Women are at the NFL combine, the NCAA is demonstrating a lack of institutional control by accusing another school of a lack of institutional control, our pets’ heads are falling off, Neil DeGrasse Tyson is trying to explain the Russian meteor to Jon Gruden, and the Brooklyn Nets appear to have hired John Madden as their statistician.
The football head injury conversation more and more people are having is a complicated and multifaceted one. One of the reachable conclusions is obvious, though: a confluence of related factors could conspire to bring about the “end” of football as we currently know it. Many people often immediately retort, “No!”, maybe because they like football a lot and don’t want it to end, but also, they say, there’s too much money in football, it’s too big of a business, and it’s way too popular and ingrained in our culture to go away. And the first person might then bring up boxing. To put the thesis statement at the end of this opening paragraph, the point, for those, like Jonathan Mahler, who might miss it, is that if a sport as widely popular and culturally ingrained as boxing could fall from prominence, so too could football; in other words, that football is America’s most popular, wealthy, culturally relevant sport is no defense to the claim that it might lose that status, because a once-similarly situated sport– boxing– did lose its status as such.
Mahler, a sports columnist for whatever Bloomberg View is, captured readers with the headline “Why Football Won’t Go the Way of Boxing (Yet)” and his thesis is that football won’t follow boxing’s decline because boxing’s decline was the result of television-related changes, not “brutality.” The issue that vitiates the analogy is not the specific reason for the decline, as Mahler believes, but it is the fact of the decline itself.
ALDLAND is disappointed that we couldn’t bring in our promised special guest for a podcast this week, but rest assured he or she will be on soon for all sorts of fun discussion. What we do have for our loyal listener(s) is discussion of last week’s Super Bowl, as well as some choice stories from around the sports world. There’s even some soccer thrown in, for our listeners across the pond. So just listen already. And tell your friends. If you aren’t telling your friends then you are failing in your social obligations.
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Download the ALDLAND podcast at our Podcasts Page or stream it right here:
Everyone saw the game and it was a few days ago, so here are just a few points to put a wrap on this sports year*:
Thanks for tuning into our Super Bowl coverage. Onward.
*It really feels like the “sports year” ought to run from Super Bowl to Super Bowl, so we’re going to treat it that way around here. I’m not really sure what we’ll touch on between now and the Daytona 500, but there are a few items in the pipeline, so don’t worry. The slowest sports day of the year doesn’t come until July anyway.
How do I know the Ravens will win? Read on…
Len Dawson, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback, after losing Super Bowl I
First, the important details: Kickoff is at 6:30 pm, according to the NFL. CBS has the television and online broadcast rights, and Dial Global will have the radio broadcast. In reality, I have no idea if 6:30 represents kickoff, or just “kickoff,” and the real thing won’t happen until 7:00. I guess we’ll all find out together.
Second, before you read further, remember that if enough of you sign this petition, you don’t have to go to work tomorrow.
Third, I think our Super Bowl preview coverage over the last two weeks has been pretty good. Some highlights while you wait for “kickoff”:
Fourth, assuming you’ve covered that ground already, the best of the rest of the web:
Fifth, as promised, your guaranteed winner tonight is the Baltimore Ravens. I admitted I’ll be cheering for San Francisco, but I have it on the best authority that the streets of Baltimore will be the ones to host a Super Bowl victory parade this year. You can read the full explanation here, but the short story is this logical truth: Norm Macdonald has a lifelong sports gambling problem; when he bets, he rarely wins; when he isn’t gambling, however, he can’t miss; he is gambling on these NFL playoffs, including the Super Bowl; a friend uncovered Norm’s early season, pre-return-to-gambling pick; by its untainted nature, that pick will be correct; that pick was Baltimore to win the Super Bowl. Unassailable. If you take it to the bank, be sure to break off part of your winnings for Norm (and me).
Enjoy the Super Bowl, everybody! Thanks for spending some of your pregame time with ALDLAND. Follow us @ALDLANDia for withering insight during the game.
With all of you ALDLANDers out there getting excited for the Super Bowl, we had to put out a robust podcast covering that game, and also the biggest game of the weekend, Michigan at Indiana. Join yours truly and Marcus as we cover everything from x’s and o’s to how dumb Chris Culliver is. Come for the Super Bowl, stay for discussion of James Franklin being a weirdo.
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Download the ALDLAND podcast at our Podcasts Page or stream it right here:
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Super Bowl XLVII, brought to you by the AARP?
The leadup to Super Bowl XVII has gotten a little raucous around here, and I promise it wasn’t planned that way. First, make sure you sign the petition, and then check out all of our Super Bowl coverage. You won’t regret it.
