The athlete’s dance with the devil

December 30, 2015

The latest performance-enhancing drug scandal involves a star so big, so golden that to utter his name in the same breath as performance enhancement is to breathe sacrilege.

And yet here we are: The NFL and Major League Baseball are investigating an Al Jazeera report that implicates several of their players in the illegal use of human growth hormone, according to secretly taped – and couldn’t-be-more-appropriately-named-if-he-were-christened-by-Central Casting – pharmacy student Charlie Sly, who promptly recanted his claims.

There is really only one name anyone is interested in here – Peyton Manning, as in the superstar quarterback of the Denver Broncos, formerly of the Indianapolis Colts; Sports Illustrated’s 2013 Sportsman of the Year; scion of the Mannings of New Orleans, “football royalty,” as the press is want to note; and pitchman par excellence. ...

Concussed

December 21, 2015

“Concussion” – starring Will Smith as Dr. Bennet Omalu, the forensic pathologist who blew the whistle on NFL head injuries and their relationship to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a form of dementia – opens on Christmas Day and is already stirring the pot.

Some say it’s too easy on the NFL.

Others that the movie plays fast and loose with the events and exaggerates the relationship between football and poor health.

“Are we actually watching players kill themselves before our eyes?” Daniel Engber writes for Slate. ...

On nature and human nature: American Pharoah and San Bernardino

December 3, 2015

Is it right to talk about Sports Illustrated’s controversial nomination of American Pharoah for Sportsman of the Year at a time when there are so many lost souls and unanswered questions amid the mass shooting of a facility for the disabled in San Bernardino, Calif.?

I think it’s relevant. We are divided from nature, of which we are apart, in part because we are divided in our own human nature.

There are two types of people who misunderstand nature. The first doesn’t care about it and ranges from those who toss the ice cream pop wrapper out the car window onto the highway to those who abuse animals. ...

Brain freeze: The NFL and concussions

November 25, 2015

Every time I despair of the psychological truth and realism of “The Penalty for Holding” – the second novel in my series “The Games Men Play” – I’m given a sign from the universe.

There’s a crucial moment in the story in which Quinn Novak, star quarterback of the New York Templars, chooses to play on despite sustaining a sub-concussion. I agonized over this plot point because of the new protocols in place that pull players who’ve sustained such injuries immediately from the game. It didn’t seem authentic not to reflect this in my book.

But truth really is stranger than fiction. In the St. Louis Rams’ 16-13 loss to the Baltimore Ravens Sunday, Rams’ QB Case Keenum sustained a concussion and continued to play. ...

Caitlyn Jenner, feminism and the beauty trap

June 10, 2015

Provocative piece in The New York Time’s Sunday Review by journalist, filmmaker and former women’s studies professor Elinor Burkett, who, while sympathetic to transgendered women like Caitlyn Jenner, doesn’t want them to co-opt her experience of womanhood.

“…As much as I recognize and endorse the right of men to throw off the mantle of maleness, they cannot stake their claim to dignity as transgender people by trampling on mine as a woman,” Burkett writes in “What Makes A Woman?”

For her, the answer to that question takes a lot more than the nail polish Jenner referred to in her interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC’s “20/20.”

The essay earned Burkett the sobriquet “crotchety” and brought me back to the days of my youth when feminists were often considered humorless battle-axes who despised Marilyn Monroe. ...

Nature teams with nurture in ‘The Professor in the Cage’

April 26, 2015

“The Professor in the Cage,” Jonathan Gottschall’s provocative new book, locates itself at the gridlocked intersection of biology and culture.

The subtitle “Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch” suggests another question, Why are women the nicer sex? and its corollary, Are they really?

The answers are fascinating and complex, though perhaps not as complex as his book makes them out to be.

Part of “The Professor in the Cage” is about how Gottschall, an out-of-shape, disenchanted academic, got involved in the brutal world of mixed martial arts (MMA). His personal story is less interesting, however, than his personal observations. He hits the mark, for instance, when he says that MMA is like gay porn – all those rippling, sweaty physiques grappling with one another in clutches that are at once amusing and arousing. It’s the reason I love wrestling. And I suspect – as the nude wrestling scene in “Women in Love” suggests – it gives men a license to touch one another in a way that conforms to traditional heterosexual society, as do all sports.

But why must male athletic competition be so violent – or at least carry the threat of violence? And why do we secretly – or not so secretly – find it thrilling? ...

What price a football player’s mind?

April 22, 2015

A judge has cleared the way for a more-than-$1 billion settlement between the NFL and some 6,000 players who could develop neurological problems from the concussive aspects of the game over the next 65 years.

While some individuals in their 30s and 40s with Parkinson’s or Lou Gehrig’s disease could get between $1 million and $5 million, the average settlement would be $190,000. As anyone who has cared for someone with dementia will tell you, $190,000 is a drop in the bucket. Not everyone, however, is sympathetic.

“This is the player’s decision to play this game and they are already making an absurd amount of money, even sitting on the bench,” Nick Keener of Lock Haven, Pa. posted on ESPN. “If they ran out of money after they are done playing, then that's their fault.”

“What about the guys who played back in the ’60s and ’70s that made just enough to get by with the offseason grocery store job?” Thomas Sanabia of Queens wondered on the same thread. “NFL players only recently became super rich. They weren't making anywhere near this amount for most of the people suing.”

“The NFL got off so good here it’s not even funny,” Zulfan Bakri added, “considering that their current TV DEAL is worth $3 BILLION per year. This is a drop in the bucket compared with what they should have paid for long-term pain treatment and care. It should be 10 x that because in 20-30 years when the current players are going thru the horrors now the costs will be thru the roof.”

I’m afraid I’m with Bakri on this. It’s true that occupations have hazards, and violent occupations have violent hazards. But I have to assume that years ago few understood the relationship between sports and neurological problems (although the movies have sometimes portrayed a punch-drunk boxer for pathos or comic relief). These men signed on for busted knees not busted brains. The very willingness of the NFL to agree to the settlement suggests the league thinks it dodged a bullet. It admits no responsibility and is probably hoping the whole issue will be swept under the rug. ...