While We’re Waiting serves as the early morning gathering of WFNY-esque information for your viewing pleasure. Have something you think we should see? Send it to our tips email at tips@waitingfornextyear.com.
Very good piece on the future of football and concussions. Highly recommend reading the whole piece- “In recent years, it’s become clear that the severity of a concussion is only indirectly related to the physical force of the impact. Sometimes, players walk away from savage hits. And sometimes they are felled by incidental contact. While data compiled from the Head Impact Telemetry System, or HITS, captures the extreme physical forces at work during a football game — it’s not uncommon for a player to sustain hits equivalent to the impact of a 25 mph car crash — there is no clear threshold for injury. The mind remains a black box; nobody really understands why it breaks.
But we do know what happens once it’s broken. In the milliseconds after a concussion, there is a sudden release of neurotransmitters as billions of brain cells turn themselves on at the exact same time. This frenzy of activity leads to a surge of electricity, an unleashing of the charged ions contained within neurons. It’s as if the brain is pouring out its power.” [Lehrer/Grantland]
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Great read on IU’s Cody Zeller- “The day he signed with Indiana, Cody Zeller was labeled no less than the program’s savior, the player who would yank the Hoosiers out of the black hole that swallowed the program up and return IU to the promised land of NCAA wins and storied success. That’s an albatross sitting on top of an elephant’s worth of pressure for any 18-year-old to shoulder, let alone a kid raised in Indiana and schooled in the tradition of IU basketball.
So how does Cody handle it? He pranks his mom. He zings his brother. And he occasionally holds a guy’s parrot while posing for a picture, then tweets, “I’m making so many new friends at IU! Mom will be so proud because she was quite worried that I’d be a loner.” Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand, Mark Twain once wrote.” [O'Neil/ESPN] (hat tip @WFNYScott)
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More on the Varejao trade scene- “The logistics of that move are unclear at the moment. The Clippers would be a logical fit, but the Cavs just drafted their starting point guard for the next five-to-twelve years, and Eric Bledsoe, despite possessing a shooting guard’s skill set, is listed at 6’1″. The Celtics, Heat, and Lakers don’t have any assets, and neither do the Knicks or Spurs unless one possesses an irrational love of Landry Fields or Kawhi Leonard. The Grizzlies have O.J. Mayo, Josh Selby, and Rudy Gay. Portland has Wesley Matthews and Nic Batum, though I don’t know why they would trade either of them for frontcourt depth. Chicago already has a Varejao of their own in Joakim Noah, and Dallas is hoarding cap space to go after Dwight Howard or Deron Williams this summer. Regardless, as the hours tick down toward the trade deadline, I think a contender will find a way to secure Varejao. Some team that realizes either that its window is right now (the Celtics or Lakers) or that it’s one good player away from a title shot (the Clips or the Grizz) will finagle an overly-complicated three or four-teamer that involves draft picks, expiring contracts, and access to Warren Buffet’s secret archipelago off the coast of French Guiana. Or it will happen in the offseason, when teams have more cap flexibility and newly-drafted rookies.” [McGowan/Cavs the Blog]
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Interesting. Which umpires have the smallest and biggest strike zones. With math and everything. [Weinstock/The Hardball Times]
