SPORTS - High School Football and the Health Cost

"Weighing the health costs of high school football" PBS NewsHour 10/6/2014

Excerpt

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  As the fall football season heats up, the Friday night lights dimmed somewhat last week with news that three young players died from injuries sustained on the field.

Tom Cutinella, a 16-year-old, collapsed following a blocking collision during a game in Elwood, New York; 17-year-old Demario Harris Jr. was pronounced dead three days after collapsing during a game.  He’s believed to have suffered a brain aneurysm shortly after making a tackle.  That same night, 17-year-old Isaiah Langston collapsed during a warmup before playing for Rolesville High School in North Carolina.

Our Student Reporting Labs train young people in public media journalism.  They went to the football team at T.C. Williams High School in Virginia, which happens to include a female kicker, for reaction.

MAHLIQUE BOOTH:  I like contact.  I love hitting.

ZACHARY EISENHOUR:  I love hitting in football.  That’s one of the things that makes football great.

STUDENT:  I like the contact.  That’s what it is.

RAYJON JONES:  When I had that first contact with someone, then like I felt like I had enough power to do what I want.

BRIANNA SMITH:  When I did kickoff last year, I obviously knew that I could be tackled.  And then when it actually happened one time, I was completely shocked, because I didn’t know what it was really going to feel like.

DENNIS RANDOLPH, Football Coach, T.C. Williams High School:  Coaches, again, we talk about this in our meetings.  We did early.  And sometimes we have kind of neglected it in the past, but please make sure that, because of these three deaths related to football — OK, and that’s most in a long period of time — with all the safety that is taking place now, we play a game.  We want to have fun.

But we also want to make it safe.  We want you to play hard, we want you to hit hard, we want you to go after your opponent, tackle him, knock him to the ground if you are blocking him, but we want you to be safe about it.  We don’t want — we’re not saying kill the other player, because that’s not appropriate.

Fortunately, I have never have worked with a kid who died.  Those kind of things are tragic.  And certainly it affects us because I work with kids every day, and I really don’t know how I would react to one of my players getting hit and dying from an injury related to the sport that I — has been a part of my life my whole life.

SPORTS - Being Openly Gay in the NFL

"How does coming out by openly gay NFL prospect Michael Sam reflect changing attitudes?" PBS Newshour 2/10/2014

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour):  The professor football player draft isn’t until May, but the news today about one potential prospect has meaning that promises to go far wider in the league and in professional sports.

MICHAEL SAM, NFL prospect:  I came to tell the world that I’m an openly, proud gay man.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  University of Missouri football star Michael Sam broke the news Sunday night in interviews with ESPN’s “Outside the Lines,” The New York Times, and Outsports.

MICHAEL SAM:  It is a load off my chest.  I told my teammates this past August that — I came out to my teammates.  And they took it great.  They rallied around me.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  The All American defensive end now stands to become the National Football League’s first openly gay active player after the draft takes place in May.  Sam says he hopes his sexual orientation will be a nonissue.

MICHAEL SAM:  It shouldn’t matter.

If I can — if I work hard, if I make plays, that is all that should matter.  Can they — can he help us win games?  Is he a team play ever?  That’s all that should matter.

SPORTS - San Diego Chargers Make it to Playoffs

My home-town team.

"Chargers seek first playoff win since 2008" by Eric D. Williams, ESPN 1/2/2014

They are doing their best Rodney Dangerfield imitation.

According to San Diego Chargers coach Mike McCoy, his team doesn't get any respect.

"We have been the underdog all year long," McCoy said.  "It doesn't matter to us.  We are just concerned about how the organization feels about ourselves."

At 5-7 with four weeks left in the season, the Chargers were given one percent chance of making the postseason, according to Football Outsiders.

But then a weird thing happened, the Chargers started winning games and gaining confidence.  Injured players such as linebackers Jarret Johnson and Melvin Ingram, along with offensive tackle King Dunlap returned to the lineup.

"Everyone counted us out a month ago," McCoy said.  "No one thought we could do this except the players, the couches and everyone else in the organization."

The Chargers are 7-point underdogs heading into Sunday's contest at Cincinnati, the largest point spread of any of this weekend's opening-round playoff games.  San Diego has not won a playoff game since 2008.

However, the Chargers face a Cincinnati squad that has had even worse playoff luck.  Cincinnati is 1-5 in wild card or first-round games.  And the Bengals haven't won a playoff game since the 1990 season.

Even though they are the favorites, Cincinnati quarterback Andy Dalton said his team will not be overconfident heading into this one.

"We have to understand what's at stake in this game," Dalton said.  "For us, we know that they've been playing well since we've played them.  They're 4-0 since we've played them out there.  It's going to be a tough matchup.  It's the playoffs, so there's a lot riding on it.  We know what's at stake."

Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers said he's not paying attention to his team's odds of getting a road victory on Sunday.

"I think the underdog and favorite talk is more for the outside," Rivers said.  "I know everyone in our locker room thinks we are going to win, and I know everyone in their locker room thinks they are going to win.

"They beat us five weeks ago.  We have seen in the postseason that anyone can win.  Whoever can play the best for 60 minutes will advance."

MEDIA - Super Bowl 2013 Commercials

Super Bowl 2013 commercials are already available on YouTube.

Here are samples:
(Note the Doritos commercials are from an amateur contest)

NFL - Referee Union Strike on Season Kick Off

"Game Time Substitution: NFL Referees Step in While Union Strikes Persist" PBS Newshour 9/7/2012

JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): And, finally tonight, professional football's regular season kicked off this week with the New York Giants taking on the Dallas Cowboys. But there were some new faces on the field who were not young stars selected in the draft.

Replacement refs are standing in for members of the NFL referees union, who were locked out by the league in a labor dispute over pay and pensions.

And there was more late-breaking football news this afternoon. An appeals panel lifted the suspensions of several players in the so-called bounty scandal, in which players were accused of receiving money from a pool intended to reward them for purposely injuring opponents.

Mike Pesca has been covering both these stories for NPR. And he joins me now from New York.

So, Mike, let's start with the latest, the latest news here. Who is this panel and what exactly has it decided?

MIKE PESCA, NPR: Yes, this is a panel that got to oversee what commissioner Roger Goodell decreed. And, so far, the commissioner has pretty much ruled with an iron fist.

In this case, there was this bounty-gate case where players were rewarded for things like interceptions and turnovers, but the members of the Saints were also awarded, it would seem, for knocking out opponents and carting them off the field.

So the commissioner suspended a bunch of players, Jonathan Vilma, a linebacker, for the whole season, three other players. And the players had been appealing this, had been losing.

But they just got a win. Now, I think this ruling has been widely and wildly misinterpreted, because you see the headline that the players win on appeal, and you figure, oh, these guys will now be playing going forward.

What this panel really said was that the commissioner overstepped his bounds a little bit. In fact, they said he possibly overstepped his bounds because the suspension was based on two things, as the commissioner articulated it.

One was the intent to injure. The other was, because there was payment, that would violate the salary cap or be a problem with compensation. And all the panel said was, the commissioner is not allowed to give any suspensions based on the compensation issue.

So, if the commissioner goes back and says, I'm re-suspending these players just based on the intent issue, which that's what the panel actually urged the commissioner to do, I could see them getting kind of re-suspended almost immediately.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, so we're going to have to wait to see what happens with that news.

Now, to this other story, the replacement referees, fill in some of the details just quickly for us here on the labor dispute itself. What is this about?

MIKE PESCA: Pay, pension.

The league wants to turn some of these officials -- these are part-time officials. They referee and get paid maybe $10,000 to ref a game on Sunday, but they're teachers, they're lawyers, they have other jobs. So, the league wants to turn them full-time.

And then there's disagreement about how much pay is at stake. Keep in mind, the NFL is an industry that is going to be making $10 billion a year, maybe not this year, but next year. And what these guys are arguing over, what the NFL referees and the league is arguing over, about $10 million, maybe even less. If you do the math per team, it's a few hundred thousands dollars a team.

But I think what the league wants to do is show it doesn't matter if it's a little bit of money. We don't feel we have to pay them. They're sending a signal for the next time they negotiate with players, hey, we could be really strong-willed in negotiations.

JEFFREY BROWN: Tough sport and a tough league, huh?

So who are the replacements and what kind of -- clearly, they were having some impact on the preseason games, including some even comic moments. And then there was a game, the first game on Wednesday.

MIKE PESCA: Well, God love them for making the preseason somewhat interesting, right?

(LAUGHTER)

MIKE PESCA: Sometimes, they would turn and face the wrong way. They seemed to mumble and stutter and not know sometimes which teams were playing, penalty on Atlanta -- oh, wait a minute. Penalty on Arizona, I meant.

And these guys, they're not the top tier of officials available. They're not big-time college refs. They're Division II and III referees. One guy even referred in the Lingerie Football League, which is exactly what it sounds like, horrifically, women in lingerie, and this guy was calling offsides.

So they haven't really covered themselves in glory. Game one of the regular season, those guys were fine, but everyone loves the comedic aspect of going through the bumbled calls.

