Out in the driveway was the Sunday Times, with a well-reported article about the precipitous decline of boys playing American football.
The trend is so worrisome that football supporters held a private summit about the potential drop in candidates to get their brains scrambled in the next generation. I can remember covering Congressional hearings in which the National Football League’s answer to brain concussions was to malign expert witnesses. The most telling detail in the Times article was the graph showing the vast dropoff – in Texas. Sounds like Texas high schools now have Friday Night Lights for soccer – with cheerleaders, and college scholarships, and crowds, but without nearly as much residual brain damage down the road. While I was reading the paper, my son-in-law texted me from Deepest Pennsylvania. Sometimes he texts about Christian Pulisic, the lad from Hershey who has scored 5 goals for Chelsea already this season, probably the best showing by any American in a top European league. At first, he and his first-born, Mister George, were planning to watch the big Liverpool-Manchester City match in a pub, not any pub, but a Liverpool soccer pub in the area. Shortly after, they decided to watch at home. From his early days with the FIFA computer game, our grandson has been a Liverpool fanatic. This is where the country is heading. Both Liverpool and Man City have charismatic managers – Jürgen Klopp of Liverpool, a German, and Josep (Pep) Guardiola of Man City, a Catalan who speaks five languages. In the same issue of the Sunday Times, their ingenuity was discussed by Rory Smith, the Times’ expert in Europe. In the meeting of the current masterminds, Liverpool drubbed Man City, 3-1. I skipped that match to work out at at the high-school track, where I spotted a soccer match between two teams of girls, fit and competitive, in their mid-teens. Two other teams were waiting to play on the turf field. My soccer-watching for the day was going to come later -- the championship match of Major League Soccer, now in its 24th season. The league started with 10 teams and now has 24, soon to be 30. Nobody claims MLS is at the level of Champions League or World Cup powerhouses but the league has improved drastically. Last year the best MLS team I ever saw, Atlanta, won the title with an open attacking style, with finesse and good coaching, but Tata Martino was scooped up to manage the Mexican national team, and one of Atlanta's fleet stars, Miguel Almiron, was scooped up by Newcastle of the Premiership, (he is yet to score in 24 appearances) and Atlanta did not reach the finals this year. Instead, Toronto played at Seattle, in front of the largest crowd ever to watch a sporting event in Seattle – 69,274 fans, demonstrative and knowledgeable. There were familiar faces, including two long-time stars of the American national team, Jozy Altidore and Michael Bradley, both with Toronto. Altidore was still hampered by a strained quad, and could not start. and it cost his team, Soccer, as all fans know, is a capricious sport. Toronto outplayed the home team well into the second half but no goals were scored. While Altidore warmed up, Toronto yielded a fluke goal when a defender deflected a shot heading wide. (It should have been listed as an own goal, but was not – shame on the league for allowing that scoring decision.) Then Seattle scored twice more before Altidore pounded in a header. Neither team matched the firepower of the super Atlanta team last year, but the league gets better every year. The MLS season is over but the European season is in full gear, and will more than carry me over to the Mets' season. And really, what else is there? * * * https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/08/sports/falling-football-participation-in-america.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/sports/liverpool-manchester-city-guardiola-klopp.html https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/11/09/sports/soccer/ap-soc-chelsea-crystal-palace.html https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2019/11/08/mls-commissioner-don-garber-gives-expansion-update-charlotte-las-vegas-and-phoenix
Ed Martin
11/10/2019 08:34:00 pm
Was thinking about you. Sat down to write 70,000!! And you beat me to it! Ciao, Home tonight from great trip. Pizza in Rome. Ouzo in Crete, and more. Ciao
George
11/10/2019 08:42:05 pm
Ed: What a wonderful trip. Welcome home. You didn't see any calcio, it sounds like. Look forward to hearing about your trip. GV
John McDermott
11/11/2019 12:31:27 am
While soccer is increasingly seen as a safer alternative for young as athletes it is sadly not immune to the problem of premature dementia due to repeated head trauma. The great German striker Gerd Müller is perhaps the best known example, though there have been numerous others. Even the legendary. The legendary ex-Cosmo Franz Beckenbauer is said to now be showing symptoms. Here is just one study: https://www.si.com/soccer/2019/10/21/soccer-study-head-injuries-dementia-parkinsons-trauma.
