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koganbotNot going to get into a lot of football talk here, but two things struck me yesterday about Peter King's MMQB Tuesday Edition. First is this sentence. "I am thinking about the game, and about all the head trauma, and I need to do some more thinking about whether it's in anyone's long-term interests to play this game." Powerful statement from someone whose writing career has revolved around football. He does go on to say that more players than not seem to do well after football. My few not particularly profound thoughts:
Problems with football go way beyond head trauma. The exploitation of college athletes, who willingly line up for the exploitation; the way football distorts college life. And I'm aware that regarding any of these issues someone could knowledgeably argue that football does more good than harm. I'd say, and I think King would say, that even if that's true, that's no excuse for letting the harm it does continue. Which doesn't mean I think the sport shouldn't continue. It will continue no matter what I think, anyway.
Also, for all I know Junior Seau — a retired football star who just committed suicide, generally described as a bubbly, enthusiastic presence on the field and in life, though hard-hitting during the game — might have had something hurting him in his pyche from early childhood, and football may have kept him alive far longer than if he'd had no football. We're assuming head trauma or the inability to cope with life after stardom. These are not bad assumptions, but we'll likely never know. Even if the brain autopsy turns up something serious, that won't definitively tell us why he shot himself. But the suicide coming at the time it does, it's contributing to what's starting to look like a sea change in attitude.
Second thing that struck me was the total disconnect between the uplifting, feel-good tone of the first part of the column, about Eric LeGrand, the paralyzed former Rutgers football player who, in a really kind gesture from his ex-coach, has been made a member of the Tampa Bay Bucs, and then the rest of the column, with the continuing fallout from Seau and the Saints bounty scandal, etc.
Fwiw, when I think T-ara I do think football, a little bit, though I know that any comparison I'm making is facile. I'm aware, and I've said, that "social analysts, especially in journalism but also in academia, often enough come in with an attitude of concern for children and with the desire to protect supposedly vulnerable audiences and vulnerable young performers; and, while the concern may be genuine, the analyses end up as simpleminded, hamfisted expressions of the writers' social and class prejudices, the writers not even knowing that these are prejudices." But that obviously doesn't mean nothing's distorted or distorting in pop, or that no one's getting hurt. Again, for me to say so is just a commonplace. But has anyone's analysis along these lines gotten much beyond the commonplace?
Problems with football go way beyond head trauma. The exploitation of college athletes, who willingly line up for the exploitation; the way football distorts college life. And I'm aware that regarding any of these issues someone could knowledgeably argue that football does more good than harm. I'd say, and I think King would say, that even if that's true, that's no excuse for letting the harm it does continue. Which doesn't mean I think the sport shouldn't continue. It will continue no matter what I think, anyway.
Also, for all I know Junior Seau — a retired football star who just committed suicide, generally described as a bubbly, enthusiastic presence on the field and in life, though hard-hitting during the game — might have had something hurting him in his pyche from early childhood, and football may have kept him alive far longer than if he'd had no football. We're assuming head trauma or the inability to cope with life after stardom. These are not bad assumptions, but we'll likely never know. Even if the brain autopsy turns up something serious, that won't definitively tell us why he shot himself. But the suicide coming at the time it does, it's contributing to what's starting to look like a sea change in attitude.
Second thing that struck me was the total disconnect between the uplifting, feel-good tone of the first part of the column, about Eric LeGrand, the paralyzed former Rutgers football player who, in a really kind gesture from his ex-coach, has been made a member of the Tampa Bay Bucs, and then the rest of the column, with the continuing fallout from Seau and the Saints bounty scandal, etc.
Fwiw, when I think T-ara I do think football, a little bit, though I know that any comparison I'm making is facile. I'm aware, and I've said, that "social analysts, especially in journalism but also in academia, often enough come in with an attitude of concern for children and with the desire to protect supposedly vulnerable audiences and vulnerable young performers; and, while the concern may be genuine, the analyses end up as simpleminded, hamfisted expressions of the writers' social and class prejudices, the writers not even knowing that these are prejudices." But that obviously doesn't mean nothing's distorted or distorting in pop, or that no one's getting hurt. Again, for me to say so is just a commonplace. But has anyone's analysis along these lines gotten much beyond the commonplace?
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no subject
Date: 2012-05-13 12:42 am (UTC)http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/05/junior_seau_s_suicide_are_concussions_responsible_.html
fwiw, I'd be happy to see minor leagues of sports rather than colleges AS minor-league sports franchises (which is a dumb and corrupt model whose quaint past no longer even remotely exists).
no subject
Date: 2012-05-17 06:14 am (UTC)Colleges need the sports revenue, so they won't change much; unless society really commits to supporting higher education, which it won't.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-17 04:40 pm (UTC)running minor-league sports. They might as well run
pizza or beer franchises.
I guess a LOT of sports have changed over a century-
plus. I looked up the first Stanley Cup winner; some
canoeing club in Toronto... and I think Man City
soccer team was originally a clergy team.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-17 08:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-18 03:00 pm (UTC)What I'd really like more time to write about is mysteries. One of my selfish sadnesses when Martin died was that I'd now never have a chance to discuss mysteries with him. There are three living detective-type mystery and/or thriller writers I'll probably read everything by (Nelson DeMille, Thomas Perry, Steven F. Havill, which is the order of quality but the reverse order I actually enjoy reading them), would've liked to see Martin squib them. But the author I most wish I could get to is Rex Stout, long dead but the one with the very best Watson-Holmes ever: Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe. Jacques Barzun pointed out that Archie is basically Huck Finn in his mid '30s and moved to the living, bustling city. So think of Huck as your Watson: not conventional, not a fuddy-duddy, but pragmatic, open-hearted, a flair for adventure, an underlying decency that remains when the world won't cooperate with decency. So not a dim but likable patsy a la Watson or Hastings, but someone able to mix in and mix it up with the world and then go home and engage in what's essentially a comedy of manners with his petulant, genius boss.
Back to King, who's a smart Watson but not a Huck or Archie. I wish I had more of the Little League coach in me, and that's what draws me to reading King regularly. And without King, I probably wouldn't stick with football. But I miss Dr. Z.