As bad as constant head trauma can be, it is just one factor in the
violence that erupts within professional football.
Banging your head against a solid wall, day after day, will eventually
lead to brain damage. But add to the head banging an environment of
violence where the goal is to dominate your opponent, and you begin to
compound that brain damage. Add to that our attitude toward women,
and our macho male need to "possess" them, along with the attitude
that you have a right to be the man in charge, and you begin to see
the real problem that comes from teaching violence.
Take a boy from early childhood and train him to be part of a team
that is focused on dominating their opponents. They must become
tougher and more cunning than the other boys competing for whichever
position they wish to play. Over the years, the weak and the faint of
heart are left behind. Only the strongest and meanest and most
skilled will survive. Those few who finally grab off the brass ring
and find themselves in the ranks of the NFL, have been conditioned to
think of themselves as invincible. They are the "Master Race". By
all standards, they are revered and fawned over. They expect to
benefit from the spoils of their long years of sacrifice. And what
are the rewards we offer them? Money and women.
Yet, after only a few years of success, they are "retired". Put out
to pasture. The lucky ones have salted away a few millions, or been
courted by some corporation to help entice business. But most are
left to become lonely has beens, living in past glory. Their wives
and children become the only objects they can dominate. And as the
years pass and the head trauma begins to exhibit itself, violence
erupts. Very often it is coupled with alcohol and drugs. It can be
complicated by doctors prescribing drugs to help with the growing pain
that often develops in bodies that have been punished over many years.
Finally, add to all of this the fact that we are a violent nation,
basking in our Empire's dominance of the world. We sneer at
"Peaceniks" and call them Pussy's, or worse. So tell me, how else
would we expect these aging warriors to behave?
Carl Jarvis
Carl Jarvis
On 9/23/14, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Are Head Injuries the Bridge Between the NFL Playing Field and Domestic
> Violence?
> Dave Zirin on September 21, 2014 - 7:13 PM ET
>
> NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
> There is an unspoken question lurking behind the NFL domestic violence
> cover-up saga that has emerged over the last month. It is whether the
> brutality of the game, particularly head injuries, plays a role in the
> prevalence of players committing acts of violence against women. The NFL
> has
> a vested interest in not having this discussion. On head injuries, as the
> title of the award-winning book said so clearly, it remains "a league of
> denial." If, in the name of public relations, the owners won't have a
> discussion about the connection between their sport and horrific
> post-concussive syndromes like ALS and early-onset dementia, are they
> really
> going to talk about links between head injuries and domestic violence? The
> sports media are largely in denial about this topic as well, as there was
> not one question in Roger Goodell's instantly infamous Friday press
> conference about whether the league would investigate whether brain
> injuries
> could be the bridge between the violence at work and the violence at home.
> Yet many domestic violence advocates are also-understandably-not thrilled
> with this line of discussion. Partner abuse occurs in all walks of life,
> all
> professions and among all income groups, and post-concussive syndromes are
> almost always not a part of those stories. Additionally, to blame it on
> concussions seems to be excusing domestic violence and denying the fact
> that
> NFL players have agency and choice before becoming abusers. This resistance
> is very understandable. But attempting to explore and explain the
> shockingly
> high rates of domestic violence in the NFL is not the same as excusing it.
> So is there a connection? As my friend Ruth, who is a DV counselor, says,
> "When it comes to domestic violence, it is extremely difficult to
> generalize
> across the board, in the NFL or otherwise." In other words, every case is
> distinct, reflecting the interpersonal relationships of the parties
> involved. But there are factors that appear to show themselves in the
> football cases with alarming regularity. Some of these factors are high
> rates of stress, a culture of entitlement for sports stars that predates
> their life in the NFL, and an inability to turn off the violence of the
> game
> once the pads are off. This is when we see the most toxic part of the
> sport's hyper-masculinist culture poison the relationships between the men
> who play the game-as well as the men who own teams-and the women in their
> lives. But among many players, this question of the role of head injuries
> still lingers in the background.
> Dan Diamond over at Forbes is one of the few journalists I have seen
> explore
> these links in detail. In one piece, he cites a "disturbing new report"
> that
> shows "3 in 10 NFL players suffer from at least moderate brain disease."
> Diamond then details many examples of former players who were found in
> their
> autopsies to have the repetitive post-concussive syndromes known as CTE,
> and
> were also arrested at some point or another for domestic violence. He
> writes:
> The key issue is whether suffering repeated head trauma lowers a person's
> self-control. And while many pro football players haven't been diagnosed
> with concussions in the NFL, nearly all of them have been playing football
> since they were young and suffered repetitive, frequent blows that can add
> up over time. And researchers know that those concussions can change a
> person. Even a pillar of the community.
> This connects anecdotally with much of my own research. Over the last two
> months, I have spoken with three different women whose husbands are or were
> NFL players. All three are domestic violence survivors. In one case, the
> marriage was mended and endures to this day. In one case, it ended in
> divorce. In one case it ended with the suicide of the player in question.
> Yet that is where the differences ended. The similarities were stunning. In
> all three cases, the violence was precipitated either by migraine headaches
> or self-medicating-drugs or alcohol-to manage migraines. In all three
> cases,
> the survivors spoke about their NFL husbands becoming disoriented or
> light-sensitive, easily frustrated and quick to anger in ways that did not
> exist earlier in the relationship. In all three cases, they spoke about
> bizarre looks on their husbands' faces when they committed the abuse, from
> a
> chillingly peaceful calm to quizzical smiles. Whatever the look, they spoke
> of being in the presence of someone they "did not recognize."
> Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!
> I also spoke with Matt Chaney, a former college football player and author
> of the book Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football, about
> whether he believed there was a causal link between concussions and
> domestic
> violencw. He e-mailed me back the following. "I can't speak as medical
> authority on any link but as a journalist and academic who's read and filed
> tens of thousand documents on football hazards from violence to drugs, and
> one who's interviewed a thousand people, along with being a former college
> player who has knowledge of countless athletes and their relationships, I
> believe football brain injuries lead many players to violence they wouldn't
> otherwise have committed, ranging from domestic cases to random acts.. I
> think brain injuries, after studying the topic as we all have in recent
> years, now explains much about the perplexing cases of violence and other
> irrational behavior among football players I've known. And while I thought
> I
> abhorred street fighting, before college football, I found myself nearly
> involved with or nearly instigating such trouble on more than one occasion
> while I was in full-contact activity, fall and spring practices, banging my
> head. If I didn't have headache after a college contact session, I didn't
> think I'd done anything."
> This question, of course, has profound implications well beyond the sport.
> It is about the choice families make whether to let their children play
> tackle football. It is about the health and safety of women in
> relationships
> with NFL players, and whether recognizing warning signs of CTE can create
> opportunities for intervention before abuse takes place. It is about the
> degree to which the league's very violence bears some complicity in their
> abuse. This is a difficult question, one Roger Goodell is loathe to
> discuss.
> That is exactly why we need to keep asking it.
> Read Next: "No Justice, No Football: Ferguson Demonstrators Bring Struggle
> to NFL Sunday"
> Related Topics: Sports | Society
> Are Head Injuries the Bridge Between the NFL Playing Field and Domestic
> Violence?
> Dave Zirin on September 21, 2014 - 7:13 PM ET
> . Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> .
> /printmail/blog/181695/are-head-injuries-bridge-between-nfl-playing-field-an
> d-domestic-violence
> /printmail/blog/181695/are-head-injuries-bridge-between-nfl-playing-field-an
> d-domestic-violence
> .
> .
> https://subscribe.thenation.com/servlet/OrdersGateway?cds_mag_code=NAN&cds_p
> age_id=105997&cds_response_key=I11BSPRV1
> https://subscribe.thenation.com/servlet/OrdersGateway?cds_mag_code=NAN&cds_p
> age_id=105997&cds_response_key=I11BSPRV1
> http://www.thenation.com/sites/default/files/roger_goodell_ap_img_1.jpg
> http://www.thenation.com/sites/default/files/roger_goodell_ap_img_1.jpg
> NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
> There is an unspoken question lurking behind the NFL domestic violence
> cover-up saga that has emerged over the last month. It is whether the
> brutality of the game, particularly head injuries, plays a role in the
> prevalence of players committing acts of violence against women. The NFL
> has
> a vested interest in not having this discussion. On head injuries, as the
> title of the award-winning book said so clearly, it remains "a league of
> denial." If, in the name of public relations, the owners won't have a
> discussion about the connection between their sport and horrific
> post-concussive syndromes like ALS and early-onset dementia, are they
> really
> going to talk about links between head injuries and domestic violence? The
> sports media are largely in denial about this topic as well, as there was
> not one question in Roger Goodell's instantly infamous Friday press
> conference about whether the league would investigate whether brain
> injuries
> could be the bridge between the violence at work and the violence at home.
