@mapaghimagsik:
The dumb lady on NPR call-in this morning “Don’t we play the national anthem to honor the troops?”
You know, there are military anthems. maybe we should just play those.
I think the national anthem before sportsball games is dumb anyway.
catclub
@jl:
I think it is actually fewer mothers letting their kids play. It will come. Slowly and then all at once.
Gemina13
@Corner Stone: Depends on the theater. Ours is small, and there’s a lot of overflow of “young” actors. We don’t have to put up with stage parents if we don’t want to. If we were the Seattle Little Theater, however . . .
ET
Being a Saints fan who finally got to celebrate a Super Bowl win when everyone was predicting the Colts would win, I was glad to wake up to a Philly win.
gratuitous
So I wasn’t the only one. Strangely comforting. I’ve been a fan of football for nearly 50 years, but I had to give it up this year. After that study came out last summer of the posthumous examination of players’ brains that showed all but one had signs of serious injury, it was just too much anymore. In the intervening months, my own peculiar brain started in on all the stuff I’d rationalized away. Early on, I’d read a “where are they now” story about some former player living out his life in agonizing pain. But, you know, choices. I knew a kid in junior high who was cheap-shotted in a practice drill. Ruined his knee for life. The horrific on-field injuries of Joe Theisman and Tim Krumrie. Darryl Stingley, paralyzed by a vicious hit and dying young. The list went on and on. And on.
If you can still watch and enjoy the game, more power to you. Watch and enjoy for as long as you can.