The Perspective of Luck, or Lack Thereof
Andrew Luck with Jacoby Brissett, in 2018. Brissett will replace the retiring Luck
Many characters have been spread across the interwebs discussing tribalism in politics the last few years. As bad as that can be, and it is a hot mess right now, tribalism can be even worse in sports.
I love sports. I really do. Especially football. But like other things, I am at a stage in life where moderation calls for it to be kept in its proper place. That proper places often becomes “at arms length” not because of the sports, or teams, or events in the games, but because of the eco-system built around sports: the coverage, the sports media, the sports-industrial complex, and the fans.
Sports and politics have that in common. People absolutely lose their minds over it, and their basic life skills and humanity tend to go with it, all under the guise and excuse of “well, they are just passionate.”
Some folks are having a rough go at that life skills and basic humanity part with the news of Andrew Luck abruptly retiring from the NFL over the weekend.
Luck has been contemplating retirement for the past two weeks, as the pain on his ankle wasn’t subsiding. He felt “quite exhausted, quite tired” after the constant pain from the ankle injury, only two years after recurring shoulder pain cost him his 2017 season. Luck battled rib and shoulder issues for much of 2015 and 2016 before the shoulder injury. Luck returned in 2018 from the shoulder injury to throw for a career-high 4,593 yards with 39 touchdowns and 15 interceptions for a 98.7 passer rating.
“It’s been four years of this injury-pain rehab cycle, I can’t live the life I want to live moving forward … I feel quite exhausted and quite tired,” Luck said. “I know I am unable to pour my heart and soul into this position … and it’s sad, but I also have a lot of clarity in this.
“I’ve been stuck in this process. I haven’t been able to live the life I want to live. Taken the joy out of this game and after 2016 when I played in pain and was unable to regularly practice, I made a vow to myself that I would never go down that path again. I find myself in a similar situation and the only way for me is to remove myself from football and this cycle I’ve been in.
I’ve come to the proverbial fork in the road and I made the vow to myself that if I ever entered this situation again, I would choose the innocence.
For the uninitiated, up until Saturday night Andrew Luck was the quarterback for the National Football League’s Indianapolis Colts. Now let us pause to consider first and foremost the inherent duality of NFL football in America. It is the most popular sport in the country, and it is also the most popular TV show in the country. Those two things are inseparable, and any discussion of the NFL needs that basis of reality or things get sideways quickly. Quarterbacks are not just football players; they are the stars of a tv show, faces of billion-dollar franchises, multi-million dollar brands unto themselves, and 16 times a year — if healthy — they also happen to play a football game.
That perspective on who and what big-name players in the NFL are is crucial. If you are just a fan wearing a jersey and cheering on gameday it is sometimes easy to forget that the team that you so heavily invest in with time, money, and emotion is a business that doesn’t really care about you at all. For the League and owners it is a $46 Billion business, that would place it by some estimates somewhere between 200 and 35th on the Fortune 500 were it not considered a “trade union”. For the TV networks and supporting sports commentary business, it is the golden goose for ratings, clicks, and year-round content.
A business based on human beings doing violence to each other, with a large dose of emotion and tribalism that comes with sports, all worth billions of dollars to multiple industries. Easy to see where people lose perspective.
And then there are the Doug Gottliebs of the world.
Retiring cause rehabbing is “too hard” is the most millennial thing ever #AndrewLuck
— Doug Gottlieb (@GottliebShow) August 25, 2019
Stuff like that is why sports sometimes has to stay at arms length in my life. Just like I’ve very much choked down on what and from where I intake my political and current event news. In the past few years, I rarely spend any time or effort on “talk radio” or personality driven political shows, as it just skews the view of the world too much into whatever branding that particular talking head is profiting from. Maybe not totally unrelated, I’ve scaled my consumption of sports media way, way back also. There is the practical part, as you can only hear so many variations of the same thing so many times, but also the emotional part of not getting wrapped up in the minutiae of the days events that will be forgotten tomorrow.
