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Obama - "End Football!"
Well, the Prez didn't really say that. His words on the topic of football:
"If I had a son, I'd have to think long and hard before I let him play football."
This is another big milestone in the football story. We have hundreds of colleges and university that have big football programs; there are thousands of high schools that have teams. And the Prez says he wouldn't let his child play because of the risks? That's a hell of a message to be sending a week before the Super Bowl.
The medical evidence that connects "normal" head hits in football to mental problems years later, is not in dispute any longer. All the schools have this information, so do most of the players and their parents. Now Obama is telling that large group of people, "You're nuts!"
I wouldn't be surprised if Obama's comments end up being more of a factor than the medical evidence. That would be quite a legacy...
This topic came up on ABC this morning. (Link) George Will had this to say about football:
We have parents today, in this bubble-wrapped childhood that we now have, when they put their child on a tricycle, they put a crash helmet on them. Are those parents really apt to let them play football? This is going to be a rebellion, like the president is speaking as a parent, from the bottom up, this game is just not suited to the human body.
Steve Inskeep, NPR, responded to Will with:
There's something deeply American about the violence of this sport.
I think they're both right. America has a violent streak, we need our gladiators (and our guns). Gladiators are supposed to die, right? Who doesn't like this stuff?
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Was that not last weeks TV guide description of NASCAR?
I don't care if they ban playing football, as long as they don't ban playing footsie.
- Larry Craig.
In football just like in life, shit happens.
Alas poor Y. A. Tittle, he was a good quarterback.
The White guy. Since race-replaced. See other pix.
Obama made some remark in his first term about those who cling to their guns, religion, etc, etc. He left out football at the time, but it's clear it was on the list though unspoken. If he keeps this up, what with his drive to infringe on the 2nd Amendment, The South will be attempting to secede for a 2nd time.
I will fight for the Second Amendment.
But I will not fight for SEC college ball idiots, billionaire monopolist NFL owners, purse snatching millionaires, millionaire college coaches, dub white kids and adults who are alumni crazy robots.
F football or mindless shit entertainment that keeps the sheeple dazed and confused.
Yes, it would be much more fun to throw bankers to the lions in these sports colosseum.
I would fight for that my man. ;-)
Throw Bernake, Dimon, Mozillo, Buffett, Munger, and half the U.S. Senate to the lions!
Buffett would be soiling his diapers.
You're such a warrior! I bet you're like 6'5", 245, can bench 450 maybe. Some guy in the chats was talking trash saying Freddie be some little 5'6" chubby puff-ass punk with a comb-over and a mail-order dol...that's bride, but I say no way. Not Freddie. He's the bomb. He be bringing some serious hurt to them banksters, he will. Yessirree! And one of them Davos types tosses Freddie to the lions, well, he ain't no diaper-soiling candy-ass like Buffett...he be womping them cats like they was a Moslem in the White House. Dat's a fact.
LOL! I "ain't" 5'6" my man. I am actually pretty close to the numbers you listed. A bit smaller. I cannot bench 450 lbs and I don't want too. I once was at a lunche with a taller but not huge young guy. He had been an offensive lineman backing up a famous quarterback. They played for a midwestern college team. The QB is one of the best in the NFL.
I guess the kid was 6'5" and maybe 235-245 now. He was probably 26. His playing weight had been 310 lb or so. he said he was eating 5,000 calories a day or so and in the weight room constantly. Thank goodness he got the weight back off at a young age.
Football is retarded. These kids get used and spit out. College ball is a business. A corrupt business as colleges make kids debt slaves. They we send them to mindless wars to get ripped up or killed.
I don't watch TV or Hollywood's brainwashing shit. F the NFL, TV and Hollywood plus O.
You sound like a real tard by the way. You probably think Medici is a pasta company.
Now that I’ve got your attention, perhaps you can help me understand something. You pretty much epitomize the regular ZH commenter: Lots of posts filled with bitterness and an affected cynicism, usually concentrating on a single theme or at best two. For you it’s TV and WH Moslems. For others, far too many others, it’s the Joos. These posters, and you, seem to have lots and lots of free time, as opposed to those who do kamikaze runs on ZH and the comments section as time permits. You are the new bedrock of ZH, but it’s kind of a loose and fragile sandstone.
The casual observer could not be faulted for concluding that you and your ilk are extraordinarily unhappy and that life is a pretty miserable experience to be endured only until the “better” days of complete social upheaval, as if any of you would actually survive it, or that any of you would suddenly change your stripes and become uncontrollably joyful. Anger and bitterness are pathological, and will follow the practitioner all his live long days. Incidentally, you continuously admonish anyone who watches TV. If turning your TV off made you happier, I cannot imagine how unhappy you must have been before, if this current version of you is better. The mind shudders to think.
