Tag Archives: NFL

There She Is, Miss Concussive Trauma

 

Two American TV institutions checked into hospice last month.

Of course, no one is going to officially pronounce dead the Miss America Pageant and the National Football League. Nostalgia and straggling sponsors alone would never permit it.

But both near-century-old organizations (Miss America was founded in 1921, the NFL in 1920) entered the autumn of their TV lives with a single rule change and a call for another. And make no mistake: To die on American television (and hence forfeit social relevance) is to die in America. Just ask Roseanne Barr or Jon Stewart.

Miss America and the NFL’s  hospice stays may be indefinite, like Broadway plays. And they may enjoy brief public remissions — also like Broadway plays. They may even produce the occasional Hamilton: something you haven’t seen, but you’ve heard good things.

Still, it was hard not to hear the buzzard caws with the latest headlines (or lack thereof). The first came on June 5, when Miss America officials announced they were ditching the bathing suit and evening gown competitions in favor of “a more interactive experience with judges to showcase the beauty inside,” one press release peacocked.

The news was greeted with uniform praise. ‘It’s a Start,’ the website Vox proclaimed.

I think you may be looking through the wrong end of the binoculars, Vox. A start of what? A better way to parade show ponies? It’s hard enough to grasp how any pageants still exist in the #Metoo landscape. These are the actual opening lyrics to the Miss America theme song, as written by Bernie Wayne (you weren’t expecting a female composer, were you?):

“There she is, Miss America
There she is, your ideal
The dreams of a million girls”

Barbie couldn’t have said it better herself.

Miss America, in particular, has a rich history of not reading the room. Consider past pageants; Which stand out more: the dresses/bikinis on display or the imbecilic questions/answers in the interview session? It was Old Faithful humor for late night comedians and smarmy news anchors.

Also, how is judging internal beauty any less absurd than judging the external? Is it less offensive to say, ‘Sorry, you’re not as  pretty on the inside as Miss Idaho’? How the fuck do you know? Isn’t it more insulting? And will we see 300-pound Miss Americas? I’d love it, but I doubt it.

Just be honest, pageant organizers. As TV entertainment, you’re on life support because you’re ignoring your core drives, conveniently tucked in the Seven Deadly: lust and envy. In 1921, Miss America began as a “bathing beauty revue,” as that was about as much skin as you could publicly flaunt back then. Today’s Internet has already nullified the sexuality to the show. And if viewers want an actual and entertaining measure of internal beauty, there’s lots of choices, including the National Spelling Bee and Jeopardy!

The second group’s demise is a little more subtle, and a helluva lot more nefarious.

On June 20, Brett Favre — the former Green Bay Packers star quarterback, current Wisconsin god and future Hall of Famer,  granted an interview to England’s The Daily Mail. In it, Favre, the poster boy of NFL toughness, made the startling admission that not only did he fear he suffered from Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, but that children should not be allowed to play tackle football until kids are at least 12.

“The body, the brain, the skull is not developed in your teens and single digits,” he told the paper. “I cringe. I see these little kids get tackled and the helmet is bigger than everything else on the kid combined. They look like they’re going to break in half.”

He said he came to the conclusion after seeing his own kids express an interest in playing.

“Maybe that’s selfish, but what are the odds of him becoming the next Brett Favre? What if he plays one year, gets a major concussion, and is never the same,” Favre said. “I would feel horrible.”

This is tantamount to Babe Ruth renouncing fast-pitch baseball. If American mothers gain wind of the Favre interview, the sport is done. Mothers decide what games we play. How many are going to allow Junior to suit up when a legend of the sport tells won’t let his own kid play because of the deadly risk?

Even more damning: the way news outlets covered the interview, which was barely. ESPN had a 30-second spot in the middle of its nightly sports newscast. But the network owns multi-million dollar  rights to future NFL broadcasts. They will inevitably lose a fortune if America quits tossing the pigskin. Ulterior motive, anyone?