Perspective is important when something as asinine as that Gottlieb take pops up. Doug Gottlieb hosts a radio show, so part of me can understand that he needs to stoke attention, and I get that hate view ratings and love view ratings both pay the same. But that perspective thing comes in handy at times like this. The trite, lazy, and frankly stupid trope of “millennials” as a synonym for lazy, or weak, or whatever is bad enough, but coming from Doug Gottlieb of all people is really something. If you were to play that game, it would go like this: Doug Gottlieb, Gen-Xer who was kicked out of Notre Dame for stolen credit card usage, became an eternal joke in basketball circles for entering a game with his shorts on backwards and proceeding to take them off and fix it on court, was ran off CBS’s Final Four coverage for what was, depending on your perspective, a really poor joke or worse.
But the great thing about perspective is you don’t have to do more than roll your eyes at that dumb tweet. Doug Gottlieb, despite the well-earned scorn and Twitter ratio he is earning from this comment, will be fine. He has a successful career despite his mistakes, appears to have a lovely family, and will be just fine come tomorrow.
Which is how folks should view Andrew Luck. He will be fine, having already earned generational-type wealth in his career. Hopefully his health and body recover to give him the physical peace he has been denied for years. The Stanford-educated Luck will have no shortage of opportunities in the future off the field. He recently married his long-time girlfriend and in June the couple announced they are expecting their first child. Somehow in the saga and shock of Luck’s decision making few have touched on the fact that one of the largest changes a person can go through, becoming a parent, is on a countdown clock in addition to all the football and health concerns he was dealing with. All the information we have, including Luck’s own words, is this was a decision for him, that was best for him, and had to be made by him.
All the rest of the noise is irrelevant. Some fans will scream about “loyalty” or “letting the team down” but they can all collectively have a seat and shut up. Most if not all of them, if suffering any one of the multiple injuries Luck has been dealing with, would not only not report for work but would be seeking and entitled to disability compensation. The guy who lost most of a season when he had to go to doctor after urinating blood the morning after a game, to discover he had among other injuries a lacerated kidney, doesn’t owe the fans a single thing. If you are so invested in a team that doesn’t care about you past the dollars you spend on it to berate a human being for making the same decision anyone else would make, that is a you problem. More than that, it isn’t just a sports problem, it is a perception problem, and a soul problem, when your chosen gladiator dares not to entertain you in the manner you see fit and it enrages you.
The Colts will still play football this season. Plenty of folks will discuss what maybe, possibly, could have been, but the game will go on. Andrew Luck will find his next chapter in life. Doug Gottlieb will eventually say something else controversial and ratio-worthy. Rage fan will find the next thing to rage about because once you dig the hole of being rage fan all you have is rage at a the bottom of a hole. The NFL and TV networks will continue to print money. Sports media and fans will continue to feed the machine with views, clicks, money spent, and hot takes given at various decibels.
Everything in its proper place. As it should be. If we could just keep some perspective on it all.
“Sports and politics have that in common. People absolutely lose their minds over it, and their basic life skills and humanity tend to go with it, all under the guise and excuse of “well, they are just passionate.””
Yes. This.
This is a great post. The booing at the game was disgraceful.Report
Well. Luck has made his millions, and hopefully he was well-advised enough that he can keep them and doesn’t end up as a door greeter in Vegas, and if he physically can’t keep going then there’s no use expecting him to.
But. “They don’t owe YOU anything”, sure, but we don’t owe them anything either, and Luck’s millions of dollars only happened because people came out to watch him throw the ball. Like these aren’t pick-up games and some dudes happened to stop by and watch, this is something where we agree to pay nine dollars for a Bud Light and they agree to do a good job throwing the ball, and when players act like that doesn’t matter it’s worth commenting.
It wouldn’t even have been that hard, have him dress and sit on the sidelines (it’s a preseason game so that won’t even look bad), put him on the field for the last few series, then make the announcement in the press conference afterwards. Make it seem like you give a shit about the appearance of the thing, the ceremony, rather than showing up on the sideline in sweats and sneaking off.
