Concussion Inc. (22 page)

The myth goes like this: as a cautionary tale of the temptations of big-time football, Penn State is especially “ironic.” For, you see, the program over which Paterno ruled for nearly half a century, in polished insularity, was exceptionally “clean.”

BS, PSU.

I wonder how many people reading this piece have heard of a former Nittany Lions defensive end named LaVon Chisley. He is serving a life sentence for murder, which gives fresh meaning to the sour joke, “Penn State? They're going to wind up in state pen.” In 2006, PSU student Langston Carraway — whose family had invited Chisley to live with them after his life spiraled into drug abuse and Paterno dumped him — was stabbed 93 times by Chisley.

Blogging for the
Baltimore Sun
, Chris Korman, who wrote a decade ago for the campus newspaper the
Daily Collegian
, said he was as disgusted as every other sentient person over the unchecked crimes against humanity by Jerry Sandusky through his associations with Penn State and the Second Mile Foundation for at-risk kids. But Korman was not shocked. An extended excerpt below — but first a program note: The most aggressive and prescient Pennsylvania journalist on the Paterno scandal has been a sometimes wacky Pittsburgh-based sports-talk host, Mark Madden, who cut his teeth reporting on (you guessed it) pro wrestling.

Here's Korman:

[Paterno] wasn't the same cerebral intellectual-as-football-coach that I'd read about and admired as a kid. . . . He seemed entirely comfortable with the idea that he'd made his bones decades ago, and that was that. The culture surrounding him supported that notion, of course. It was almost impossible to question the tenets of his virtue without being labeled nothing more than a rabble-rouser. Yet his players ran amok and left us constantly reading through police reports and court documents, and Paterno too often dismissed their transgressions as boys being boys. He was lenient in exactly the way Joe Paterno was not supposed to be.

[ … ] Penn State has long operated in a bubble; major newspapers from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh did not insist on covering the football program thoroughly, and the townspeople in State College had it in their best interest to make sure the football team, the heartbeat of their little city (and economy), had few obstacles (i.e., players who aren't academically eligible, or who get arrested).
8

Though the football team is something less than the economic heartbeat of my city, Berkeley, the DNA is familiar. You can't have lived here for as long as I have and not be familiar with hushed-up police-blotter stories involving Cal football players. (I do not refer to the well-publicized cases, such as that of current National Football Leaguer Marshawn Lynch.) To the extent coach Jeff Tedford is held accountable, it is only for his ongoing failure to recruit and develop quarterbacks as good as Andrew Luck. Tedford's program, too, is one of the “clean” ones. We all know that, because that's what we're told.

There is a sickness in our society, and it has a name: football worship. The symptoms are evident in red and blue states alike, in rural provinces and urban strongholds, in honkytonks and ivory towers, in profit-hungry enterprises and in the vicarious fantasy projections of paying fans and unpaid volunteer coaches.

This is not a problem that will be solved by bringing the National Collegiate Athletic Association to its antitrust knees, or by paying de facto professional college players something closer to their market value. And it won't be solved by saying that it exists at Pisspot Polytechnic or USC or Miami or Ohio State … or Penn State … yet somehow not here, right here, where each and every one of us lives. We are all Penn State.

15 November 2011..........

Many have remarked that a key to the unraveling in State College, Pennsylvania, was its insularity — a corollary to Penn State football's lack of accountability. I agree, and I am struck by how that most heinous of criminal patterns — systematic child sexual abuse — seems to attach itself to putative nonprofit institutions (Penn State, the Second Mile Foundation, the Catholic Church) more readily than to for-profit companies. There is plenty of corruption, plenty of ugly practices in the upper reaches of corporate America, but not so much
this
.

