Heel Turn: Joe Thomas supports Tom Brady, compares Roger Goodell to WWE’s Vince McMahon
August 23, 2015Weekend Recap: Indians win “epic” series against Yankees
August 24, 2015It’s Monday, you guys. Here’s to it being a happy one. If you’re a fan of the Carolina Panthers, Pittsburgh Steelers, or Green Bay Packers, however, you’ve likely had better ones.
In the event you spent the weekend in a windowless bomb shelter, Packers All-Pro wide receiver Jordy Nelson will miss the rest of the NFL season after a non-contact injury sent him to the turf like a pile of bricks. In the same contest, Steelers All-Pro center Maurkice Pouncey left on a cart after sustaining an injury to his left ankle. By this time next week, Nelson will have undergone reconstructive ACL surgery and Pouncey will have a plate inserted into his leg. Both of these injuries come just days after Kelvin Benjamin, Carolina’s 6-foot-5-inch behemoth of a wide receiver, tore his ACL during a practice, merely making a cut.
As frustrating as all of the pulled hamstrings and bike riding has been in Berea over the past two weeks, things could be so, so much worse. In his latest “Hey Tony!”, ESPN Cleveland’s Tony Grossi stated that most people in the NFL believe that the collectively bargained restrictions—fewer practices, no two-a-days—is to blame for all of the poor conditioning and seemingly shocked bodies. Now, it’s tough to pin a purported lack of conditioning on torn ligaments and broken bones, but this certainly doesn’t make it any more digestible for fans.
If anything, this last week shows how quickly things can evaporate at the player level, and how quickly things have to change course at the team level. The crazy thing: We’re only half-way through preseason, and the true dress rehearsals are still yet to come.
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Speaking of the NFL, in a spectacular piece of sports journalism (linked here and below, of course), a story about retired San Francisco linebacker Chris Borland uncovered a comment from Hall of Fame wide receiver Cris Carter wherein the long time member of Minnesota Vikings told rookies, in 2014, that they need to find a “fall guy” who will take the hit in the event players find themselves in unfortunate circumstances. The video could be found on the league’s website—until yesterday, when it was pulled in the wake of this story—and was accompanied by plenty of laughter.
There are two sides to the debate: Yes, players are the franchise to their own circle; if the family and friends of these players wish to have the lifestyle that comes with the franchise, they have to do what it takes to keep the franchise running; and no, players shouldn’t be getting into problems—make good decisions and no “fall guy” is needed. Of course, there’s a slew of nuance and gray area in the middle. Was Carter referencing one person, or simply a crew of individuals in charge of keeping the player out of the headlines? What about guys like Jimmy Haslam, who seemingly has a handful of fall guys who took the brunt of what happened with Pilot Flying J? And then what about the league? They were apparently OK with the entire discussion until this story came about? And then what about Borland, who seems to be on a scorched Earth trail on all things NFL.
The entire story is worth your time, but this one line item—where Borland says he was “appalled”—will drive a good chunk of the discussion.
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Sunday night was the 2015 edition of WWE’s SummerSlam. While we won’t go into spolers (you could probably just Google them), I do want to share the latest Richard Deitsch media podcast with David Shoemaker, Grantland’s “The Masked Man,” who covers professional wrestling at such an admirable level of quality and depth and passion. Even if you’re not a wrestling fan, this interview is worth a listen—find out what it’s like to not only “cover” something that isn’t real, but one that has no offseason.
