Does Football have a Future?: Football players are anywhere from five to nineteen times more likely than a member of the general population to suffer from a dementia-like illness. This is likely a result of
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (
picture), neurodegeneration caused by receiving multiple concussions or even subconcussions that are not detectable around time of impact. CTE has been linked to
other mood and behavior changes, including suicidal depression (a great review of the medical literature generally), and has been found in football players as young as
21. And, of course, there is the sometimes debilitating physical disability (either acutely or later in life) from playing a hard-contact sport. The NFL has a long history of adjusting safety standards in bits and pieces (e.g.,
legalization of the forward pass) to meet public concern over potential injury and disability from playing the sport, though still to some degree publicly
denies a connection between football and brain damage. New Yorker writer
Ben McGrath talks to football players (past and present), their families (often left behind by untimely death or dementia-twilight), franchise heads, and doctors to explore this history, the crushing legacy of sports injuries, and the question of whether it is possible to reform the rules to minimize the risk of concussion and thus the risk of CTE (if any such risk is acceptable). Would it still be football if such changes were to tone down the violence? (
Yes, No [from iconoclast Buzz Bissinger]) And, uncomfortably: is the sport of football unethical for its players, even if entered into on their own volition? (
previously in the New Yorker; previously on MetaFilter
1, 2, 3)
[more inside]
posted by Keter
on Feb 13, 2012 -
107 comments
Green Bay Packers Yearbooks from the (Vince) Lombardi Era (1960-1967). The yearbooks
here are from the team's return to glory under Lombardi. Arriving in 1959, Lombardi led the Packers to their first winning season in eleven years in his first year as coach. From that auspicious start, Lombardi's Packers had nine winning seasons and claimed five NFL championships in the 1960s. Each yearbook contains roughly 80 pages of text and photos.
posted by cashman
on Jan 29, 2011 -
8 comments
The absurd amount of over-laughing that occurs during NFL Pregame Shows has long been a cliche. The Wall Street Journal
recently calculated that one show spent 2 minutes and 22 seconds, or 11.6% of its length, laughing. But
this recent video may be the defining moment of the trend, raising over-laughing to an art form.
posted by JoeGoblin
on Jan 14, 2011 -
68 comments
Malcolm Gladwell did an article about this in the New Yorker, but
this GQ article shows the opposition the researchers who discovered CTE faced from the NFL.
posted by reenum
on Dec 19, 2009 -
61 comments
(American) Football
trick play video roundup: the
Statue of Liberty,
Fumblerooski (
2), the
Puntarooski, the
Hook and Lateral (
2), the
Flea Flicker (
2), the
End Around (
2), the
Double Pass, the
Fake Punt (
2) (
3), the
Fake Field Goal (
2) (
3),
Fake Field Goal/Fake Punt, the
Swinging Gate, and the
Bouquet Toss.
[more inside]
posted by starman
on Dec 5, 2009 -
57 comments
Max McGee was not expected to play in Superbowl I. He ended up catching 7 catches for 138 yard and two touchdowns including the first ever in Superbowl history.
After retiring he became one of the most
popular broadcasters the team ever had.
He also was one of the founders of
Chi-chi's restaurant.
He
died from a fall on Saturday. He was 75.
posted by Bonzai
on Oct 21, 2007 -
14 comments
The Final Cut. "I never thought the end would come like this -- with me holding the end of my life's passion in one hand and a foot-long Italian sub on wheat in the other." The side of the NFL you rarely see: former Redskins lineman Ross Tucker tells his story.
posted by bijou
on Sep 9, 2007 -
84 comments
One of the stars of the new NFL season will make its debut this Sunday. It's not a player - it's Arizona Cardinal's stadium. It's got a retractable roof, and a
movable grass field that can roll out of the facility where it will reside most of the year and get its nourishment, maintenance and grooming. First of its kind in North America. NPR
audio piece.
posted by jaimev
on Sep 8, 2006 -
37 comments
The Steelers were 7-5, then won their final four regular-season games to secure the AFC's last playoff spot. They went to Cincinnati and won a wild-card game. They won at Indianapolis, which had the league's best record. And then they handed Denver its first home loss in the AFC championship game.
And now they're the first 6th seed playoff team ever to
win the Super Bowl. History made.
posted by allkindsoftime
on Feb 5, 2006 -
138 comments
Supersized in the NFL Analyzing data from the 2003-2004 season, researchers say "more than a quarter of NFL players had a body mass index that qualified them as
class 2 obesity" -- equivalent to a 6-foot man weighing between 260 and 300 pounds.