In that spirit, I sent a message with the text below yesterday morning to Bob Ladouceur, the legendary football coach at De La Salle High School in Concord, California, with copies to Leo Lopoz, the school's athletic director, and John Gray, the director of communications (for the athletic department, I believe, not the school, though I could be wrong about that). When none of those gentleman replied, I followed up today with the school's principal, Brother Robert J. Wickman, F.S.C. I will publish any response I receive from anyone at De La Salle.

To be transparent from the outset, I am a critic of the football system at all levels. I seek your responses to the questions below… .

By way of background, I know nothing about you or the De Le Salle High School program other than what I have read and heard as a general sports fan and as a consumer of Bay Area news media. I am familiar with your proud record of national-class athletic success, which includes alums such as current National Football League star Maurice Jones-Drew. I recall the tragic story of Terrance Kelly, the De La Salle standout who became an innocent-bystander murder victim in his hometown of Richmond, California, on the eve of embarking on a student-athlete career at the University of Oregon. By far my single biggest source of information is the very long and nice profile of you by reporter Rusty Simmons, which was published on the front page of the
San Francisco Chronicle
on October 16 of this year.

I thought Mr. Simmons' piece was a weak piece of journalism, and I told him so directly at the time in a polite email exchange. In the course of thousands of words of praise (whose sincerity I do not doubt), he quoted and cited the post–De La Salle life of only one of your ex-players — and that was Patrick Walsh, who has gone on to assume the same job you hold, but at Serra High School in San Mateo. Mr. Simmons replied to my criticism by saying he could have quoted enough Ladouceur protégés to fill a book.

Here are my questions to you:

1. Browsing your website, I was stunned to encounter first these words at the top of the home page: “The public's perception of what we do or what we stand for is drastically different than what actually takes place. I can imagine that this is probably true for many organizations. This is especially true for our football team. People are constantly writing the local papers questioning the integrity of our program. It's upsetting in so much that it questions the integrity of school officials and coaches sworn to uphold the ideals of our founder St. La Salle. What's worse, it completely nullifies the hard work, sheer grit, and determination of our student athletes at De La Salle High School.”
   What motivated you to say this? (Certainly not, I would think, coverage like that of the
   Chronicle.
   )
   
2. In his profile, reporter Simmons wrote that your own playing career had been ended by two serious injuries. I have no idea why he either did not ask you or he chose not to specify your injuries. Can you please do so for me?
   
3. Would you release publicly the budgets of the De La Salle High School Athletic Department and football program?
   
4. As you will see, the focus of my blog is the concussion crisis in football. Please share with my readers the complete record of the Spartans, during your tenure, in the area of traumatic brain injuries. Please also tell us the specifics of how your program has evolved in diagnosing and treating concussions and in formulating return-to-play procedures.
   

21 December 2011..........

Chris Mortensen of
ESPN
reports that the NFL will employ independent athletic trainers to spot concussions from the press box level and alert the folks at field level. Nice step, comments Mike Florio of NBC Sports'
Pro Football Talk
, but they need independent neurologists on the sidelines.

Excuse me while I refrain from doing handsprings. Professional football players are pros and they have a union. A lousy and corrupt union, maybe, but the jockocrats can do whatever they'll do. For all I care, they can assign certified morticians to every game.

The point is that “concussion awareness” steps, such as this latest one, are not reproducible at the feeder levels of American football mania: public high schools and peewee leagues. Most of the participants there shouldn't be playing Russian roulette with lifelong mental disability in the first place. And those worthies don't have the dough for independent trainers and independent neurologists. Most of them don't even have press box levels. Only the morticians, plus the lawsuits flowing therefrom.

We need a national sports concussion policy. Until we get one, we'll have an affirmative action program for the billable professionals, both the earnest and the cynical, of Concussion Inc.