I mean, when you get to the pro level, it’s as much Pro Wrestling as it is the sport itself. Particularly when pretty soon the defense is gonna be drones and all football will be touch football.Report
“But. “They don’t owe YOU anything”, sure, but we don’t owe them anything either, and Luck’s millions of dollars only happened because people came out to watch him throw the ball”
Yes. There were past transactions. You paid money, he played. He no longer wants to pay, and luckily he’s not demanding more money.
So why should he sit on the sidelines or play performing monkey? Did you prepay? Was there a contract for future performance? Is there some reason he’s not allowed to, effectively, say “I’m not renewing this contract” and walk away — or why people would feel somehow cheated about it?
Again, the rhetoric here is that he owes something to someone. What does he owe? How does he owe it? I mean I get that people might prefer he do something different, but what’s the justification for getting salty over it?Report
“There were past transactions. You paid money, he played.”
Well. “I ain’t owe you SHIT dogg, you already done WATCHED me play” is certainly justifiable from a utilitarian perspective, but it does make the people who bought season tickets every year wonder if maybe next year they wouldn’t rather buy a boat and read about the games in the paper on Monday.
“Did you prepay?”
People who bought season tickets sure did, along with all those advertisers who signed contracts to pay millions of dollars to have their names prominently displayed in the stadium of a team whose star quarterback just quit.Report
I think it’s interesting how the ire here is directed, not at the party who formed the contract with the ticketholders (the stadium or team management) but at the player, with whom no one but management formed a contract with.
If I go to see a play and the lead actor is sick, I’m sure there is something written on the back of the ticket to the effect that management reserves the right to put in an understudy in lieu of the star I came to see. I never made any agreement with the star, but the playhouse.
But more than this- there is an undercurrent of anger that the player is treating this like a mercenary transaction, instead of some moral duty to work, and this I see as a recurring pattern in how we as a society talk about labor and work.
In one breath, we assert that work is simply a transaction, buying and selling of labor.
Yet when the laborer balks at the terms and refuses to deliver the labor, somehow that is seen as distasteful, immoral somehow.
We never take that attitude with the other side of the bargain. When a stadium refuses to give us a ticket unless we pay more, mostly people shrug and accept it. Yet why do people become so offended when laborers actually treat their labor as a commodity?Report
“If I go to see a play and the lead actor is sick, I’m sure there is something written on the back of the ticket to the effect that management reserves the right to put in an understudy in lieu of the star I came to see.”
you need to extend that metaphor a bit, something more like the lead actor quitting the production halfway through the final dress rehearsal after the city is covered with posters prominently featuring their name and face
“there is an undercurrent of anger that the player is treating this like a mercenary transaction, instead of some moral duty to work”
the undercurrent of anger is from the people who saw a great deal of money (both private ticket sales and tax receipts) go to this team as an organization and to Andrew Luck specifically, and they accepted it because they looked forward to seeing a team play football reasonably well, and now he’s walking out on that without (so far as we’ve heard) negotiating a graceful exit or even addressing that so much of the money happened because of him.Report
Right, and so why is the anger directed at the employee and not at the management?
I mean, you never had any sort of agreement with Luck, but you did with the management, and it seems like they are reneging on their promise.
So why do they escape the anger?
They could have certainly managed the team differently, taken more care to prevent his injuries, or been more explicit with the fans about the fickle unpredictable nature of the transaction.Report
“why do they escape the anger?”
It’s…not the management that walked off the field, or told Luck to do it.
I mean, if you want to say “they should be angry with more people than just Andrew Luck” sure, I’ll agree to that, but the thrust of the post (and commentors) is that the anger is totally unjustified, like it’s some kind of “fan entitlement” to expect the guy making millions of dollars because people want to watch him throw a ball to make a show of respect when he decides he’s done with ball-throwing.Report
OK, but this is what I am referring to when we talk about labor, like it should have some other dimension to it besides just a mercenary transaction.