You could be a little more honest too, Gipper. The NFL also exists in two of the Seven Deadly realms: Greed and wrath. You know your existence comes courtesy of the primal urge to watch human beings bludgeon one another into retardation. We loved it with the Greeks, we love it with the Cowboys.

Perhaps American institutions simply have a century-old expiration date in an ever-changing zeitgeist. It’s fitting that both of these institutions once represented the height of femininity and masculinity. Miss America and the winning Super Bowl quarterback were once America’s prom king and queen.  But the years have morphed them into measures of the toxicity of gender identity.

But fear not, ogle junkies. Pornhub gets nearly as many queries as Google, so your prurient needs aren’t aren’t at risk.

As for brain-bruising-free competition, ESPN has ramped up coverage of non-concussive sports, including championship darts and drone racing. They even began national coverage of the picnic sport of the masses, in which you toss a beanbag at a target with a hole in the center.

It’s called cornhole. Seriously. If ESPN has its way, you’ll soon ask your soulmate, “Let’s skip the movie. Can we go cornholing?”

Who says you can’t mix sport with sexiness?

 

 

 

 

 

The Good Race

 

Peyton Manning retired this week, bringing to a close a career that will include two dozen passing records, five league MVP trophies and two Super Bowl rings. His induction into the National Football League Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, is as certain as gravity.

But when Ken Burns and other historians wax poetic about the man, they should not overlook his other historic achievement: the greatest retirement speech in the history of sport.

Hell, it may be one of the greatest retirement speeches of all-time. Written himself and lasting nearly 12 minutes, his adieu to an 18-year-career was less a recollection of achievements than a realization of life.

I admit, I was bawling by the end, around the 11th minute, when he quoted Scripture, 2 Timothy 4:7

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

After the speech, when the cameras at ESPN cut back to the commentators, the athletes — hulking, bruising NFL greats who played through compound fractures — were sniffly with snot and blurry with tears. Lou Gehrig will always be remembered for his farewell to Major League Baseball as he entered his long night. And, given the darkness awaiting him, it may always be the most moving.

But consider: Lou uttered barely three sentences, in about a minute, to heartfully confess that, despite the disease that would later kill him and take his name, he was the luckiest man on earth.

For sheer poetry, though, Peyton’s speech is unrivaled, particularly for an athlete. Like, viral-video-graduation-ceremony-self-improvement-class good. Everyone from journalism instructors to Academy Award winners should keep that speech permanently. Not for its turns of phrase; in truth, non-football fans won’t get a dozen references to players or plays.

But watch his emotionally-wracked monologue for even five minutes, and it’s clear Peyton isn’t even giving a speech. He’s reading a love letter. To his sport, to his fellow athletes and coaches, to his fans.

Say what you will about football (and there’s much to condemn). The sport’s brutality may eventually be its undoing.

But sport — like movies, TV, Broadway, even Justin Bieber songs — are all forms of art (albeit, some more cerebral  than others).

And in Peyton’s speech, there’s no mistaking the heart behind the arm: an icon openly confessing, and weeping over, his love of an art he’s been practicing since he was strong enough to hold the instrument.

That alone is worth a reservation in Canton.

R.I.P., NFL

 

You know you’re in trouble when Hollywood starts talking about you.

Just look at Steve Jobs. His death gave birth to six biopics in two years   (it will be interesting if history renders a verdict of Jobs as a Henry Ford or P.T. Barnum).

Similarly, NFL Commission Roger Goodell, Tinseltown has you in their sites.

Hollywood has done myriad documentaries on the risk of helmet-to-helmet injury. But the true salvo came in November, when Sony greenlit the  feature film Concussion, with Will Smith. Though the movie was a steaming bowl of turd, the story — about the coroner who discovered the concussion syndrome CTE in 2003 and tried to warn the NFL about risks —  was a game-changer.

concussion

 

Artistically, the best thing about that film is that it ended. Eventually.

But that one of Hollywood’s biggest studio threw down with the biggest industry in professional sports is the larger distinction. Once, Hollywood viewed football as the sport of American heroism: Winning one for the Gipper; Marshall University’s resolve to play on despite a plane crash that killed most players; the grit of Rudy.

Now, the NFL is the mustache-twisting villain on the train tracks.

This won’t diminish today’s Super Bowl, of course, enjoying its 50th birthday with much pomp, circumstance, and pre-pubescent child singers. Football has never been more popular, now reserving two more days of the week, Monday and Thursday. NFL teams are holding games in London and Mexico for an international audience. If held to popular election, Super Bowl Sunday would win hands-down over Election Day as a federal holiday.

And ESPN is going apoplectic at the thought of the decline of its blue chip stock. Commentator Michael Wilbon, a grumpy former colleague at The Washington Post, has made a catch-phrase of this refrain:  “The NFL will never die because people love to see other people hurt.”

wilbon

He’s got a point. The Greeks and Romans practiced a more savage game in gladiator matches, and that was the world’s most popular sport from 100 BC to 325 A.D. The Greek philosopher Marcus Aurelius, himself a former gladiator, once urged that the kill-or-be-killed exercise was a necessary step in the ascension to manhood.

“It is not death that a man should fear,” Aurelius wrote. “But he should fear never beginning to live.”

And the NFL has similarly vocal support. This is the 50th anniversary of the championship, and never has the media sniffed the throne of a game more. There were two prime-time shows this week about the sport’s best Super Bowl commercials. With former athletes as  commenters (Your seat in hell is reserved, Boomer Esiason). esiason

But as philosophers also say, pride goeth. And while the sport currently enjoys a pinnacle perch, the sport is following an eerie trajectory of not only the ancient Greeks, but a contemporary sport, boxing:

Overreach. Like football, boxing was the most popular sport in the nation, dominating headlines and coverage for 80 years with heroes the United States once reserved for war heroes. Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano and Muhammad Ali were more recognized than Coca Cola. louisrockyali

 

Football has a similar trifecta in Tom Brady Peyton Manning and Cam Newton, also all big endorsers of the endorsement. Commercially-concocted heroism never ends well.

tompeyton  cam

  •  Gambling. Boxing was quartered and fed to junkyard dogs by organized crime, which paid off boxers to take a dive. The sport became so fractured with competing illegal interests that, since 2004, we have not had a unified heavyweight boxing champion, once as preposterous a notion as flying cars. Similarly, the NFL is under federal investigation for its ties with fantasy football leagues, which are as crooked as my handwriting. league

 

 

 

 

  • Denial. Boxing finally recognized the danger of concussions, and grudgingly conceded in 1955 a syndrome known as Dementia Puglistica, virtually identical to CTE. But the sport — with the NFL shouting an “amen” from the pulpit — claimed the brain injuries required a genetic precondition and posed a risk to only two types of athelets — boxers and steeplechase racers.  To this day, the NFL insists that linking 70,00o blows to the head — which an average NFL lineman receives — to brain damage remains a questionable science (apply parallels to the tobacco industry here).

Windbag analysts love to counter that the sport isn’t in similar jeopardy because it appeals to a better-protected, more-aware demographic: teens (you know you’re listening to douche bags when they talk about reaching the right demographic, a fancy word for ATM).

But to those who prostitute in sales and hype, consider. There is but one demographic: child-bearing mothers. They are the first to recognize brutality, and the first step up to keep their children from engaging in it.

Today, boxing is a niche sport, filled with poor, uneducated athletes who fight for money or anger. Name one parent you’ve ever heard proudly boast “my boy is trying to be a pro boxer.” Now name a parent who doesn’t beam that the kid got a scholarship to a punishing college football powerhouse.

That tide may be shifting. With the high profile concussion-deaths of Mike Webster, Junior Seau and Ken Stabler, with the terrifying mountain of evidence that even a sport like high school girl’s soccer is a concussion risk, how many parents will want their offspring entering this workplace:

Are you ready for some badminton?