For reasons that are obvious yet difficult to describe, the NFL's policy of allowing its players to gradually destroy themselves would probably be less offensive were African Americans involved in ways other than just running, jumping and hitting. They aren't. As of today, there are still no black majority owners in the NFL, and only one who comes close (Reggie Fowler owns 40 percent of the Minnesota Vikings). Out of 32, only six of the league's head coaches are African American... Football fans are primarily white and relatively wealthy, earning $55,000 annually on average. 40 percent are over the age of 50. "Football has demographics that baseball would kill for," said one CNN analyst, who, were he more direct, would have said, "White guys with hefty disposable incomes watch football."Jefferson also mentions the poster which will be in every NFL locker room this season, which includes in unmistakable language: "Concussions and conditions resulting from repeated brain injury can change your life and your family's life forever." Let's see if it changes behavior in 2010, or whether coaches and announcers will continue to herald a player for quick recovery from having his "bell rung."
... Although the NFL recently started a fund that will give ex-players with dementia $50,000 a year for medical treatment, it's also installed a byzantine bureaucracy between the patients and that money.... Without the dementia bonus, the average NFL pension payments, which kick in at age 55, are hardly enough to cover a person's living expenses and specialty medical care. As of 2006, a 10-year veteran who retired in 1998 would receive about $51,000 annually.
... For a stark contrast, consider Major League Baseball, a sport that's about 60 percent white and eight percent black. Bolstered by a strong player's union, the MLB has a pension plan that dwarfs that of the NFL, despite the fact that most baseball players rarely hit the ball, let alone each other. Any player who gives just 43 days of service to the MLB is guaranteed $34,000 in pension benefits—just one day as a member of an active roster qualifies him for comprehensive medical coverage. Beyond that, a major-leaguer with at least 10 years under his belt is set to receive $100,000 per year at age 62.
Our previous coverage: here and here and here.
I was about to type a long rant, but I will write something shorter. Football is stupid.
ReplyDeleteAs we discussed via email, the deployment of statistics in the article is suspect.
ReplyDeleteThat was me. I agree with your basic point, but the racial stuff is just weird here. You edited out the part where the story decried the fact that only 13% of the NFL's viewership is African-American, without mentioning that only 13.5% of the US population is African-American. And I'm not sure about the income numbers either -- $55K a year does not seem particularly rich, especially if it's a mean instead of a median. As for the other two factors in the baseball-football comparison, I find it difficult to believe that NFL audiences are whiter or older than baseball audiences, but that's missing the point -- what does that have to do with anything?
ReplyDeleteWell, I discussed them with Isaac. :)
ReplyDeleteI don't take seriously Cord's concerns about the NFL's audience. I think the league has made some, but not sufficient progress on coaching diversity, and that it isn't responsible for an absence of black billionaires interested in buying teams.
But I'm most concerned about the concussion and aftercare issues. That the NFL has a worse pension program than the NHL is mind-blowing.
Well, he's trying to hype the whole concept of black men rendering themselves into dementia for the purpose of entertaining white people in an industry where blacks have no long-term future, and it's a provocative concept. I edited out those details because I agree with your skepticism/dismissal as to what he uses.
ReplyDeleteI'm not quite clear on why white ownership/coaching/viewership (the first two of which are more problematic than the last) renders white players' concussions acceptable.
ReplyDeleteYeah, look, I don't think it's that the NFL doesn't care about its black athletes. I think it's that the NFL doesn't care about its athletes, period. And the athletes aren't out there trying to entertain white men in an industry where black men have no long-term future. The athletes, both white and black, are out there trying to acquire a lot of money and a lot of fame (and its trappings, meaning, basically, women) in what they know is a a short amount of time (though perhaps they don't really appreciate how short). Very few of these athletes, black or white, could make more money, even over a much longer period of time, doing anything else -- for the simple reason that most people can't make more money over a long period of time than these athletes make in a short period of time. If a player plays three years in the NFL, he will make a minimum of $1,080,000. How long would it take most of these guys, white or black, to make the same amount of money in a different job, even without applying a discount rate to account for the front-loading of the NFL salary? 10 years? 15? 20? Most of the 3000 players in the NFL each year, whatever their race, lack a long-term future in the NFL. The lack of the long-term future is not the problem -- the problem is the injury risk.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the NFL's concussion and sub-concussion brain injury problems are terrible, but I don't think they have anything to do with the racial makeup of the employees or owners of the teams.
Incidentally, one thing I forgot to say is that "anonymous CNN analyst taken out of context and then paraphrased perhaps unfairly" does not exactly impart credibility. There is not a uniformity of quality among people who work at CNN -- some are credible; some are not; some are Larry King. "CNN analyst" is so general as to equate to "industry follower" or "one reporter for a publication of which you have heard" or "this guy I know." The fact that Jefferson couldn't even get this shadowy, well-selected person to say what he wanted him to say, and then had to say what he (Jefferson) thought that the shadowy person would have said but did not actually say if he (the shadowy person) were being more direct (i.e., if he were saying what Jefferson actually wanted him to say) makes it even worse.