Which I’m fine with, by the way!
I think the sooner we acknowledge that labor can never be just a commodity, the better.Report
“It’s…not the management that walked off the field, or told Luck to do it.”
No, they just negotiated a contract with Luck that allowed it. The anger is totally unjustified. He’s a man, doing a job, who quit his job.
You don’t throw a fit when a guy quits Home Depot. You don’t throw a fit if, say, your favorite actor or singer decides to hang up the hat.
You spell out how unjustified it is in your defense about how it isn’t — you say “to expect the guy making millions of dollars because people want to watch him throw a ball to make a show of respect when he decides he’s done with ball-throwing.”
Why? You paid, he performed. Why do you expect he owes you something beyond that? You didn’t buy his life. You bought tickets to see the team he was on play, but you seem to think that he’s been paid so much that he shouldn’t be ALLOWED to stop being the dancing monkey until the fans decide.
You paid team to watch team. Team paid him, one of many, to play for them. He played and got his salary. He then quit. You can still watch the team.
And yet you seem angry that he was allowed to quit. At the utter gall of the man, to decide he was done playing. Like it was HIS choice or something.Report
“You don’t throw a fit when a guy quits Home Depot.”
lol
“Andrew Luck is no more meaningful to the Colts than some random dude is to Home Depot” is a quite a take
“Why do you expect he owes you something beyond that?”
if Andrew Luck were as inconsequential and useless as you describe then why did they pay him so much money
“you seem angry that he was allowed to quit”
i get that you’re stanning for your sports daddy and that’s fine, I’m not here to kinkshame, but at no point in any of my posts have I suggested that he shouldn’t have been “allowed” to quitReport
“if Andrew Luck were as inconsequential and useless as you describe then why did they pay him so much money”
Do you get into a snit when the CEO of a fortune 500 company quits his job?
” but at no point in any of my posts have I suggested that he shouldn’t have been “allowed” to quit”
Oh, you’ve been quite open that he should be allowed to quit. You just think it’s in poor taste or insulting or something because he “owes” something to people.
But you can’t specify what, except some nebulous “We paid good money” crap. You paid good money to his team, which paid him good money to play. He’s no longer playing, so he’s no longer getting paid, which means your whinging about how much he’s made is absolutely immaterial.
You paid, he played. He quit, you’re not being billed. He owes the fans nothing, and hey — they don’t owe him anything.
So why are you whining?Report
I mean to literally be the worst version of myself the colts training staff has made luck worse over the last 4 years so anybody expecting them to suddenly get better and put good product on the field is a moronReport
Right, and so why is the anger directed at the employee and not at the management?
If this morning’s CBS story is accurate, one of two announcements had to be made over the weekend. Either the team announcing they had placed him on injured reserve (out until at least week 6 of the season), or Luck saying he had retired. The story says management offered Luck the choice.
The IR thing would no doubt have been better received by the fans than the retirement was. OTOH, it would have meant the team would have to count Luck against the salary cap and use one of the scarce IR slots. If everyone thought Luck was out for the season, the team made him a pretty generous offer.Report
It wouldn’t even have been that hard, have him dress and sit on the sidelines (it’s a preseason game so that won’t even look bad), put him on the field for the last few series, then make the announcement in the press conference afterwards.
If what I have read is accurate, his leg was already at the point where they wouldn’t allow him on the practice field where QBs wear red jerseys and aren’t hit at all. If true, putting him on the field for live action, even in the preseason, would have been out of the question. CBS is reporting this morning that the team offered him the opportunity of going on injured reserve — wouldn’t be allowed to play until week 8 — rather than retiring, to see if perhaps the leg would get better, and Luck made the decision.Report
I can certainly understand the guy being too hurt to play, because those dudes get whaled on, but it suggests a certain…lack of concern to wait until after everyone’s bought their season tickets to announce it, and to show up in sweats instead of acting like you actually wanted to play.Report
What did Luck actually know before the fans bought season tickets (or the team set up its draft board) that he should have made a decision about? If he knew then that he couldn’t play, he would have said so. If he is anything like the competitor his entire football life suggests he is, he kept trying to get well and play. It became too much. That it didn’t become apparent that his efforts would be futile until an inconvenient time is not his fault.Report
>to wait until after everyone’s bought their season tickets
Season tickets for what? To see Luck? Did they buy “Luck Season tickets”.