> Yet many domestic violence advocates are also-understandably-not thrilled
> with this line of discussion. Partner abuse occurs in all walks of life,
> all
> professions and among all income groups, and post-concussive syndromes are
> almost always not a part of those stories. Additionally, to blame it on
> concussions seems to be excusing domestic violence and denying the fact
> that
> NFL players have agency and choice before becoming abusers. This resistance
> is very understandable. But attempting to explore and explain the
> shockingly
> high rates of domestic violence in the NFL is not the same as excusing it.
> So is there a connection? As my friend Ruth, who is a DV counselor, says,
> "When it comes to domestic violence, it is extremely difficult to
> generalize
> across the board, in the NFL or otherwise." In other words, every case is
> distinct, reflecting the interpersonal relationships of the parties
> involved. But there are factors that appear to show themselves in the
> football cases with alarming regularity. Some of these factors are high
> rates of stress, a culture of entitlement for sports stars that predates
> their life in the NFL, and an inability to turn off the violence of the
> game
> once the pads are off. This is when we see the most toxic part of the
> sport's hyper-masculinist culture poison the relationships between the men
> who play the game-as well as the men who own teams-and the women in their
> lives. But among many players, this question of the role of head injuries
> still lingers in the background.
> Dan Diamond over at Forbes is one of the few journalists I have seen
> explore
> these links in detail. In one piece, he cites a "disturbing new report"
> that
> shows "3 in 10 NFL players suffer from at least moderate brain disease."
> Diamond then details many examples of former players who were found in
> their
> autopsies to have the repetitive post-concussive syndromes known as CTE,
> and
> were also arrested at some point or another for domestic violence. He
> writes:
> The key issue is whether suffering repeated head trauma lowers a person's
> self-control. And while many pro football players haven't been diagnosed
> with concussions in the NFL, nearly all of them have been playing football
> since they were young and suffered repetitive, frequent blows that can add
> up over time. And researchers know that those concussions can change a
> person. Even a pillar of the community.
> This connects anecdotally with much of my own research. Over the last two
> months, I have spoken with three different women whose husbands are or were
> NFL players. All three are domestic violence survivors. In one case, the
> marriage was mended and endures to this day. In one case, it ended in
> divorce. In one case it ended with the suicide of the player in question.
> Yet that is where the differences ended. The similarities were stunning. In
> all three cases, the violence was precipitated either by migraine headaches
> or self-medicating-drugs or alcohol-to manage migraines. In all three
> cases,
> the survivors spoke about their NFL husbands becoming disoriented or
> light-sensitive, easily frustrated and quick to anger in ways that did not
> exist earlier in the relationship. In all three cases, they spoke about
> bizarre looks on their husbands' faces when they committed the abuse, from
> a
> chillingly peaceful calm to quizzical smiles. Whatever the look, they spoke
> of being in the presence of someone they "did not recognize."
> Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!
> I also spoke with Matt Chaney, a former college football player and author
> of the book Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football, about
> whether he believed there was a causal link between concussions and
> domestic
> violencw. He e-mailed me back the following. "I can't speak as medical
> authority on any link but as a journalist and academic who's read and filed
> tens of thousand documents on football hazards from violence to drugs, and
> one who's interviewed a thousand people, along with being a former college
> player who has knowledge of countless athletes and their relationships, I
> believe football brain injuries lead many players to violence they wouldn't
> otherwise have committed, ranging from domestic cases to random acts.. I
> think brain injuries, after studying the topic as we all have in recent
> years, now explains much about the perplexing cases of violence and other
> irrational behavior among football players I've known. And while I thought
> I
> abhorred street fighting, before college football, I found myself nearly
> involved with or nearly instigating such trouble on more than one occasion
> while I was in full-contact activity, fall and spring practices, banging my
> head. If I didn't have headache after a college contact session, I didn't
> think I'd done anything."
> This question, of course, has profound implications well beyond the sport.
> It is about the choice families make whether to let their children play
> tackle football. It is about the health and safety of women in
> relationships
> with NFL players, and whether recognizing warning signs of CTE can create
> opportunities for intervention before abuse takes place. It is about the
> degree to which the league's very violence bears some complicity in their
> abuse. This is a difficult question, one Roger Goodell is loathe to
> discuss.
> That is exactly why we need to keep asking it.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
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