Saturday, September 15, 2012

Our Gladiators

Funny coincidence: I just started playing a free gladiator game on my iPad and this piece on the NFL came out.  Oy.  I had written a fair amount here on the concussion problem (here, here, and here as examples), so I do think that Goodell was right to punish the bounty-hunters, but wrong on his scheduling obsessions.  The previous bargaining effort had an 18 game season as a focal point despite the fact that the NFL was facing a serious problem with the danger of the game with 16 regular season games.

Last season saw numerous players losing significant playing time due to concussions although others managed to stay on the field longer than they should have.  And now we have Thursday games throughout the season.  Whitlock is right that the talk about concussions and the reality of the schedules suggests just a bit more than naked hypocrisy.  The lawsuits that will hit the NFL will be most problematic, and I do start to wonder again whether I should watch football tomorrow. 

This story does convince me not to watch on Thursdays.

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