The NFL’s perception problem

February 6, 2016

On this Super Bowl weekend, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told Robin Roberts of “Good Morning America” that people around the world will be watching Super Bowl 50 Sunday, implying that the game is the center of the universe.

People may be watching the Super Bowl around the globe, but that doesn’t make it a global sport the way soccer or tennis is. Few people in Indonesia beyond some ex-pats care about the NFL – a subject I address in my forthcoming novel “The Penalty for Holding.” But there seems to be a disconnect between public and internal perceptions of the game.

For Goodell the game is one he’d be happy having a son play; arrests are down 40 percent among NFL players, with the players more upstanding than non-players in their demographic group; and, as for concussions, he actually said there’s a risk in sitting on the couch. Really.

Meanwhile, Johnny Manziel – aka Johnny Football, the soon-to-be-former Cleveland Browns quarterback – has imploded. It’s the usual – trouble with drugs, alcohol and women. ...

Ken Stabler’s CTE and the threat to quarterbacks

February 4, 2016

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. ...

Updike’s complaint: Gay fiction – and what belongs to us

January 31, 2016

Aaron Hamburger, the short story writer and novelist, begins his laudatory review of Garth Greenwell’s “rich, important” debut novel “What Belongs To You” in the Jan. 31 edition of The New York Times Book Review by indulging in a remembrance of a review past.

He recalls John Updike’s 1999 New Yorker piece on Alan Hollinghurst’s novel “The Spell,” in which Updike – who wrote many sexy novels – complained that Hollinghurst’s “relentlessly gay” fiction bored him because “nothing is at stake but self-gratification.” “What Belongs To You,” Hamburger writes, provides the “ringing” retort to Updike’s complaint.

I suspect that Updike may have been not only bored, though, but frightened and even repulsed. For gay fiction, like gay sex, presupposes the male as love object. And that might’ve been an uncomfortable exploration for the alpha male who wrote the “Rabbit” series and “The Witches of Eastwick.” ...

The Barbie makeover – a step in the right direction?

January 29, 2016

As a woman of a certain, ahem, vintage, I owned the original Barbie doll.

She was a brunette with a ponytail and bangs that looked like an awning and improbable blue eye shadow, given that she was wearing a zebra-striped strapless bathing suit that showed off big boobs, a wasp waist and deer legs that seemed permanently molded for high heels.

I hated her on sight.

The years haven’t improved that perception. The unending wardrobe, the pink dream house and convertible, the bland boyfriend Ken – Barbie was designed to invite envy even as she had nothing really to offer. The funniest thing was her array of occupations, including astronaut and, in the Clinton years, presidential candidate. It was much like the Bond girls always being astrophysicists. ...

‘Downhill racer’ indeed

January 25, 2016

I didn’t want another day to elapse without acknowledging the passing of skier Bill Johnson, who died Jan. 21 in an assisted living facility in Gresham, Ore. at age 55. Johnson was in deteriorating health for a number of years following a stroke. But I think that many would say that life killed Bill Johnson.

If you are of a certain vintage, then you remember the moment – the Olympics, Bjelašnica, Sarajevo, 1984 – when brash Bill, in Joe Namath/Muhammed Ali fashion, announced that the gold in the men’s downhill was his and everyone else was skiing for silver. No American man had won the gold in the downhill. But on that day, Johnson was better than gold. He was as good as his word. ...

Can the Broncos stop Cam Newton, er, the Panthers?

January 25, 2016

A good defense stops a good offense like good pitching stops good hitting – or so running quarterback Quinn Novak wonders in my forthcoming novel, “The Penalty for Holding.”

Anyone who thinks that, he reasons, has never considered Alexander the Great taking it to the Persians in 331 B.C.

And indeed, while the Denver Broncos’ defense surely stopped Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in the American Football Conference Championship, that defense is going to be hard-pressed to stop the Carolina Panthers’ electrifying running game as encapsulated by their QB Cam Newton in Super Bowl 50 Feb. 7. ...

Is tennis match-fixing a story with teeth?

January 20, 2016

The tennis match-fixing sort-of scandal is what journalists call “a story with legs.”

Yes, but does it have teeth?

We’ll get to Novak Djokovic’s wisdom teeth and their role in the saga in a moment. But first, our story thus far from the BBC and BuzzFeed News: Over a 10-year period, 16 players – half of whom are playing in the Australian Open, including a Slam winner – allegedly threw matches. No one has been named, because phone records etc. of the accepted bribes don’t exist. But the point seems to be that official tennis knew and did nothing. Everyone from Martina Navratilova to Roger Federer has said in effect to the investigators, Put up or shut up. ...