Before you sit down with your wings and beer…

15 thoughts on “Before you sit down with your wings and beer…”

1. No comments?Report

   1. What would you have us do, Nob? Boycott watching NFL — and, as a practical matter, college football too and even the CFL with its bizarrely huge field — because of the information in the article?

      Should we watch the games but feel guilty afterwards? Bash our heads against some load-bearing beams in our respective hours in sympathy with the players?Report

      1. All I’m asking for is that people read it and know what happens to player’s bodies for their entertainment.

         What they do after knowing is between their conscience and themselves.Report

         1. That’s a fair reply, Nob, but it seems like a call for reflection. I can see how such a thing wouldn’t result in a lot of comments, even if it did get a lot of people thinking about it.Report

         2. I sympathise with your request. I’ve had some issues with silence on some of my own posts. I’ve concluded everyone does read what’s written here. I know I do.

            But as Burt observes: what valid response can possibly be made to this continuing tragedy?

            Protest is futile, nothing seems to get through.
            What’s to become of our world, who knows what to do?
            Driven to tears

            Rest easy, Nob. Your work is taken seriously around here. Some things, some issues, just defy any meaningful response. Lots of people here love football. We see the injury cart come out onto the field. We watch these kids — kids! — young men in their prime, hauled off the field and into the locker room and lots of them don’t come back out onto the field, ever. Doesn’t stop us from watching it, though.

            Housman:

            Now you will not swell the rout
            Of lads that wore their honours out,
            Runners whom renown outran
            And the name died before the man.

            So set, before its echoes fade,
            The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
            And hold to the low lintel up
            The still-defended challenge-cup.

            And round that early-laurelled head
            Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
            And find unwithered on its curls
            The garland briefer than a girl’s.Report

         3. All I’m asking for is that people read it and know what happens to player’s bodies for their entertainment.

            I read it. Right when you first posted it yesterday. The whole grisly thing.

            Football’s a brutal game.Report

      2. It’s a good thing no one has ever represented playing sports as “healthy” or Nob would be pointing out a real problem here in the way that playing football can seriously impact people’s health for the worse. 😉

         (OK, I realize that was truly, totally and unnecessarily snarky. Please don’t kill me. I really don’t need, want or expect a response, though if you want to say “Shut up, Glyph”, I will completely understand.)Report

2. We’re all starting to learn what’s going on in American football. Are similar things going on in the variants of rugby around the globe?Report

3. Lyndon Johnson ended his first congressional campaign with an appendix that was about to burst, but he wouldn’t stop going door-to-door asking for votes until the polls closed, because he needed to win that badly. He came very close to dying. After I read about that, I couldn’t enjoy C-SPAN anymore.Report

   1. I was on the fence about watching the inauguration today after what it did to Ol’ Tippecanoe.Report

4. Ow. I had to stop reading halfway through.Report

   1. Me, too.Report

5. Thanks. Now I can reinterpret the fact that I find that I found football intolerably boring as proof of my moral superiority.Report

   1. hehReport

   2. It’s what I do with Ayn Rand.Report

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