I thought they bought season tickets to see the team play. I didn’t realize that with Luck retiring, the whole team was being shuttered.Report
A bit of Google research says that before the 2017 season that Luck sat out following shoulder surgery (except for two weeks of practice in October), management kept dropping hints that he would be ready to play and sent him out on publicity appearances. Reportedly, there was at least one e-mail from Luck to a friend that said something like, “I’m nowhere near ready to go. I’m just out here to sell tickets.” There were at least threats of a lawsuit by season ticket purchasers.
So, yeah, some number of them were only interested in buying Andrew Luck season tickets.Report
>So, yeah, some number of them were only interested in buying Andrew Luck season tickets.
Then they are morons whose whining I find even more pathetic, something I didn’t think was possible.
Although I would have found the lawsuit’s inevitable outcome hilarious, as what they bought were Colts season tickets, and not Luck season tickets.Report
There is probably a point though at which they may veer into false advertising. If they KNOW he isn’t playing but they say, “COME WATCH ANDREW LUCK AND THE COLTS!” they’ll selling a false bill of goods.Report
I suspect a judge would laugh them out of court.
They’re Colts season tickets, not “Luck” season tickets. You can’t claim a false bill of goods unless the Colts aren’t the team playing. Sure, they might be parading around their top ranking player — but he’s not the team, the team isn’t him, and the tickets are clearly “Colts versus X, Date Y”, and the very nature of football means star talents get injured often enough that there most certainly is no expectation that any given future game will see a specific team lineup, nor could any reasonable adult believe that was the case.
I mean what is their actual damage? Devaluation of the value of the tickets because Luck quit? You could sue any time someone gets hurt enough to be out the rest of the season under that logic.Report
And I don’t know about Indy’s season tickets, but you have to be on a waiting list for YEARS to get season tickets in Denver. People just don’t decide to buy season tickets on a whim. Or maybe they do in Indy.Report
He can’t go on the field for the last few series, because he’s injured. That’s kind of the point.Report
I’m largely in agreement with this, but I think there would have been somewhat less pushback if he had come to this realization a few months ago, rather than just a couple weeks before the regular season starts.Report
Yeah, I think that’s what’s getting everybody on this one. “It’s just sports, it’s just a luxury good” sure, but aren’t luxury goods what make life worth living? Don’t we have an expectation that the goods we purchase will be well-made, competently presented, and enjoyable?Report
Don’t we have an expectation that the goods we purchase will be well-made, competently presented, and enjoyable?
We do. What basis we have for that expectation is another question.Report
No more basis than in any type of entertainment, I suppose. And, as I keep saying, if you want to make the argument that a performer owes nothing to the audience then that’s a viewpoint with some validity but it’s also not really what’s going on in pro sports, although the notion that the 49ers are being rotten on purpose as an art project is rather droll.Report
Even if the “performer” owes something to the audience, significant physical injury/harm would negate that debt. Also the performer is the NFL and the Colts. Luck was an employee.
In terms of enjoying sports, part of the deal with watching a game is your team may sucks eggs and the game is boring/terrible/un fun to watch. That’s all part of the game.Report
Well that’s why the NFL should rely on draftees instead of players who can resign their commissions.Report
I am far from a sports guy but my very rough view is that Football advertises and markets itself as the sport of “real America” (TM). This has been true since the late 1980s at least but possibly older. Basically, football sees itself as more rural, more macho, more pickup truck, more conservative, etc. This is after all the sport that tried to make Rush Limbaugh a commentator in the early aughts, that shows you who NFL thinks of as its primary audience. Can you imagine basketball or baseball doing this? I cannot.