And if you could put together a lowlight tape, that might be the sort of impetus where the NFL and some of its owners will say, you know what? Enough of this embarrassment. Let me gather together the change that is left in my couch essentially for these billionaire owners and settle this disagreement with the refs.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, just in our last minute, Mike, I mean, one question for those who don't follow football is -- and this sort of raises the whole issue -- how important is a referee anyway, right?

What does a referee do? What difference might it make it the games as season really gets under way this starting Sunday?

MIKE PESCA: Right.

And passionate football fans say, hey, the best refs in the world blow calls left and right.

JEFFREY BROWN: Right.

MIKE PESCA: But the players' whole issue that safety could be at stake, I don't know, it might seem hard to clearly, definitively say one blown call led to an injury.

But it's sort of the pace of the game. The games are so much slower with these replacement refs, the announcement that they make towards the camera. And there's a lot of intricate rules. The replacement refs and NFL will say, football is football. But the NFL itself has a lot of different rules and a lot of weird rules that they don't have on the local level.

And for all the money that fans are asked to pay, especially in person, to have it undone by referees who are much less professional than anyone on the field, it doesn't seem in keeping with this soon-to-be-$10-billion-a-year industry.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Mike Pesca of NPR, thanks so much.

MIKE PESCA: You're welcome.

SAN DIEGO - Public Funding of New Football Stadium

This article refers to candidates for Mayor.

"5 Things the Candidates Aren't Telling You About Football" by Scott Lewis, Voice of San Diego 9/5/2012

A pretty innocuous piece in U-T San Diego on Saturday got me fired up.

"DeMaio, Filner oppose public funds for a new stadium," is the headline.

In it, mayoral candidates Bob Filner and Carl DeMaio swear off public funding for a new Chargers stadium and the Chargers tactfully try to scold them for it.

It's not what the candidates for mayor are saying in the piece that got me. It's what they're not saying.

Let's take a look at five things they're not telling you.

I. That they're calling the Chargers' bluff: Both candidates have determined that there is no public appetite for a big taxpayer investment in a new stadium. I don't have any polling, but it makes sense. Even diehard Charger fans don't seem all that excited about plowing hundreds of millions of public dollars into a stadium while roads and neighborhoods crumble.

At the same time, the team says that it needs a new stadium and it reminds us that, every year, it has the option to leave.

There's currently no precedent for building an NFL stadium without public funding.

That means that telling the voters you are against public funding for a stadium is, to the Chargers, equivalent to telling the team to leave or shut up about it.

The two brash and outspoken candidates, however, are not willing to say that outright.

II. That this is a change for DeMaio: Not long ago, DeMaio, the staunch fiscal conservative, had one of the most liberal positions on public funding for a stadium. The city already loses $12 million or more every year maintaining Qualcomm Stadium for the Chargers. DeMaio was one — of many — who believed you could package that annual loss and turn it into a subsidy for a new stadium.

But at the last NBC televised debate, and here in the U-T, he's taken a much more direct stance: No city taxpayer dollars for a new stadium.

"I will not allow for a public subsidy for a new stadium. I do not believe it is necessary," he said at the NBC debate.

If anything, the city's financial health has improved since he had a more open view of a subsidy. So what changed? He's not saying.

III. That no alternative financing model exists: Both candidates seem to believe that it might be possible to build a stadium without public subsidies.

DeMaio is being more proactive about this, as he pushes a task force to find this public-private unicorn.

But his task force will find the same thing I did: Across the country, NFL stadiums are built according to a simple formula: An owner hints at, or threatens to leave. Fans clamor. Mayors capitulate. A tax increase, or bunch of them, is passed. A new stadium rises. The owner's equity in the team skyrockets.

Chargers special counsel Mark Fabiani regularly notes now (and did again in the U-T piece) that the average public subsidy for an NFL stadium makes up 65 percent of its cost.

Note the important feature there: A tax increase is passed.

Most other cities can pass tax increases much more easily to handle that. For instance, in conservative Texas, a city needs only get 50 percent of voters, plus one, to get a tax increase passed for a stadium. But in California, you need 66.7 percent of the vote. It's a much higher hurdle.

This is why we're trying to be so clever about how to finance new stadiums in San Diego and Los Angeles. The way most other cities do it is not available to us.

The candidates don't seem to want to embrace this reality. It'd be fine if they were painting a different picture. But simply saying you can build a stadium without a public subsidy right now is no better than saying you have a magic potion that cures baldness but don't know what's actually in the potion.

IV. Filner's stance obligates him to talk about big changes in cities' relationships to the NFL: When Bob Filner approached this discussion, he chose an innovative route. He turned the tables on the Chargers and owner Dean Spanos.

In other words, the Chargers want to force the city to make a decision: Invest in our football team or lose your football team.

