When it comes to sports reporting, many ‘reporters’ abandon any pretense of objectivity and become fans of their local teams and shills for the sports they cover and for the wealthy team owners. It will be interesting to see how much space the sports pages of newspapers will give to the recent results about CTE injuries in football players.
Fellow FtB blogger Intransitive writes about one clue that sports reporters tend to suppress bad news and that is how quickly reporters seem to be able to compile massive dossiers of the disreputable actions of star players when those players abruptly fall from grace. As Intransitive says, the truth is that all this information was known all along to the reporters who cover the sports and the players but they did not reveal it to the public because it would bring disrepute to the game or to the star players and hurt ticket and merchandise sales and also reduce their access to the people they expose. Only when the damage is already done do they come out with the truth. This is not dissimilar to the relationship of access-based political reporters and the politicians to whom they want access. Consider the case of NBA owner Donald Sterling’s racist comments.
The corporate media kissed the NBA owners’ posteriors by not reporting what the media and the owners already knew to be true. The media did it because they didn’t want to be shut out of locker rooms and denied pass credentials. Instead, they began questioning black NBA players, current and former, asking what they thought about it instead of explaining their silence, their failure to report what they knew. The corporate media were blaming the black NBA players for Donald Sterling’s actions, and black Americans in general for being offended instead of “being grateful” as the subtle implication was made.
The classic case is, of course, Tiger Woods who had this squeaky clean image until he very publicly went off the rails and then all the dirt about his boorish behavior towards not only women but caddies, other players, and spectators, came pouring out. Now that he seems to be washed up as a player, the media published the recent mug shot of Woods when he was found asleep on the side of the road and arrested for drunk driving because he could not pass the roadside tests. Even though it was later revealed that Woods had no alcohol in his system but instead may have been suffering from the effects of the pain medication to deal with his chronic back problems, now they don’t care if he is shown in an unflattering way, while before his fall only the most flattering photos and stories would be shown because Woods had hugely increased the popularity of golf.
Well, it will be hard to suppress this. The fallout from this study seems to have started already -- John Urschel abruptly retired. Urschel is a pretty unique character -- in addition to being professional football player, he’s also an accomplished mathematician (currently a PhD candidate at MIT). Last season he suffered his first serious concussion and said that it affected his ability to do math for quite some time. Though he does not say so explicitly, I would strongly suspect that the effects of his concussion and this study may be the reasons he decided to stop playing football.
-- RM
rgmani,
Thanks for that link. I feel that schools and colleges should stop having football as one of their sports because then they become complicit in suggesting that it is safe. If adults want to hurt their brains, you can’t stop them.
A slight tangent to the post, but your mention of NFL injuries reminded me that American football is a great example, along with boxing, that adding safety equipment actually increases injury rates -- especially head trauma -- in contact sports, by encouraging increasing aggression. For contrast, see the Australian version of football, which has very little in the way of padding despite also being a full contact sport, and yet has a much lower incidence of brain trauma.
Apologies for the slightly off-topic query — related mostly(?) only in the sense it is about a sport I know our host follows — but I haven’t seen any comments on the recently-concluded Women’s Cricket World Cup, and perhaps especially the amazing India–England final at Lords.
Yes, I had been meaning to write about it. It was a great final and I was especially pleased to see that Lords had a sell-out crowd for it, although the preliminary round games had few spectators.
What the rest of the word calls football (“soccer”) also has a brain damage problem, in this case caused by heading the ball. A simple rule-change (“no heading”) would solve it, without changing the game more than marginally. Will it be adopted? Is the Pope a Muslim? Do bears use wet-wipes?
KG,
I too thought that disallowing the header would be an obvious first step. It would change tactics a little. For example, the corner kick that is aimed high near the goal mouth would disappear but it does seem like a small price to pay. Have they done CTE studies on soccer players?
Jeff Astle is the most notorious case, dying months before Mike Webster. His was death labelled “industrial disease” (i.e. related to his work). I read that US women college players are estimated to head the ball 1800 times per year (sorry, no source to cite).
US Soccer made a pre-emptive move to avoid lawsuits (not so much for the benefit of players) by banning heading for kids under 13. All major hockey playing nations have also banned body checking for under 13s, again primarily to avoid legal liability.
Even where head injuries aren’t commonplace, they are preventable, but toxic masculinity makes players unwilling to wear safety equipment. Just yesterday, Tampa Bay pitcher Robbie Ray was hit in the head by a 100mph comebacker that a batting helmet would have prevented.