Every comment is bile-filled. Everything, save for “stacks” and weapons, is hated. Jeez, even sports are hated. Perhaps you were not an athlete. Perhaps you never experienced the joy of dunking a basketball or hanging in the air longer than even Newton would expect? Perhaps you never won a race or caught that pass in the endzone for the winning touchdown. I’ve got to tell you, that stuff is (was) thrilling. It is called “enjoying life”. Now that those years have passed me by, I can still take some pleasure watching another do the same, because I remember what it felt like. I remember the effort it took to make it happen, and the satisfaction in having achieved it. I can do something that around these parts is exceedingly rare: enjoy. And don’t tell me it’s meaningless or foolish, because in this vast Universe EVERYTHING any of us does is meaningless and foolish. Despite that, we still do stuff, because we are alive, and because we have the ability---if we allow ourselves the privilege---to enjoy. To each his own.
There are many reasons why ZH has lost a lot of members. One reason is that, with few exceptions, there is nothing new. Another is that the board has been overrun with the forelorn, lonely and hateful types. It’s all just more gloom. Knowing it doesn’t change anything, and while some of the articles are interesting and thought provoking (and explains why the “kamikazes” still show up), much is repetitive. I used to read stuff from, for example, Krieger and Brandon Smith. Not anymore. I could write the next twenty of either of their articles, because they are painfully redundant. Despite that redundancy, they are devoured by the unhappy set around here as if each one was completely fresh. Since their articles are always oozing bitterness and depression, it is puzzling why they are so admired. Masochism is my only explanation, as masochism is fed by anger and diffuse hatred of just about everything, including one’s self. (By the way, Bruce Krasting is always fresh and never to be missed, the complete opposite of Krieger and Smith.)
Just as those Krieger-Smith-sometimes Tyler articles are repetitive, so are the comments of the free-time forelorn crowd. “Turn off your TV” “F’ing White House Kenyan Moslem” “I blame Da Joos!” “It’s part of their plan” “False flag” (do these free-time, life sucks-types even allow for the possibility of a single ‘real flag’ in all of recorded history?) “Any second now” “Gold, bitchez!” Is there a point to this repetition? Is it the equivalent of a kind of prayer, the way an old time Catholic says a rosary or a Buddhist chants in Pali?
Maybe what I am really asking is if everything is so miserable, why stick around? Eternity is waiting. There’s no TV in eternity and no false flags and neither Moslem nor Joo. Isn’t that a more attractive alternative? Actually there is another alternative. It’s called growing up. The world has seen much worse days than today’s admittedly serious situation. People endured. They fought for what they could change and learned to accept that which could not be changed. They got through it. They even found things to like rather than endlessly search for things to hate. Perhaps you’ll try that, because it IS a choice. Just a suggestion.
And if you’re really just the most happy-go-lucky guy in the world, the life of every party you attend, and everyone’s go-to man for an emotional pick-me-up, then I guess I just misread your on-screen persona.
How about we make Bernanke return punts against the Steelers .
They'd be told he was someone "important" and they'd let him walk up the field.
How about we make Bernanke return punts against the Steelers .
C'mon you guys, your messing up the Super Bowl Weekend Spirit. I know it's all a head fake from the PTB, but let a guy have some fun, eh?
Next thing you know you'll be bitching at Asian Porn...
btw...
GO SAN FRANCISCO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!49ERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!BEER!!!!!!!HOTTIES!!!!!COMMERCIALS!!!!!!!!
Well Freddie...I give you Exhibit A.
Seems he likes his TV and brainwashing.
Isn't it time we ban contact football. Think of all the damage were doing to our children by letting them put on their football helmets and going out to compete like gladiators. Besides all those headbutts lead our kids into wanting more agressive activities like shooting guns. Just think of all the gun violence we could prevent if we just eliminated contact football. We can still do the lingere bowl as long as the girls don't use their heads as a weapon. Boob to boob contract is ok, just no head butting unless your butting into another girls butt. lol
South Park had an episode about this already, titled Sarcastaball.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIxzNe9IEC4
Is Art imitating life, or life imitating art, or as I have said before, we are in the Twilight Zone/ Matrix/ Sliders....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpV852GDbGQ
Or just make better helmets. Geez, do I have to think of everything?
Meh, whatever -- just keep yer hands off Rollerball!
Modern day gladiators. True enough, but at least these guys make some serious bucks with serious bennies. The kids that are sent off to fight in foreign police actions or whatever the current politically correct term is for war risk a lot more for chickenshit pay and a good dose of life long trauma.