Filner flipped it around, very cleverly, and said, essentially: OK, we'll invest in the team if you give us equity ownership in it. It's smart. It forces the Chargers to demand a handout instead. Do investors just hand their capital out? Only to nonprofits.

Unfortunately, no matter how attractive getting equity in the team would make the investment, the NFL doesn't allow cities or normal people to own parts of its teams.

So Filner's idea has evolved into a kind of revenue-sharing vision. City builds a stadium, somehow gets money back.

"What is the city getting back? If I’m going to invest a dollar and get back 10, yeah, I'm going to do it. I’m not going to give them a dollar," he told the U-T.

Sounds great, but he's not even trying to grapple with how hard this would be to pull off. He'd have to convince his buddies in Congress, for example, to push the NFL to stop excluding the public from owning shares of the teams lest they lose anti-trust benefits. Or he'd have to negotiate an unprecedented deal that would open the NFL's books and return the city a profit.

If he's not thinking along those lines, then he's just spouting off.

Will he at least hint at how he can pull such a feat off?

V. That a stadium is a luxury. Buy it if you want it: At the end of the day, a stadium and an NFL team are luxuries for a metropolis. The way the game is rigged, you have to pay to enjoy the luxury (and even if you pay, they'll black out the games sometimes).

I'm giving up hope that the NFL will ever stop depending on government and raise capital for their facilities the way capitalists do: by selling shares.

Let's leave it on an optimistic note, though.

Perhaps California will be the NFL's wake-up call. Maybe it will realize it can't build stadiums here because the broke cities just can't hand them fat checks anymore.

And maybe that will force the NFL to consider some big reforms that give cities better deals. And then, maybe, that will encourage other cities to demand better deals.

The fact is, the rules in this game need to change.

They won't, though, as long as we don't talk about them.

COMMENT: As a San Diegan, especially after the economic boost building the 'new' baseball stadium downtown gave us, I vote for having a new football (Charger) stadium, tax issue aside. Also we DO need a new football stadium, the present venue is much too old.

Although having our city being able to buy shares would be better, but that's in the hands of the NFL and lawyers, therefore does not address the issue today.

SPORTS - Football Great Junior Seau Dies 1969-2012

A sad day for all us San Diego fans. Not just for his football, but also for his community work.

(click for better view)


"Junior Seau, hometown icon, takes his life" by Kristina Davis, Debbi Baker and Pauline Repard, San Diego Union-Tribune 5/2/2012

Excerpt

Former Chargers linebacker Junior Seau (1969-2012) died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his beachfront home in Oceanside Wednesday. The hometown icon who rose to stardom in the NFL was 43.

Seau’s girlfriend called 911 at 9:35 a.m. reporting a possible suicide, Police Chief Frank McCoy said. Officers found Seau in a bedroom with a gunshot wound to the chest. Efforts to revive him were unsuccessful.

A handgun was found near his body, and police are investigating the death as a suicide, McCoy said. No suicide note was found, police said.

An autopsy is expected to be completed Thursday, according to the Medical Examiner’s Office.

Hundreds gathered behind police tape around Seau’s two-story home on the south end of The Strand and reflected quietly about the immense impact he had on the community. About 40 to 50 friends and family arrived in waves, hugging one another and crying.

Seau’s mother, Luisa Seau, sobbed in front of reporters as she cried loudly, “Junior! Why didn’t you tell me you were going?”

“I don’t understand, I don’t know anything,” his mother said. “I’m shocked. I appreciate everyone, show your love to my son.”

One of Seau’s sisters, Annette, asked for privacy for the family.

“My brother was a loving brother and a caring citizen,” she said.

As the medical examiner’s van carrying Seau’s body pulled away from the home about 1:20 p.m., supporters had to hold back his mother as she started running after it. Other mourners sobbed as the van passed, and one knelt down to pray.

Flowers and tributes began to pile up nearby as family and friends struggled to explain a motivation for Seau’s suicide.

On Monday, he appeared to be in high spirits at the Tim Brown celebrity golf tournament in Dana Point, said California Highway Patrol Officer Jim Bettencourt. He said Seau stopped by the CHP’s booth that afternoon on the 11th hole and traded jokes and laughs with the officers.

His ex-wife, Gina Seau, of Fairbanks Ranch, said that on Tuesday he texted her and each of their three children separate messages: “I love you.”

“We’re all in shock,” she said. “We’re beyond sad and beyond shocked. The kids and I are just huddled together at home. There is no way to make sense of this. “I hope and pray everyone remembers what a wonderful man he was.”

Chargers President Dean Spanos said in a statement: “We all lost a friend today. Junior was an icon in our community. He transcended the game. He wasn’t just a football player, he was so much more.”

Other accolades poured in from around the county.