And if your head explodes with dark forebodings, too

It's often been said that "Sports is human life in microcosm", but sometimes it's a pretty tawdry microcosm. Other times, it's just frickin' bizarre. We'll get to tawdry in a second, but first, the quotable sports story of the day:

The chicken toss has been declared off limits at Kansas State. For years, Kansas State students have smuggled live chickens into basketball games against Kansas, then thrown them onto the court and behind the opposing bench before tip-off mocking their rival's Jayhawk mascot.

Umm, how exactly does one get not one, but several live chickens into a basketball game? These days, many stadiums still check purses, on the chance that Al Qaeda might hate not only our freedom, but also varsity college sports. In what exactly can one keep a chicken hidden and quiet, out of view of security until it is chucked onto the court? This has to rank as one of the mysteries of the universe, as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, to the tawdry. The chairman of the N.F.L.’s research committee on concussions, Dr. Elliott Pellman, has resigned. Ok, that's not the tawdry part. It turns out that not only was he caught a few years back seriously padding his resume, and not only is he not a freakin' neurologist, but his "research" for the league seems to contradict virtually all the established medical research on concussions. ESPN published a story on him and the NFL's treatment of concussions a year ago which was truly disturbing:

Since it first published research results in 2003, Pellman's committee has drawn a number of important conclusions about head trauma and how to treat it that contradict the research and experiences of many other doctors who treat sports concussions, not to mention the players who have suffered them. For example, Pellman and his colleagues wrote in January 2005 that returning to play after a concussion "does not involve significant risk of a second injury either in the same game or during the season." But a 2003 NCAA study of 2,905 college football players found just the opposite: Those who have suffered concussions are more susceptible to further head trauma for seven to 10 days after the injury.

Pellman and his group have also stated repeatedly that their work shows "no evidence of worsening injury or chronic cumulative effects of multiple MTBIs in NFL players." But a 2003 report by the Center for the Study of Retired Athletes at the University of North Carolina found a link between multiple concussions and depression among former pro players with histories of concussions. A 2005 follow-up study at the Center showed a connection between concussions and both brain impairment and Alzheimer's disease among retired NFL players.

Just to make it clear, post-concussive syndrome can be incredibly serious. Merrill Hoge, a former player and current sportscaster, described his symptoms:

Five weeks later, he was hammered on a tackle in a game against Buffalo and collapsed on the next down. His vital signs vanished for a few seconds. He spent two days in an intensive-care unit, and was told by neurologists that his eight-year career was over.

For a year, Hoge said, he could not stand bright lights and had dizzy spells. He struggled with arithmetic, and reading was difficult. He also had no sense of direction.

"It's one of the most helpless feelings I ever dealt with," he said. "I would get lost in my own neighborhood."

It can get worse. Andre Waters, a player for the Philadelphia Eagles, committed suicide in November, and the brain damage he incurred during his career is being blamed:

Brain damage caused on the football field ultimately led to the suicide of former NFL defensive back Andre Waters, according to a forensic pathologist who studied Waters' brain tissue.

Bennet Omalu of the University of Pittsburgh told The New York Times that Waters' brain tissue resembled that of an 85-year-old man and that there were characteristics of early stage Alzheimer's. Omalu told the newspaper he believed the damage was related to multiple concussions Waters sustained during his 12-year NFL career with the Philadelphia Eagles and Arizona Cardinals.

Anyway, back to the NFL's concussion committee. Were one to be uncharitable, one could suggest that the committee is blatantly violating their Hippocratic oaths and endangering players for either hidden payoffs or possibly even worse, the continued opportunity to be the medical equivalents of starfuckers. Shockingly enough, their systematic trend is to suggest that athletes being paid millions of dollars maximize the value that teams get out of a contract, even if it endangers their lives and livelihoods once they are no longer team property. I'm not trying to suggest that the people on the committee range from physicians little better than tools because they are working outside their field of expertise to compromised hacks who should actually know better...but I'm not really in the mood to suggest any other alternative, if you get my drift. As for the league, it's important to remember that while fans talk of tradition and good times, owners think of dollars. We see championships, they see dollars. We have heroes, they have profits. There may be an occasional exception (Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks comes to mind), but in general, it's all about the money, and we are their all-too-willing ATM machines, as they pull their clever reverse Robin Hood trick on us.

There would be a larger outcry about this kind of thing, except for the fact that in discussing sports, most men take out their brains, place them gently on a padded surface, and replace their cognitive capacities with a mix of testosterone and bullcrap. We value things like "shaking off a hit" even if that hit has left an athlete with a permanent brain injury. Again from the ESPN piece:

A knee to the back of the head knocked Chrebet stone-cold unconscious a quarter earlier, and now the Jets' team doctor is putting the wideout through a series of mental tests...Then he asks, "Are you okay?" When Chrebet replies, "I'm fine," Pellman sends him back in.

For some sick reason, this kind of behavior is seen as exhibiting "toughness" and "resolve", and is admired and complimented. Forget the fact that Chrebet has a family and decades more to live, of course, since he's a wide receiver and this is a close game! For all that I love watching sports, sports culture often disgusts me, as my anti-Chief diatribes should probably have indicated. I'm still trying to convince myself that athletics can be separated from the culture surrounding them, but I haven't come up with an argument that sounds vaguely plausible as of yet. Thankfully, baseball lacks the violence associated with football, and merely has to deal with the fact that some people estimate that over 80% of all players take either steroids or some form of amphetamines. Joy!