One item buried in all of that is a breakdown of a fantastic GIF of 49ers fans. While preparing my analysis, I came across a number of videos of musical performances that were new to me, even though the songs are well known. One of those was by a relatively recent Super Bowl halftime performer, so I decided to feature it in this spot this week:
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The Truth: What really happened in the murder trial of Ray Lewis, Reginald Oakley, and Joseph Sweeting (via Atlanta Magazine)
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“When was the last time a high-profile case in Atlanta ended in acquittal?” Bruce Harvey asks. “For a criminal defense lawyer, it doesn’t get any better. It ain’t never gonna be no sweeter than this.”
The colorful, ponytailed defense lawyer smiles broadly, sitting behind his paper-strewn desk in a loft near the Tabernacle club downtown. Behind him, the wall is dominated by a framed photo and signature of legendary lawyer Clarence Darrow. Harvey’s Harley-Davidson motorcycle is parked in the lobby downstairs. “Not guilty, not guilty, not guilty,” he almost whispers. “You know, this was the right verdict. In that way, justice and the system was vindicated. When it works the way it’s supposed to work, our justice system is a glorious thing. The trial wasn’t the problem, the problem was that this case ever made it to trial. That was the disgrace.”
The Ray Lewis Murder Trial, beyond attracting more national attention than any courthouse drama to unfold here in more than 20 years, became a morality play for modern-day Atlanta. It had the intrigue of a well-crafted whodunit. The glitz and glamour of the Super Bowl. An NFL star accused of murder. The trappings of Buckhead. A setting outside a popular bar in which professional athletes partied in a VIP room. It had the street hustle of hip-hop. Young black men wearing mink coats and drinking $200 bottles of champagne with luscious gold-diggers hanging on each arm. It was the kind of trial that makes or breaks legal careers, that seals reputations. And it attracted the creme de la creme of Atlanta’s criminal defense lawyers.
“This was a defense lawyer’s dream,” says Harvey. “You had a high-profile, nationally significant case and an innocent client.”
The result was a stunning and humiliating defeat for Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard. CNN legal analyst Roger Cossack went as far as to compare Howard’s performance to the bumbling Inspector Clouseau of the Pink Panther movies. “If they ever write a book listing the most inept prosecutions ever,” Cossack wrote in his online column, “this one will be highlighted as the standard by which all others are to be measured.”
In a series of interviews, both the defense team and Howard spoke candidly to Atlanta Magazine about the trial. Howard strenuously defended his handling of the case and his decision to enter the courtroom to personally prosecute after a nearly four-year hiatus from trial work. He described witnesses sabotaging the prosecution with organized silence. He answered criticism that he rushed the case to trial, maintaining that the case demanded aggressive prosecution.
Defense lawyers revealed how they shredded the prosecution case. They described political pressure from city officials that led to hastily drawn indictments. Some of the defense lawyers accused Howard of approaching ethical boundaries, even lying to them. (Howard denies all such allegations.) All the lawyers spoke openly of their behind-the-scenes disagreements, detailing awkward moments in coordinating a shared defense strategy. They told the inside story of Lewis’ dramatic 11th-hour plea agreement that gave the All-Pro Baltimore Ravens linebacker what he’d wanted all along: probation for a misdemeanor count of obstruction of justice. And they explained how they won the outright acquittals of co-defendants Joseph Sweeting and Reginald Oakley on all charges.
Above all, they talked about the truths that were never revealed in the courtroom. They talked about what really happened that night when two men died in the middle of the street in the heart of Buckhead. … Read More
(via Atlanta Magazine)
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Super Bowl XLVII, brought to you by the AARP?
First, here’s Sports On Earth’s Mike Tanier on Super Bowl Media Day:
The most notorious event of Super Bowl week: a Roman orgy in which the wine and debauchery have been replaced by banal quotes and poorly concealed hostility. Media Day is our industry’s excuse to stuff a tube down our own metaphorical esophagus and gorge ourselves like foie gras geese on a fatty slurry of pregame hype. The players trapped inside interview booths for hour-long interview marathons are ironically the only people in attendance not trying to draw attention to themselves. The whole event is televised, and sometimes open to the ticketed public, so fans can watch players go glassy eyed at inane questions while reporters jostle each other as if the person who gets 18 inches closer to Pernell McPhee wins an automatic Pulitzer.
Media Day, like many Super Bowl events, has acquired its own gravity and atmosphere, so sportswriting cutups like me are more likely to write about Media Day than to write reports based on the interviews we conduct during Media Day. You might think that this would be a good year to report on the phenomenon of reporting on the phenomenon of Media Day, which I am technically doing in this sentence, but in fact that became a common angle on Media Day about two years ago. At some point, you just stick phrases like “Delanie Walker spoke to a bikini model holding a disco ball dangling from a fishing pole Tuesday,” on a plate with some field greens, then move on to something else.
Tanier’s basic take on Media Day isn’t new or fresh– something he readily acknowledges– even if his way of presenting it was.
The question is, why do the same people who hate Super Bowl Media Day seem to absolutely love the cultural circus that is college football’s SEC Media Days?
This is an open thread.UPDATE: This no longer is an open thread.
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