Roger Goodell, David Stern and causing more harm than good
By Tom Ziller @teamziller on Aug 23 2013, 10:37a 2
Mike Stobe
In Friday's Hook, we compare Roger Goodell and David Stern, explore the Tony Wroten trade and remind everyone about previous giant men that were well compensated.
This is the second ham-handed, gross Goodell moment that's been exposed this year. In the other, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sought a partnership with the NFL and its member teams for an awareness campaign on Obamacare. (A number of the other sports teams in other leagues have participated and there is a substantial, lucrative history of the government leveraging sports teams' audiences in awareness campaigns.) Republican leadership sent a menacing letter to Goodell, warning him away from allowing the NFL to participate in a campaign seeking to educate the nation about the provisions of a very real law that likely impacts them. So naturally, Goodell caved and the league announced the NFL nor its teams would be participating .. http://www.cincyjungle.com/2013/7/1/4484506/nfl-will-not-promote-new-obamacare-initiatives-to-fans .
Both vignettes make me glad the NBA has David Stern in charge. I can think of only one issue in recent NBA history in which Stern gilded over what seemed like a wider problem: the whole Tim Donaghy scandal. Stern did appoint an independent investigator and made a number of public statements, but at times it seemed like the commissioner was too eager to convince us that Donaghy was a "rogue" agent, not a sign of symptomatic failure of the ref corps. Skeptics remain.
Otherwise, Stern addresses major issues head on. He's not beholden to, well, anyone but his owners. Despite no apparent PED problem in the NBA, he's pushed for stronger testing. He dealt with the league's crack problem head-on in the 1980s. He's made what could be rampant marijuana use by players a de-emphasized issue. (One of the NBA's most sneakily brilliant decisions was to only suspend players on their third positive marijuana test so that the first two incidents don't get publicized at all. Who knows how many stars got a first offense and wound up in the league's drug program only for the news never to see the light of day? Okay, so maybe this isn't a good example of facing issues head on ...)
The point is that Goodell is totally beholden to outside influence and, as a result, uses his own power and influence to cow others. That's bad, especially on something as important as health issues. What's more infuriating is that those ESPN executives who blinked when Goodell applied his pressure really likely had little to fear. ESPN, remember, pays handsomely for its NFL rights. Stern is known as a micromanager -- check out Those Guys Have All The Fun sometime -- but this type of action is beyond the pale. And in the end, it's a dissservice to fans who deserve to know the full picture on player health without the NFL running interference on journalism.
And that, in this example, causes harm to the sport Goodell runs. That's something Stern has infrequently done. He'd argue the worst moments of his career, like the 1998 lockout, helped save the league in the end. If Goodell can argue the same about his intransigence on the concussions doc and the broader concussions issues, he has bigger problems than we know.
Let's hope Adam Silver is more of a Stern and not at all a Goodell.
A confronting story that looks at the implications of cutting-edge research relating to the prevention and management of head injuries in football players.
[ .. some time ago i read an article which said many Australian Rugby league players were, as a result of brain damage, as a 60 year old at 40 .. with much greater risk of Alzheimer .. thought i posted one, but guess not .. ]
[img]www.abc.net.au/reslib/201205/r939606_9927149.jpg A confronting story that looks at the implications of cutting-edge research[/img] relating to the prevention and management of head injuries in football players.
They've been called modern day gladiators and each year football players get bigger, faster and they hit harder. Getting hurt may be part of the game, but reporter Quentin McDermott looks at the latest research on head and brain injury. He reveals there is growing evidence that footballers young and old could be suffering long term brain damage.
It's a story that has implications for anyone who pulls on a football boot, from pros to primary schoolers. A prominent neurosurgeon tells Four Corners he is so concerned about what he's seeing that when it comes to school children there's a clear rule:
"I personally would say three significant concussions, three strikes and you're out."
Right now in the United States, researchers are doing all they can to understand what happens inside the brain when players make physical contact.
Using new imaging technology it's possible to examine not just the structure of the brain but to see how its function is changing. Some researchers now believe that a player doesn't have to sustain repeated concussions to risk permanent brain damage, but that repeated sub-concussive impact affecting the brain can be enough. The research has major implications for young players:
"We found it in a 17 year old football player, an 18 year old, we found it pretty extensive in a 21 year old, so it's helped people realise that it's not just a pro-athlete problem, that you're more vulnerable when you're young anyway and so we're clearly giving this disease to children who don't understand what they're even getting into."
So are football administrators taking the issue seriously enough? All three body contact football codes - Rugby League, Rugby Union and Australian Rules Football - say they no longer allow concussed players to finish a game, and severely penalise any player who deliberately causes a head injury. But they are also sceptical about the relevance of the US research to football as it is played here.
"I think that we need to be pretty careful how we interpret the (US research) because their game is completely different, you know? The aim of their game is to actually crash into each other with their heads you know, so potentially players are playing concussed. We don't have any such thing in our game and we take any head contact very seriously."Rugby League doctor
Researchers in Australia are lining up to do work that mirrors the investigations being done in the United States, but final agreement with the different football codes and clubs seems some way off.
Until that research is carried out, we won't know whether the repeated head injuries suffered by some footballers are damaging their health permanently. That means another generation of footballers run the risk of serious injury.
"Hard Knocks", reported by Quentin McDermott and presented by Kerry O'Brien, goes to air on Monday 14th May at 8.30pm on ABC1. It is repeated on Tuesday 15th May at 11.35pm. It can also be seen on ABC News 24 each Saturday at 8.00pm, on ABC iview and at 4 Corners.
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