Michael Wilbon on concussion risk, subtitled "I won't let my son play organized football."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/08/AR2010080802429.html
A poster! That's sure to change behavior. On the one side, trying to become one of the very few people who actually get the full measure of A DECADE OF BIG CHECKS AND FAME AMONGST MIDDLE-AGED WHITE MEN (as opposed to just getting the brain injury), but on the other side, a poster!
ReplyDeleteEdwin Tufte plus Andrew Kuo plus Christoph Niemann plus Deep Thought couldn't put together a poster that could even budge the scale being weighed down on the other end by those expectations and demands and alternatives.
This is one of those areas -- our Josh Hamilton Photos "debate" from exactly a year ago -- in which Isaac and I don't really disagree too much, but disagree anyway.
ReplyDelete1. It sucks for whiite, Latino, Pacific Islander and other players to have concussions too.
2. I knew the article was provocative when I posted it. That's why I posted it.
3. As lifelong Eagles season ticket holder, I'm confronted with the racial dynamics of NFL fandom all the time. And it's troubling just how much black players are seen as interchangeable animals while whites get all the "gritty, hard-working" love.
Adam is pro-concussion for Asians.
ReplyDeleteSimilar contact sports such as Rugby and Aussie Rules Football don't have a problem with frequent concussions.
ReplyDeleteSimple solution, take off the helmets.
Safety through insecurity, it may seem counterintuitive, but often humans engage in riskier behavior the greater their perception of safety is. Helmets give a false signal of protection (they offer some protection, but unless they're radically redesigned, they can't protect against concussion), and are used as an offensive weapon in many cases. You won't see a person with their head uncovered spearing another player in the chest.
As far as the racial angle for the story, that's just crap on a stick. Not everything is about race, and most things attributed to race, are really a matter of class, education, and culture, which while may correlate to 'race', are also easily separated, but lazy jerks who are looking for a provocative hook love to use race as a shorthand for those other factors that matter far more in people's lives and perceptions of each other.
I said AND OTHERS. I don't want Dat Nguyen or any portion of Hines Ward or Johnnie Morton to suffer either.
ReplyDeleteThe very first Google result for "rugby concussion rule" is an article entitled: Concussions in Rugby: The Hidden Epidemic (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC155428/). The sample size, researchers admitted, was too small, but they had this to say: "Based on our findings, we conclude that previous research probably seriously underestimated the incidence of concussion overall and seems to have frequently missed between 50 and 90 percent of those injuries."
ReplyDeleteAt an anecdotal level, a guy I knew in college was not allowed to play football (for which he was recruited) because of recurring concussions. So he went out for the rugby team, and promptly got more concussions.
Here's a good rule of thumb: If you play in a sport where you can look at people and see that they've had their noses broken more than once, the sport has a concussion problem. Not every broken nose results in a concussion, but the way you get one is very similar to the way you get another, and it stands to reason that a lot of one of those types of injury will lead to a lot of the other.
Football players have gotten rid of cups (but not crotch-punches) and knee, thigh, and hip pads (but not deep knee, thigh, and hip bruises). They take steroids (bad for you) and painkillers (to let them play even though hurt) so that they can run into each other as fast as they can. They try to play again as soon as possible after concussions. Elite football players are trained to disregard completely the risk of danger. Taking away their helmets appears, at least to me, to present an exceedingly low probability of avoiding injury and an exceedingly high probability of increasing the most catastrophic injuries. Just because something works with traffic circles doesn't mean it will work in professional sports.
And as for Australian Rules Football, here's a pamphlet that has all the makings of great poster material:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.afl.com.au/portals/0/afl_docs/development/coaching/afl_concussion_management_booklet.pdf
Just add a cat hanging off a tree branch ("Hang In There!") and you're golden.
I get the "wild abandon" theory, but there's a ton of money being spent on developing new football helmets (not to mention those Gazoo-like baseball batting helmets, which were slimmed down for this year's all-star game) that try to reduce the occurrence of concussions. Riddell just won a patent infringement case against Schutt concerning concussion reduction technology. Paul Lukas's Uniwatch blog has been following one prototype in particular -- see here (scroll past the Lance Armstrong bit to the text next to the Concussion graphic) and more here (after the lengthy discussion of UFL uniforms). Wired did a writeup on the Bulwark as well, here.
ReplyDeleteYeah, remember that guy from Buffalo -- maybe it was Steve Tasker; can't remember -- who wore the helment that looked like it was an inflatable helmet? Foam on the inside and the outside, and kind of giant. It looked stupid, but he was like, "I like being able to balance my checkbook."
ReplyDeleteIt was Mark Kelso. Tasker seemed like a guy who probably had a lot of concussions.
ReplyDeleteI have had three concussions in my life one riding a horse (complete loss of consciousness), and two playing touch rugby (the first also included a broken nose, the second was just a severe bump on the head).
ReplyDeleteI only tell this story because I am a 34 year old woman who plays amateur sports and is not rewarded for getting back on to the field and continuing on playing. This article is saying the right things but coming at it from the wrong direction. Namely, the NFL should have comprehensive, reasonable and accessible pension plan which is configured in a way that recognises the performance pressures that players are put under to play at risk.
What about wrestling? (actual sport wrestling, not WWE) Lot of broken noses there, but it never occurred to me that there was a concussion issue.
ReplyDelete