This is only going to continue as people opt-out of football because of the physical toll. The sport will then attract the biggest machos of the machos as fans. Most of whom are not very healthy themselves.Report
“This is after all the sport that tried to make Rush Limbaugh a commentator in the early aughts”
and they tried to make Dennis Miller a commentator as well, and he was on more than Limbaugh was
and it’s not as though both sides don’t accept football as a metaphor for Real America, which you yourself do right hereReport
I dunno man… pro football isn’t Friday Night Lights… these days its a pretty sophisticated blend of Urbano-Murica… Robots and Hip-Hop-Pop Country… at times it panders one way or the other, but if you step back and look at it as a whole, its kinda impressive, really.Report
I actually think it’s one of the very few institutions out there that, warts and all (including the big dumb one with the red hair), tries and in many ways succeeds, at appealing accross the culture war divide.Report
There are a lot of reasons that jobs end. Sometimes you get fired. Sometimes you get laid off. Sometimes you quit. Sometimes the company goes out of business.
One of the things that *I* grew up with was the “two weeks’ notice” thing. It is appropriate to give your employer two weeks’ notice.
A tweet went viral a couple weeks ago about a guy who just up and quit Subway via text message “I ain’t comin’ in tomorrow” or similar and the manager texted back about unprofessionalism or something like that and the guy said something like “You’re lucky you got a text.”
There were several different kinds of responses to this that covered the spectrum. Some people thought that millennial entitlement manifesting as premature quitting from a minimum wage service job was beyond the pale. Other people gigglesnorted and said some variant of “fight the power”.
Luck quit because he looked at his life and said “nah, I’d rather not” and quit. Was the timing perfect?
Those who love Colts Football probably have a point when they say something like “HE SHOULD HAVE QUIT TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE DRAFT!” because, had he done that, Luck quitting would have had less of an impact on Colts Football for this season, maybe the next one. As it is, Luck quitting has more of an impact on Colts Football for this season, maybe the next one.
And for those who care deeply about Colts Football, it makes sense to say “ARGH! THIS INCONVENIENCES ME!”
But, at the end of the day, they’re lucky they got a text.Report
as with all breaking news stories, there is more coming out now. Some reports are saying he told the Colts as far back as April, and there have been multiple reports now that Jacoby Brissett, who is replacing him, was told by Luck last week that he was done. At some point the truth with come out. Part of the story, that I didn’t want to get into since it has it’s own life and is fluid, is that the news broke during a preseason game while Luck is standing on the sideline. So people are seeing the tweets and looking at their TV’s and thinking “oh he just walked up and quit”. It is a bad optic, like you said, but just that: an optic. The people that needed to know apparently knew.Report
I was waiting for this part. Luck was THE center of attention for the owners/managers/coaches/etc. in this area, and there is no F-ing way they weren’t up in the middle of the decision making process at every step in the road. ‘Cause, while Luck may make X-millions per year, the team makes X+Y millions from him. That they would be trying to work every angle on this is a given. What fans (and jackasses of the hot-take) saw was only one final aspect of what was going on. They didn’t see the doctors reports, the pleading for one last season, the discussions with his wife, the pain he was in after each practice, etc.
I am not a Colts fan and I don’t consume any sports media, much for reasons like this. I like to watch a football game (or listen to a baseball game) so I can just enjoy the game, not the machinations behind it. I got enough of that in the working world.Report
If he told them in April, to hell with them. Dude can do whatever the hell he wants. More power to him.Report
“At some point the truth with come out. “
Probably not. There will be slightly different stories from “sources familiar with the events”, and at least two versions from actual identifiable people. Fan theories will include the possibility that Spike Lee was behind it (because he wants the team to end up in San Diego so that LA won’t lose one of theirs, of course).Report
I think they’ve known it was coming. I heard this morning they won’t exerxcise their clawbacks which implies to me that they think he may heal up, do a lap around the globe, and play again. They clearly don’t want to ruin the relationship.Report
Those who love Colts Football probably have a point when they say something like “HE SHOULD HAVE QUIT TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE DRAFT!”