Poster: I think that a man with a helmet defending his country should make more money than a man with a helmet defending a football.
"a man with a helmet defending his country" ---Where do you see those today? All I can see is guys with helmets defending a bunch of corporate oligarchs who blow up weddings in Pakistan while spying constantly on their own citizens.
...and college players who don't make the NFL (98%) can cross the street and apply to the local police force. Great farm system, really.
Only if they have an IQ of 104 or below. They won't be hired if it is higher, for real.
And the pres along with most other "public servants" would never send their kids to fight their wars.
Hey, 1 more industry to give to China so they can make all the money with it!
It's a terrible, dumb made for TV "sport". Simple.
Each position has tailor made bodies (look at the defense line-up, full of lard). It's a masonic, mind-control game, with the military (see all those fly-byes and NAtional ANthem singing).....
Add to that the whore-i-zation of women through the meaning-less cheer-leader crap and you have a picture of social engineering on meth.
It would be GOOD FOR AMERICA is football, where the foot hardly touches the ball, dies.
Lingerie football is already here, naked football next?
Ugh!
ori
There is nothing masonic in a football game.
So football is congruent with freemasonry? I'm going to have to think about that for a while. Okay, that's long enough.
ORI, get off the beedi weed while you still have a few working synapses.
Maybe the coin-toss coin has an all-seeing-eye on it, and the refs are Masons.
Can't say I disagree with you but care to comment on cricket? I find it absurd that India is so enamoured with the (wussy) sports that their colonial overlord let them be bat boy for once. Or is that dogsbody?
Vlad, I agree with you completely. Cricket and it's colonial under and overtones are crazy and India, socially engineered since "independence" (Hah!!!) is sickening.
It has been made a near religion and I don't think that is by accident.
I think it's time pro-sports (Lance Truthweak anyone?) needs to go the way of the dodo.
ori
PS: Oh, ice-hockey, talk about a bloodsport. I went for one game while in the US.... wow. Beer, testerone, blood and reffree allowed punch-ups. Animals.
For a guy who takes out wedding parties with Hellfire missiles and deliberately targets children, he sure is sensitive about the dangers of sport:
http://www.thenation.com/blog/171582/us-military-approves-bombing-children
Yeah, Obama a year or two ago hellfired/killed a bad guy who 12 years ago was a leader of the mosque a few blocks from my home here in DC. In that strike, he also killed others, reportedly including the guy's teenaged son. Now THAT was one hell of a concussion delivered, I'm sure. Blindsided. Obama hits harder than Jack Ham.
I swear, were I POTUS, and taking out people like that including innocents, and having a family myself, I am sure I'd have trouble sleeping at night. I'd be worried sick.
he's a pussy.....never had a father...was raised by women....women always ran his life....still do...........
What do you expect!!
Paging Miss Barnhardt,....Miss Ann Barnhardt
Football: probably one class-action lawsuit away from extinction. Short Riddell? ;)
Send in the drones.
so it seems as though american are the only violent gun toteing fuck heads; hmmm.
ever think we are the only nation left to be able to defend ourselves individualy.
gun totely losers by implication of statements. goodbye to you. this experiment of usa wasn't because the brits were being nice to others. no,no not much violence in brit territories or africa or ______________
fucking dumb ass article
ok pol pot never existed and rugby i a figment of my historical imagination.
fucking dumbed down BK. and your point.
all acts of violence are perpetrations against other humans, some much more obvious than others.
bruce, something tells be you are a pussy. most likely afraid of the woods and can type but otherwise pretty much helpless.
push yourself in new directions. people-see what you are made of; you would be suprised how feeble you are at being agressive.
the world isn't a very nice place, just appears as though...
Nothing's more dangerous than plain old cars at the end of the day. I promise you that a determined person could do far more damage with a car than a semiautomatic weapon. So what's next after banning football? Cars?
The entire belief that legislators can simply legislate society into some kind of non-dangerous utopia is in itself incredibly dangerous. Life isn't perfect ...and it's perfect that way.
It's simply a question of balancing individual freedom vs. the needs of the state. Since about 1100 A.D. it has been considered a crime against the state to maim another citizen of military age. Football does that. But it also is a path to riches and glory for many men who otherwise would live anonymous lives of quiet desparation.