https://soundcloud.com/si-media-podcast-with-richard-deitsch/david-shoemaker
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You can preview the impending NFL season with a batch of hot takes or you can do so with some #ActualSportswriting. Here’s this week’s edition:
“How Darrelle Revis became the NFL’s savviest negotiator” by Mina Kimes (ESPN The Magazine): “As we walk through New York’s SoHo neighborhood, passing an outdoor basketball court, none of the kids shooting hoops notices the All-Pro cornerback, who recently re-signed with the Jets. He’s anonymous in gray sweats. (It should be noted that they’re unusually soft and luxurious sweats, the kind of sweats that probably cost more than most people’s dress pants.) Out of uniform, Revis, 30, looks surprisingly average, like a genial uncle who happens to work out a lot.”1
“Adrian Peterson’s suspended reality” by Eli Saslow (ESPN The Magazine): “He spends the bulk of his time with friends who believe he has done nothing wrong. He asks his relatives not to talk about the allegations of child abuse, not to use that word — ‘abuse’ — in his presence, and they willingly play their part. While NFL insiders spent their offseason debating Peterson’s actions and any hope for redemption, he acted as if not much had changed. Inside his manufactured community, he remains the victim of a colossal misunderstanding — an icon with little to prove and nothing to redeem.”2
“Why former 49er Chris Borland is the most dangerous man in football” by Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada (ESPN Outside the Lines): “Borland has consistently described his retirement as a pre-emptive strike to (hopefully) preserve his mental health. But buried deeper in his message are ideas perhaps even more threatening to the NFL and our embattled national sport. It’s not just that Borland won’t play football anymore. He’s reluctant to even watch it, he now says, so disturbed is he by its inherent violence, the extreme measures that are required to stay on the field at the highest levels and the physical destruction he has witnessed to people he loves and admires — especially to their brains.”3
“F— Winning” by Albert Burneko (Adequate Man): “The big grown-up world is coming up behind my children—behind James Harrison’s kids and yours, too, if you have them. To sort them: those who will prosper, or falter; those whom the barbarism we have enshrined into our way of life will reward, and those it will devour; those who will strive with their whole selves to make their way in that grown-up world and then unknowingly choose to attend the same prayer meeting as Dylann Roof and be snatched out of it in violence and fear and confusion, whether they got trophies for participating in sports or not.”4
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And finally, John Oliver takes on LGBT discrimination and adds some positive thoughts for Ohio’s own John Kasich and some not-so-positive ones for everyone else.
Be good, you guys.
- Upon receiving the latest issue of ESPN The Magazine, this was the first story I sought out. Revis is a fascinating character, and Kimes paints the picture perfectly. [↩]
- One of my favorite writers covering one of the league’s most captivating stories. The details in this takeout are head-scratching at times. [↩]
- I didn’t know there were two Fainarus until this story, but we’re all better for it. That they followed Borland around for five months and churned out several thousand words of reporting on a controversial topic is worthy of an award. Journalism! [↩]
- Another week, another #ASW that concludes with a column. On the heels of last week’s discussion about James Harrison and participation trophies comes this fantastic essay. [↩]
14 Comments
“If you’re a fan of the … Pittsburgh Steelers …, however, …”
Then hopefully your weekends continue to be bad this autumn.
I don’t even play a physiologist on TV, but it’s possible that some of these football injuries are the result of over-training rather than under-training.
Great article on Borland. Amazingly thoughtful guy, and brave enough not to get get trapped in a cognitive dissonance of knowing he might be destroying his brain but enjoying the wealth and fame and buzz of playing in the NFL. Or maybe that’s not fair to players with fewer options, those who aren’t as bright or prepared to do something else to support themselves.
I heard the audio from Cris Carter. What he actually said were words to the effect that “if you are NOT going to act right, and you have a posse, then make sure the posse knows one of them is your fall guy.” I guess to him that’s being “real” as he sees the NFL’s culture, but more than a little ironic from a guy who warns about the substance abuse that plagued his career. I mean, isn’t accepting personal responsibility for your actions a centerpiece of recovery?
Cris Carter loves the sound of his own voice.
“Now, it’s tough to pin a purported lack of conditioning on torn ligaments and broken bones …”
Shouldn’t that be the other way around?
it’s a wide receiver thing.
Good point. They don’t call you the Nerdo di tutti Nerdi for nothing.
john oliver 2016
If a Kenyan can become president, why not a Brit?
First rule of having a fall guy is you don’t talk about having a fall guy.
What’s that?
Adding ridiculous amounts of mass and muscle onto a frame that isn’t designed to support it is a bad thing? Sure, man. Next you’ll try to convince me that contorting your arm thousands of times a week to throw a baseball at maximum velocity with crazy spin might not be the safest thing.
Lee Majors also sung the theme, “The Unknown Stuntman”. It should be a law that TV stars must sing the theme song for their show.
I was pretty young, but my recollection is that it was a pretty good show, too, at least for your run-of-the-mill ’80s action shows.