It’s no secret that I am not a football fan — I never was much of one, and League of Denial put the nail in that coffin — and so I’d forgotten until now that the Indianapolis Colts‘ Lucas Oil Stadium has a retractable roof. Or at least had one until yesterday, when half of it decided to get stuck:
https://twitter.com/CoachClicheBell/status/935124713654947840
They finally got it closed a few minutes ago (11:40 am, according to the Indianapolis Star), but you just know this is going to lead to the Colts demanding a new stadium, since it’s been nine whole years since the team built this one with $715 million in public money. I’m joking, I think, but given that this is Indianapolis, maybe not.
Wait a minute… You let a propaganda film be the “nail in the coffin”?
Ah, it wouldn’t be Monday morning without Ben Miller showing up to shit over facts by calling them “propaganda.”
There has never been a propaganda film that wasn’t filled with “facts”, Neil.
You’ve been warned more than once about trolling, Ben.
I’m not trolling. Every propaganda film has tons of facts. What makes it propaganda is conveying the facts in a one-sided, unfair narrative. ‘League of Denial’ qualifies (obviously, in my view).
Repeatedly flinging epithets without providing the slightest information is trolling, by definition, since all it can result in is a flamewar, not an educated discussion.
Since there seems to be some confusion on this matter, I’ll be adjusting the commenting rules to clarify it.
Trolling is insincere. I am sincere. The purpose of my comment wasn’t to start a “flamewar”.
Would it be better to just say “League of Denial is propaganda”? I thought that was too passive aggressive, and passive aggressive behavior is, in fact, something that naturally increases conflict.
It would be better if you gave reasons for why you hold your opinions, so we can actually have a discussion. Just flinging your opinions against the wall isn’t likely to accomplish that — the only thing anyone can say in response is “Nuh-uh, is not!” — no matter what the Great Pumpkin may think of your motivations.
You got it, Neil.
For LoD, the entire focus was on attempting to link head trauma with CTE. There was nothing about linking CTE with aging, drug use (recreational or PED), lack of sleep, diet, or anything else. There was also no attempt to discuss the effect of concussions while young vs. concussions while old (~27 y/o in athlete years). It was factual, but it was a one-sided, unfair narrative on the link between football and long-term mental problems.
I don’t normally side with Ben, but I do find the current narrative regarding concussions very odd.
In the 80s in rural northern Minnesota, my crazy grandfather who played D1 hockey back when there were no helmets and noses got broke like once a month (literally), would caution us kids as soon as checking started at age 8,9,10 that we always had to keep our heads up. “You get hit too hard too many times, you get too many concussions, and you end up punch-drunk like a boxer”. This is back in the supposed “dark ages” regarding concussions. Except I don’t remember those existing.
Everyone knew concussions were horrible for you, and repeated ones worse. In fact I had a friend who fell off a snowbank onto his head whose doctors barred him from playing contact sports ever gain at like age 12. That was in 1991? Now people did get concussions of course (one friend even did end up pretty screwed up with big problems in his 20s), and played through them if possible…
but at no point growing up in the 80s and 90s playing football and hockey were we ever told they were “no big deal”, or something to be taken lightly.
it is just not a culture I am familiar with. Just to be clear I am all for reducing head trauma in these sports and think say “Jacked Up” was terrible for the culture of these sports. But I just don’t think that just because we now have better imaging and the identification of a physical mechanism it is now some giant news flash that concussions are terrible for you. Twitter acts like in 2007 people just like “concussions are grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat!”, when that is just not what I experienced at all at any level of play.
I think the big revelation from McKee et al was that you don’t need sizable concussions to have significant brain trauma — a whole lot of micro-injuries to the brain of the kind that virtually every play experiences are enough to cause lasting damage.
I do wonder whether anyone ever bothered to check whether old-time football players tended to have mental/emotional problems soon after their retirement, or if it’s gotten worse since players have gotten bigger and hit harder. But either way, it’s not a sport I can personally stomach watching anymore.
I am assuming/hoping that eventually they just move to the rules anyone who has played with friends are familiar with. Where there is a little being physical, and still tackling, but no “hitting”. Seems like such a simple rule change. No one has trouble adhering to it in men’s leagues. It cuts down on “hits” by several orders of magnitude.
That’s what I think they’re going to do in the future. Actual tackles only, no more throwing yourself into another player to make a stop.
I’m with you, Boz. I’ve been hoping for a “no blowing people up” rule for years.
As flag football gains in popularity among youth, I wonder if there’ll eventually be more support for this. Probably not, because watching enormous people making crunching noises against each other seems to be the televised sport’s main appeal right now.
Old-timey football was played without helmets and pads that prevented some of the harder hits from occurring since, well they’d hurt, a lot. As the pads got better, the collision speeds increased and the sudden stops increased as well.
Rugby players show a lower instance of CTE overall than gridiron football players a number of reasons, the lack of pads is probably one of the bigger ones.