We send men into toxic mines. We send them crabbing on the Bering Sea. In the interests of becoming the low cost producer, companies pile on more and more dangerous duties on their workers, and life becomes, for most of us, a trade-off between destroying our health and making money to support ourselves and our families. Any job which is joy for the worker quickly gets noticed by management, which then figures out a way, maybe by laying off three co-workers, to pile that work on the joyful worker until his life becomes overstressed and miserable. Even if such men never suffer a concussion or a torn ACL, they get hypertension and coronary artery disease, etc., and die before their time.
The NFL is perhaps the most visible of the professions in which this trade-off occurs, and it is one where the mayhem is obvious, the salaries enormous, and the injuries oftentimes external and recorded for posterity. Nobody videotapes and televises the rest of us slowly rotting from the inside out. Although, come to think of it, some reality shows like the crab one and the axeman one, are now puttingh such damage on display for our entertainment.
The state will want to ban football in its present form, but the players and the owners will be wealthy enough to put up a good fight. If they can get human growth hormone out of the game, and spend some big bucks on developing better, albeit very expensive, helmets to cut down on the concussions, the game will go on. The fact that men destroy their health in the playing of it is not a big deal. It happens in most industries when you take a closer look as to how life works. Men should have the freedom, at least, to choose their own poison. Pressure needs to be asserted to make the game as safe as possible for its participants, but nobody gets out of here alive.
Dude, you're way over analyzing. Football is about respect, from the guy across from you and from the rest of the world. You're a modern day gladiator...you get paid very well and the world is in awe of you (most of the world). Every guy on that field knows the risks when they strap on the gear. It's that simple...it's about money and respect. The gubbernmint should stay out of it...
And I think you are under-analyzing. I cannot disagree with you as to the motives of the college or NFL players, although I might quibble over your emphasis on gladitorial glory. That glory translates readily into a hot young wife and lots of money. But even if the government stays out of it, the widows and the children will still file lawsuits after living with the wreckage for which the player admittedly consented, albeit perhaps without sufficient foreknowledge of the actual cost.
The big lawsuit right now centers around the brain damage suffered after a series of concussions over time. Football players are general considered "workers" covered by Workers Compensation laws, which bar lcourt awsuits (and jury trials) for employer negligence, so the lawsuits have to allege that the harm suffered in successive concussions arises to the level of "intentional".
Perhaps an example is in order. A good case on the subject in Michigan involved a small business which profited from the chemical recovery of platinum from hospital x-ray films. They hired a couple of non-English speaking immigrants to dump the used film into an open vat of acid, from which the platinum was precipitated out as the film dissolved. The room where this occurred had a large open vat of acid, which produced acid fumes. The workers had no masks or breathing apparatus, and their lungs were quickly destroyed by the acid fumes. The owners said they had intended no harm, and that they were merely negligent in causing these horrendous injuries. The court ruled that they had known the the harm was almost certain to occur, and they had clearly intended the natural consequences of the work environment into which they had sent these unfortunate men.
The helmet lawsuit involves allegations that the NFL knew about the concussion problem, hid the problem from the players, and did nothing to protect the players from suffering the natural results of successive concussions, to the point where the harm could be found to be "intentional" in order to maintain a nice stream of profits by sacrificing the players. The allegation is that, by analogy, the NFL and the owners sent the players into that room with an open acid vat, and profitted greatly by doing so, knowing full well that many of them would suffer permanent brain damage.
I think that the plaintiffs have a difficult case to prove, but I can see their argument.
The reaction to the lawsuit has to date been mainly rule changes limiting the number of helmet-to-helmet incidents, especially where one of the players is pre-occupied with catching the ball, and to openly admit to the reality of the concussion issue, in order to eliminate the "they never told me" legal argument. This is an open and obvious ploy to counter the argument that the players go out on the field with a near certainty of being concussed, and even if they did, they had consented to that sort of injury with full knowledge in advance of actually incurring the injury.
The NFL is willing to live with workers' comp laws, which pay limited benefits (and no "mental anguish" or "pain and suffering" damages), but the league is terrified of these lawsuits, which have a greater chance of forever changing the game than any offhand comment by the POTUS.
You're right..Life isn't perfect but more often then not it isn't as complicated as it is made out to be.
Don't like football? Fine, don't play football.
Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy
No...Q-tips.
Over 7000 people a year are injured cleaning their ears with cotton swabs. Clearly we need to regulate, legislate and encourage the outright ban of hygiene of the ears.
Seriously.
Having played the game at a very high level, and in the pits (I was an O-Lineman), I knew the risks involved. It's one of the great things about the guys who play the game...they make no excuses and don't blame anyone but themselves when they lose. No wonder Obama hates the game...just sayin
PS I'd love to have a one on one opportunity doing board drills with that loud mouthed pencil neck wimp who goes shooting a lot...