George
11/11/2019 07:08:23 am
John: quite right. I believe there are stats out of Europe that suggest heightened trauma from head-head contact (one yesterday in MLS final) as well as from headers.
John McDermott
11/11/2019 07:18:08 am
George, I’d be Very interested to know statistics on head-trauma related issues in rugby and Australian rules football. American football is played with more protective gear and the latest helmet technology. But I think the forces and frequency of hits to the head are on an entirely different level. I’m sure Steve Young, to name just one example, is monitored regularly for any sign of deterioration.
George
11/11/2019 01:28:40 pm
I've heard rugby people say head trauma far lower than FB or soccer.
John McDermott
11/11/2019 02:18:06 pm
George, my own soccer-related head trauma "events" are: broken nose 1, laceration above the eye and nine stitches, broken nose 2, broken jaw. Below the head: separated sternum, various cracked ribs, fractured clavicle, dislocated thumb, severe ankle sprain, MCL severe strain, broken toe, dislocated little finger. Even so, I consider it a small price to pay for all that the game has given me. And, so far, no neurological damage, just two creaky knees and a sore hip.
Roy Edelsack
11/11/2019 01:42:22 pm
I don't see how "American" football can survive after the ability to diagnose CTE in living humans is discovered and my understanding is that this day is very close.
George
11/11/2019 08:07:52 pm
Roy, I did not see it, was into BB at the time...just saw the videos. awful. I've seen dislocated shoulders but not an elbow. (Saw Theisman's broken leg at midfield, too good a view from press box.)
bruce
11/11/2019 08:26:49 pm
george,
bruce
11/11/2019 05:14:48 pm
george,
George
11/11/2019 09:16:48 pm
There was an enforcer -- in hockey, a goon -- who died young from abuse but also too many fights. Derek Boogard. John Branch, great reporter for NY Times, won a Pulitzer for his work on what lead to Boogard's death. Sure, lad, drop the gloves and the helmet and go pound that guy. GV
bruce
11/11/2019 09:38:42 pm
george,
Josh Rubin
11/12/2019 11:24:57 am
70,000 in Seattle! that reminds me of when my dad and I saw Cosmos in their heyday at the Meadowlands as part of more than 77,000! It was a thrill to see so many turn out for soccer in the US at that time, but it was a bit of a bubble. Much better now to see the game's popularity being built from the ground up.
Ed
11/12/2019 05:44:09 pm
Josh, saw a game like that Pele versus the Greek National team, there were 70,000 or so and seemed they were all screaming, “Hellas!”
George
11/13/2019 07:35:49 am
Josh and Ed: you guys are killing me. Never saw Pele era in NJ. Was covering religion (make your own jokes.)
Josh Rubin
11/13/2019 09:00:47 am
Ed, my dad and I saw a league game (a few actually) with the stadium at or near capacity. We also saw a few games when Cosmos played at Randall's Island, both before and with Pele. Before Pele, we may have been the only fans rooting in English.
George
11/13/2019 11:25:55 am
Never saw Pele play. But I have met him a dozen times. Very pleasant guy.
bruce
11/13/2019 11:32:35 am
george, 11/13/2019 11:54:27 am
George-at the risk of adding to your discomfort, I saw Pele play with Santos several times.
Ed
11/14/2019 10:20:23 am
Alan, lucky as goalies are in the midst of it. Our Muhlenberg Goalie, Bill Hitchcock, dove for a loose ball and was kicked, injuring his spleen. He lived a long, soccer free life, afterwards. I invented a way to head with less concussion risk, but it never caught on, somehow. I jumped high and the ball hit me square on the nose! Have you seen a nose the size of a grapefruit?
George
11/14/2019 07:27:44 am
Alan: protocol for concussions is much better since American football was shamed.
bruce
11/14/2019 07:39:45 am
george, Comments are closed.
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QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html Categories
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