Even those players weren't the biggest ones:
the study counted more than 60 players -- 3 percent -- with body mass indexes placing them into
class 3 obesity, with individual weights approaching 400 pounds.
"I don't know what's going on in the minds of coaches", said lead researcher Dr.
Joyce Harp, an assistant professor of nutrition and medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Players' growing girth "is a major concern," said
Dr. Arthur Roberts, a former NFL quarterback and retired
heart surgeon (.pdf file) whose
Living Heart Foundation works with the players' union to evaluate heart-related health risks faced by current and retired players. More inside.
posted by matteo
on Mar 1, 2005 -
42 comments
The battle for the NFL After
EA Games bombshell announcement that it had signed a five-year exclusive licensing deal with the
NFL, many sports games fans are wondering what will happen to their favorite franchises that don't feature
John Madden. You can bet
ESPN is hoppin' mad (and probably Microsoft as well), as are fans of its
NFL 2K series (of which I'm a proud member). Do deals like this hurt the fans or the sport ... or even the gaming industry itself? I certainly think so. Sports is about competition! Oh, no, wait it's about money. Never mind.
posted by WolfDaddy
on Dec 17, 2004 -
34 comments
Going Poston! - This is a
Flash parody about the NFL's most notorious player agents, the Postons, Carl and Kevin.
This article from a month ago, pretty much sums up why they're becoming so infamous.
posted by Witty
on May 13, 2004 -
7 comments
On sunday, Rush Limbaugh commented that Donovan McNabb, quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles, was overrated and was only seen favourably by the media because they want to see a black quarterback do well.
McNabb responded, and earlier tonight
Limbaugh resigned from his post on ESPN's pre-game show. N.D. Kalu, one of the Eagle's defensive ends, offered this choice quote: "He speaks well, he's well-read, but he's an idiot."
posted by The God Complex
on Oct 2, 2003 -
100 comments
Run Ricky Run. Ricky Williams, running-back for the Miami Dolphins, gets an A for effort for designing and maintaining his own website. He keeps a journal where he sounds off on everything from battling fame and the perks that come with it, to meeting his idol (Jim Brown). He even talks about money problems, just on a much larger scale then you or I would have.
posted by Starchile
on Nov 26, 2002 -
15 comments
It's sad we lost, but the Mayor got what she had coming This woman is an atrocity to the beautiful city of Dallas - she is grossly uncouth, lacks class, and is not fit for the position of mayor in one of the greatest cities in America. She made a bet on the Cowboys when they started the season with a game against the Houston Texans - and lost. The agreement was that if the 'boys won the game, the Mayor of Houston would wear a 'boys cap and jersey at a city hall meeting. Likewise and reciprocal from the herself. Yeah.
posted by JessicaRose
on Sep 18, 2002 -
25 comments
The Football Prospectus is up and running. The good folks who work on the Baseball Prospectus have turned their attention to NFL. This is their inaugural effort. Their contrarian thinking and in-depth statistical analysis has (slowly) started to creep its way into MLB coverage. Can their unique take and historical perspective change football's conventional wisdom as well?
posted by herc
on Aug 16, 2002 -
9 comments
Ryan Leaf retires from NFL at 26 This article calls him one of the biggest busts in NFL history. When signed in 1998, he said "I'm looking forward to a 15-year career, a couple of trips to the Super Bowl and a parade through downtown San Diego." Instead he got interceptions, fights related and unrelated to his job (for which he blamed everyone but himself), and a lot of disappointed fans. What happened?
posted by GaelFC
on Jul 26, 2002 -
23 comments
Seahawks Stadium was open to the public for the first time this past weekend, with activities on the field for kids, concession stands open with video menus advertising $3.25 hot dogs, and tours of the private box seats and the media room. It's a large stadium with fantastic views of downtown Seattle from some seats and views overlooking Elliot Bay from the western railings, the best hundreds of millions of tax-payer dollars can buy.
On Saturday, the first day of the public open house,
a man jumped to his death from a northwest ramp of the stadium.
posted by dan_of_brainlog
on Jul 22, 2002 -
15 comments
Take the Wonderlic test. The Wonderlic is a 50-question
IQ test administered by the National Football League to all prospective draft picks. Teams use the test results to varying degree, in part to determine the ability of athletes to learn systems and grow as a player. Interestingly, offensive tackles and centers have the highest average NFL Wonderlic scores. (The test here is a fast 15-question sample; you'll need a piece of paper to jot down your answers.)
posted by werty
on Mar 1, 2002 -
31 comments