Though the lack of pads leads to other problems like spinal injuries in rugby the gridiron pads help prevent.
That’s not how I remember it at all. It seems like I’m probably older than you, but I remember Joe Montana taking some serious hits, and they’d take him back to the sideline and joke, “How many fingers do you see, Joe?” “Eh, close enough!”. And he’d be back out playing on the next series.
This was very common.
I’ve personally talked with Dan Bunz, and his wife made him retire. He was coming home with concussions. The team and the league didn’t take it seriously at all.
Looks like it’s time for Jim Irsay to take a little vacation in St. Louis… as long as he can avoid a DUI that should get the ball rolling… or heck, maybe a DUI would generate some publicity for the non-threat trip.
Hey… back in the day nobody ever complained about Gladiators getting hurt during the games let alone the damage of repeated concussive blows to the head…. I say take off the helmets and let the head butting begin!
Life expectancy in gladiator days was what, 40?
Average was about 10 bouts with the average age of death at age between 18-25, trending towards the lower end for most fighters.
Which was average overall, but not good since if you could make it to about 10 years old, you’re life expectancy was about 50 years. Childhood survival rates in the late Republic and Empire were charitably described as somewhere between not good to god awful which brought down the average quite a bit.
Hey, as long as it keeps the drones out.
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Drone-pilot-arrested-for-dropping-leaflets-over-12385138.php
Back on the topic of football roofs, why does a stadium with artificial turf and no baseball tenant have a retractable roof?
If you are not paying for it why not? I live in Minnesota and would never find it cost effective to own a pool. But if the city was going to build me one and pay me to maintain it. Well build away!
So God can watch his favorite team? Wait, wrong stadium.
Clearly so fans can enjoy the gorgeous Indianapolis weather that takes place in September to December.
Something about booking outdoor things in the summer, but I have no idea on if they get enough business to justify the additional cost for the roof. Also if it hasn’t been open in a while I’m assuming that these events aren’t as popular as they were sold as to the municipal funders.
You can get some hellacious thunderstorms in the late afternoon in Indiana during the summer, watching the heat rise up from the black earth. At least that’s what it seemed to me when I lived there. I suppose if you are going to have concerts there a retractable roof isn’t a bad idea if it is cost effective.
Read this morning’s comment sections and felt the need to weigh in (which I don’t do often). I find Ben Miller’s comments to certainly breach the spirit if not the letter of the law of this site. Again there are many unknowns about Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) and the fictionalized filmed with Will Smith as horrible. But as our understanding of this is just starting to grow in the 21st century, it does pose scientific and structural questions for us as a society. That does not prevent me from watching Sunday Football, just like the NHL bilking Arizona taxpayers out of several hundred millions dollars doesn’t prevent me from turning in to Hockey Night in Canada on Saturdays.
Not sure if it was a serious comment or not comparing gladiators to contemporary NFL players but well it is true that no one questioned the morality of having people die during Coliseum games many Roman authors of the period did question other aspects of Roman society (Polybius, Cicero, Dio etc.). Between this fact and the fact that our societal morality should deviate quite largely from an autocratic empire from a millennium and half ago means we should try to investigate more and mitigate the effects of playing in the NFL.
It’s a very good point, Jake. There are many ‘entertainment’ options our society enjoys/permits which have significant risks and consequences for the participants – not to mention non-entertainment vocations that carry significant additional risks for workers.
Boxing, motor racing, downhill skiing, air shows, circus acts, hockey, wrestling, mining, nuclear and coal fired power plants, repossession agents etc. All have significant risks associated for participants/workers. Some carry risks for the general public as well.
All these professions have impacts on both the length of workers careers and their quality of life during and following same. Yet we focus solely on concussions related to football. Apart from the staggering amount of money involved and the famous names, why would we do this?
I agree that professional sports should do everything they reasonably can to prevent unnecessary injuries, but in what way are professional football workers any more deserving of protection from OH&S risks than miners or nuclear technicians?
One of the things you implicitly understand when you take a job in a mine or nuclear plant is that there are risks involved there that do not occur elsewhere. Those should be minimized, but everyone involved understands there is inherent risk in working 1,000 ft below ground, for example.
Similarly, stunt pilots and racing drivers know that at least some portion of the remuneration they receive is related to the dangers they face. Racing is a lot safer today than it was 30 years ago, but there are still violent accidents that take or badly affect lives (and spectators at motor racing events are still required to agree to waivers as part of buying a ticket… though these do not provide total indemnity for the organizers of course).
Many sports put participants (paid or otherwise) at risk. Why is football the current poster child for “ruining lives”?
Psychologists, dentists and EMR/First responders still have amongst the highest suicide rates in the professional world we are told. Is anyone talking about banning those professions because of the damage they obviously cause?
At best we seem to be quite selective about the workplace health effects we care about.