The only ones who have a point are the ones who, at the beginning of April, were saying, “It’s Andrew Luck. His injuries always get worse and take longer to heal than anyone thinks. If he won’t retire, trade him now, while you can get value for him, and then try to find a new QB who can save next season on short notice.”Report
Yeah, they were watching him get creamed season after season. I just read article that suggested his story will be one of the biggest talent wastes in pro-football. I don’t know if that’s accurate or not, but it sure seems like it is.Report
I was going to say that every team should have backups for their starting players. I remembered that Brissett had started for the Colts for a full season. I had forgotten that they went 4-12 that season. So I can understand fan frustration. The problem is that we’ve had a few genetic freaks recently (Favre, Peyton, Brady), and people expect 20 years out of their quarterback now.
I’d like to see the NFL and the players association come to some decent agreements to protect players. The thing they won’t do is make shorter seasons, which is a shame. The league wants to move to 18 games, and they might get it. Their dream is to make Presidents’ Day into Superbowl weekend. Would the players insist on a 16 game cap per player? I don’t think the fans would like that.Report
It is remarkable how many other athletes are simultaneously praising Luck while also unmercifully dunking on the idiot sports talkers who insist that their judgments of Luck’s retirement are worth taking seriously.Report
It’s almost like the people who know the most about what he is going through understand it better than the people who make livings/garner attention from shouting from the periphery…strange, that.Report
The Shawn Kemp Top 50 Dunks video that is available on YouTube is probably the greatest series of dunks I’ve ever seen, but the replies jackasses like Gottlieb are enduring is in a very respectable second place.Report
> Some fans will scream about “loyalty” or “letting the team down” but they can all collectively have a seat and shut up.
Stay classyReport
Years ago I heard a guy being interviewed, I think on Fresh Air but I’m not certain, about why he didn’t watch TV anymore. He said one weekend day his wife was having a garage sale and she wanted his help. He told her he couldn’t because he had to watch the Celtics game. His wife asked him if he thought Larry Bird cared whether he watched the game or not. He thought about it for a second, and wheeled the TV out to the garage to be added to the sale.
I’ve been a high school football official for nearly 30 years. I’ve watched the number of players shrink as the awareness grows about what football does to a body. My son played football in grade school (he finished in 2010). I wouldn’t let him today. We have ex-players in the news for committing suicide because they can feel the onset of CTE. I’ve been predicting the demise of high school football for a few years now, and I’m pretty sure I’ll see it in my lifetime. Pro football may never disappear, but I can see it being marginalized, much as professional boxing has become.
Good for Andrew Luck for getting out a rich man.Report
“Pro football may never disappear, but I can see it being marginalized, much as professional boxing has become.”
I’ve been saying this almost word for word for about a decade now, and most people think I’m nuts. Glad to see people are finally coming around on this point.Report
> He told her he couldn’t because he had to watch the Celtics game. His wife asked him if he thought Larry Bird cared whether he watched the game or not. He thought about it for a second, and wheeled the TV out to the garage to be added to the sale.
I find this very suspicious, mostly because it is from A Bronx Tale (except Mickey Mantle and the Yankees) and because I’m sure there were shows his wife liked watching. It’s very self-congratulatory and makes my eyes roll.
> Pro football may never disappear, but I can see it being marginalized, much as professional boxing has become.
Yes, I can see football only being played by children who feel they have literally no other choice to make it out of poverty. However, as long as colleges hand out 85 scholarships to play football, it will never fall to the level of boxing, where the sport was outlawed in colleges in 1960.Report
I don’t recall that scene, but it’s been awhile. I should rewatch that movie anyway. It’s really good.
Football is a very expensive sport to play. The equipment is expensive (I have a friend who sells $950 helmets.), insurance is expensive, and staffing it is expensive. And the insurance premiums aren’t going down. If the high school pipeline dries up, I can see football existing only at the power 5 conference level.