24 January 2012..........

This week I came across the most heartwarming quote I've seen in some time. It was from Dr. Howard Derman, co-director of Houston's Methodist Hospital Concussion Center. Just as UPMC is the official sports medicine provider for the Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL and the Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League — ­doctors-to-team paid endorsement contracts and all — the Derman group in Houston serves the same function for the NFL's Texans, Major League Baseball's Astros, and Major League Soccer's Dynamo. Methodist Hospital offers young athletes ImPACT baseline tests for $5 a pop, and freely circulates materials on such topics as “Return to Play Defensive Back,” “Return to Play Wide Receiver,” and “Return to the Classroom After a Sport-Related Concussion.”

Discussing the youth tackle football leagues of greater Houston, in which more than 1,000 kids as young as five play every year, Derman told the
Houston Chronicle
, “I'm not saying it's safer to play football as a child [than other activities], but the plasticity — flexibility, in layman's terms — in the brain is greater in a child, and it has more room to swell. So things we see in adult football players are slightly less of a concern in children.”
9

This might be the most exotic argument I've heard yet from the “concussion awareness” crowd: it's better, not worse, for little kids to get their brains bashed … precisely because they're still growing!

Through an intermediary, Dr. Derman has complained. Since Derman marked at the top of his email that it was not for publication, I have emailed him my request for permission to publish it.

In the meantime, here is my own reply to the substance of Derman's comments:

My fundamental response to you is: you gave the quote to the
Houston Chronicle
; you own it.

The point of the
Chronicle
story is that football is safer than cheerleading. Beyond preposterous.

It is good to hear that you are paid $0.00 by the Texans. Is Methodist Hospital likewise paid $0.00? Or maybe the better question: does Methodist Hospital pay the Texans $0.00? The team's logo and association are right there on your center's website (which, incidentally, has no non-patient contact info, and no telephone number for media inquiries, that I can see).

My article did not claim that $5 was an unfair market price for what I have long opined is the unreliable ­ImPACT test. That the true cost is more does not sur­prise me and merely reinforces the argument that football concussion “solutions” will bankrupt our public schools. There is no way every high school football program in the country can successfully execute all the “football safety” mandates of new state-by-state legislation.

Please call me anytime. I also invite you to email your and Methodist Hospital's contracts with the Texans, for both medical services and sponsorship.

24 January 2012..........

Stefan Fatsis, with whom I haven't always agreed, has a hell of a strong post in his latest contribution to the Slate-Deadspin NFL Roundtable — a smart fan's gasfest that I sometimes poke fun at, but not this time.

[T]he NFL's chief marketing officer, Mark Waller, [tells the
New York Times
] player safety is “probably one of the most important topics for casual fans,
particularly mothers.
” I added the italics, because if Mom thinks football is crazy dangerous, she's not going to let her son play, and if enough sons don't play, football loses popularity, and if football loses popularity — you get the picture. Mom may not be reading websites that track catastrophic football injuries, but she will be watching the Super Bowl.
10

I'm also amused by the news that the NFL is about to unveil yet another new safety website, this one focused on the evolution of football rules. I wonder if it will juxtapose contemporary commentary with observations by Dr. Joe Maroon on how you just need to make sure you lead with your shoulder pads when executing the flying wedge. (And maybe Dr. Joe and WWE can lend John Cena, Rey Mysterio, and others to do “don't try this at home” public service spots.)

24 January 2012..........

In college we used to joke, “If I were smart, I'd get good grades.” And if I could write as well as Robert Lipsyte — author, commentator, former
New York Times
sports columnist — I'd be Robert Lipsyte. Since I can't, I'm not, but I'm a Lipsyte reader and admirer, which is good enough today.

Writing for TomDispatch.com in a piece headlined “Four Reasons to Watch the Super Bowl,” Lipsyte neatly straddles disgust and sympathy. The essay isn't perfect (the take on class warfare seems to me more Jello-like than lucid, and Tim Tebow was not a rookie in 2011), but the takeaway is a gem. It comes right after Lipsyte tap-dances on the Joe Paterno legacy and breaks down how football's “little insults to the brain” begin early and “add up to catastrophe in middle age”: