A few days before Super Bowl 50 this Sunday comes sobering news: Onetime Oakland Raiders quarterback and Super Bowl MVP Ken Stabler had CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a kind of dementia related to concussions and sub-concussive hits.
Stabler, who died in July of cancer at age 69, left his brain to be studied by researchers in Massachusetts.
Of the 91 brains of ex-players that have been tested – you can’t test for this except after death – 87 had brain trauma. ...
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With the US Open drawing to a close this weekend, we turn our attention to the resumption of the Davis Cup competition with several stars, including Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal, in play for their respective countries.
One star on the sidelines for Australia is trash-talking, break-taking, umpire-arguing, racket-throwing, crowd-criticizing, sock-changing Nick Kyrgios, who’s been left off his country’s Davis Cup team to work on “personal development.” Translation: He’s been sent to the time out corner. Indeed such is his status as tennis’ reigning bad boy that former reigning bad boy Bernard Tomic – he of the motorcycles, lap dances and fistfights – has been pressed into service for the saucy Aussies. ...
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A judge has cleared the way for a more-than-$1 billion settlement between the NFL and some 6,000 players who could develop neurological problems from the concussive aspects of the game over the next 65 years.
While some individuals in their 30s and 40s with Parkinson’s or Lou Gehrig’s disease could get between $1 million and $5 million, the average settlement would be $190,000. As anyone who has cared for someone with dementia will tell you, $190,000 is a drop in the bucket. Not everyone, however, is sympathetic.
“This is the player’s decision to play this game and they are already making an absurd amount of money, even sitting on the bench,” Nick Keener of Lock Haven, Pa. posted on ESPN. “If they ran out of money after they are done playing, then that's their fault.”
“What about the guys who played back in the ’60s and ’70s that made just enough to get by with the offseason grocery store job?” Thomas Sanabia of Queens wondered on the same thread. “NFL players only recently became super rich. They weren't making anywhere near this amount for most of the people suing.”
“The NFL got off so good here it’s not even funny,” Zulfan Bakri added, “considering that their current TV DEAL is worth $3 BILLION per year. This is a drop in the bucket compared with what they should have paid for long-term pain treatment and care. It should be 10 x that because in 20-30 years when the current players are going thru the horrors now the costs will be thru the roof.”
I’m afraid I’m with Bakri on this. It’s true that occupations have hazards, and violent occupations have violent hazards. But I have to assume that years ago few understood the relationship between sports and neurological problems (although the movies have sometimes portrayed a punch-drunk boxer for pathos or comic relief). These men signed on for busted knees not busted brains. The very willingness of the NFL to agree to the settlement suggests the league thinks it dodged a bullet. It admits no responsibility and is probably hoping the whole issue will be swept under the rug. ...
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San Francisco 49ers’ wide receiver Anquan Boldin stirred the drink recently when he said embattled Niners’ running quarterback Colin Kaepernick – who trained during the offseason to become more of a classic pocket passer – just needs to be himself.
“…I think he just has to block out everything else around him, stop listening to what people want, what people have to say about you, stop listening to what people want to see you do and just be yourself," Boldin told SiriusXM NFL Radio, via CSN Bay Area, on April 9.
"I think sometimes when you try to go off the suggestions of other people and try to please other people, you forget who you are and what got you there,” Boldin added. “I think if he just goes out and (is) himself, he'll be just fine. And that's the thing I try to tell him. 'Go out and be Kap. Don't try to go out and be anybody else, because that isn't what got you to this point.”
Wise words about identity, a much misunderstood subject that’s a crucial theme in “The Penalty for Holding,” the upcoming second novel in my series “The Games Men Play.” Like Colin, my hero, Quinn Novak, is a quarterback at the crossroads trying to balance pleasing others and remaining true to himself. It isn’t easy in our selfie world, which often spurs a 180-degree reaction. In his April 12th column “The Moral Bucket List,” The New York Times’ David Brooks wrote:
“Commencement speakers are always telling young people to follow their passions. Be true to yourself. This is a vision of life that begins with self and ends with self. But people on the road to inner light do not find their vocations by asking, what do I want from life? They ask, what is life asking of me? How can I match my intrinsic talent with one of the world’s deep needs?” ...
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Picked up my first-ever copy of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, which I bought for one reason and one reason alone – an image of a man.
Well, that’s not entirely true. I have to write about Greenwich actress Kelly Rohrbach, one of the featured “rookie” models, in my guise as editor of WAG magazine. But mainly I bought the Swimsuit issue for the two-page Levi’s spread featuring San Francisco 49ers ‘quarterback Colin Kaepernick, his teammate Vernon Davis and model Samantha Hoopes. (The Niners play in Levi’s Stadium.)
The ad campaign is about the most wholesome thing in the mag, which veers now and again into Playboy territory. The cover in particular has the media once again wringing their hands over whether or not SI went too far with a depiction of Hannah Davis in an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, not-yellow-polka-dot bikini, the bottom of which she has pulled down to the top of her pubic region. This is a popular new trend in posing models – having them hook their thumb or thumbs in one or both sides of the pants or skirt to hint at the treasures and pleasures beneath. Colin does it on the cover of the fall/winter issue of VMan magazine. And a young woman holding a basketball does it in the Feb. 15 edition of T, The New York Times Style Magazine. ...
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A shout-out to two former colleagues covering the NFL’s domestic abuse crisis.
Jane McManus of ESPN continues her fine reporting with a piece on the NFL’s addition of more women to the team that will ultimately help clean up this mess. A revelation: Off the Field, the NFL wives organization, is just being included in the discussion now. (Apparently, a first letter from the wives to the league was lost. What a surprise.)
If you’ve been reading this blog, then you know that Jane and I worked together at The Journal News, a Gannett publication. One of our estimable colleagues was longtime religion reporter Gary Stern, who contributed a piece on the entwined lives of NFL commish Roger Goodell and suspended player Ray Rice in the paper’s Oct. 5 edition. ...
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So the San Francisco 49ers face-off against the Kansas City Chiefs Sunday, Oct. 5 for the first time in the regular season since the Niners traded quarterback Alex Smith to the Chiefs, signaling that Colin Kaepernick would be their guy.
The Niners seem destined for an embarrassment-of-quarterback-riches drama. This is the team that traded Joe Montana – possibly the greatest quarterback to date – to the Chiefs no less, because they had Steve Young.
When Alex Smith suffered a concussion back in 2012 and Kaepernick took over for him, leading the Niners to the Super Bowl, well, it was a bit like that moment in “42nd Street” when the star breaks her ankle, the ingénue goes on and the rest is theatrical history.
Even though Kaepernick has better statistics than Smith – and from a pure performance standpoint is a helluva lot more thrilling to watch, because he’s a running quarterback – the Smith-Niners reunion has led to the inevitable “Did the 49ers Make the Right Choice?” column.
Here’s the thing...
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