It’s already happening.
https://rolltide.com/sports/2016/6/10/sports-m-footbl-archive-m-footbl-archive-1970-html.aspx?id=208
https://rolltide.com/sports/2016/6/10/sports-m-footbl-archive-m-footbl-archive-2015-html.aspx?id=162Report
> I don’t recall that scene, but it’s been awhile.
https://youtu.be/Md2vBiNm7W0?t=69Report
As I said up above, the only way football can continue is if they stop people being crippled by playing at the pro level, and the only way to do that is to limit the impact forces sustained, and the only way to do *that* is to put an upper limit on the size and speed of players, and since that’s not actually possible to do with humans the only solution will be to eliminate the humans. First the down-field defense and D-line ends will switch to drones and use touch-football rules (if the drone bumps into you then you’re down), then the rest of D-line will probably go drones as well once they figure out rules for dealing with running backs–since the drones can’t grab but can get in the way, maybe a ten-second clock starts once the back gets the ball and he has to figure a way past them or the play’s blown dead. And if your D-line is drones then your O-line might as well be drones too, meaning that the only actual humans will be the quarterback, the running back, and the receivers…Report
> the only way to do *that* is to put an upper limit on the size and speed of players
There are a couple of ways to do that. First, you could get rid of unlimited substitution, which would cause larger players to be disfavored for smaller players who have more stamina.
Also, there is something called Sprint Football, in which there is a weight limit for all players of 178 pounds.Report
Which works but then you’ll get things like in wrestling, with people starving and dehydrating themselves to fit the weight limit, and that’ll cause its own health problems (we’ll move from concussion syndrome to long-term malnutrition)
Changing around substitution might work but that just means the second-rankers will be big strong fast guys as well, they’ll just get to play more now (you’ll have “first-half lines” and “second-half lines”)Report
This is largely being treated as a binary thing because that’s what we do with everything now – but it really isn’t binary, and lots of things can be simultaneously true.
Does Luck have a right to make his own decisions about his life? Of course.
Does he owe “the public” spending more years working in career he no longer wants to work in and thinks might be damaging him in life-lasting ways? Not really.
Was the timing of his decision ideal for everyone else? Not remotely.
Do his business partners, vendors, and employers have a case to be a little cheesed, whether or not the choose to appear that way publicly? Probably, yeah. We all would.
Is there something wrong with Colts fans who have been waiting for half a year for “next year” to gnash their teeth and howl at the moon now that “next year” is going away before it even began, and now they have to adjust to “*next* next year?” Hell yeah. If this were the Lakers and LeBron I would be screaming at my cat.
Should Luck have the expectation that the media complex that surrounds the NFL let him off easy and not really make this into a story? No. Part of why he is (probably) set up for life financially is because this was the ecosystem he decided to profit off of with his skills, and when you do that you have to be willing to take the good with the bad.Report
Every single Fantasy Football league out there has one guy who drafted Luck. He’s screaming bloody murder right now and demanding a new draft. And everybody else in his league is pointing and laughing at him.
And this story will evaporates the second the league has something new to scream about. If this is still a story by halftime of the first Monday Night Football game, I’ll be surprised.Report
That’s what they get for drafting before cuts are made.Report
> Every single Fantasy Football league out there has one guy who drafted Luck.
Including OJ Simpson. Really https://twitter.com/TheRealOJ32/status/1165441329226276866
> He’s screaming bloody murder right now
Is 25 years “too soon”?Report
Someone should pull up that piece I wrote about Josh Beckett once. I think it was my first or second piece?Report
Viola.Report
Kazzy ‘s piece was about Frank Viola?Report
Third base.Report
Incidentally, so far the Colts are #2 in their division at 5-4, which is only slightly below average for second-place teams so far. (meanwhile there are absolutely rotten teams — the Bengals haven’t even won a game this year!) So I guess the people suggesting that Luck leaving wasn’t all that big a deal for the Colts were right after all. I still think they handled the exit badly, but it does seem like you can make an argument that it was still worth going to the games even without him.Report