Football Under Fire in Wake of Seau Death

[Allegra]

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/05/03/football_under_fire_in_wake_of_seau_death

May 03, 2012

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Junior Seau. Junior Seau's suicide. I met Junior Seau just one time. It was one year at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic Golf Tournament. Dean Spanos, the Chargers owner, was playing in the tournament and I was playing with Fuzzy Zoeller and his crew that year. And we all had dinner one night after that day's round.  And Junior Seau was everything everybody is saying about him. He was uplifting, he was funny, he was in a great mood.  He was kind of in my face humorously over politics.



He was a big believer in the government doing as much it could to help the poor and this kind of thing.  He was just one of these people you like being around. So, now, how to explain the suicide? I have to tell you, I am amazed.  Every channel I go to there's either a sports doctor or a psychiatrist or somebody explaining, "It has to have been all the concussions from playing in the NFL! It just had to be. There can't be any other reason."  Well, I did hear one other reason, that he just couldn't adjust to not being in the spotlight, to not being on stage.

The football field's a huge stage and he was a big star. He just could not adjust to being a comparative nobody.  He didn't leave a note so nobody knows.  Here's Sanjay Gupta. He was on CNN so nobody heard it. That's why I want to play you this one.  He was on Anderson Cooper 210 last night, which nobody saw.  So I have to play the sound bite here for you.  Anderson Cooper said, "Sanjay, several NFL players have committed suicide in recent years. Brain-related injuries they sustain while playing have been blamed.

"It's impossible to know what was going on in Junior Seau's mind at this point..." So, "impossible to know." It's impossible to know, but still: What was going on in his mind? It's impossible to know, Sanjay! We all know it's impossible to know, but is it possible? Even though it's impossible to know, "is it possible that past head traumas could have played a role in Seau's taking his own life?"  It's "impossible to know what was going on in his mind," but nevertheless I want you to answer the question of why he did it.

GUPTA:  We have enough evidence to say, "Yes," because you're starting to see, uh, a pattern of exactly what you're describing here, Anderson. This idea that the previous blows to the head -- uh, trauma, for example, sustained on a football field -- can accumulate over time and lead to something known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, CTE.  Dave Duerson. You remember, you and I talked about him in 2011. He shot himself in the chest as well.  It's a very unusual way -- uh, a rare way -- for one to commit suicide and just hard to talk about. But in Duerson's case he had left that note that Paul was sort of alluding to saying, "I shot myself in the chest.  I'd like my brain to be studied."  Duerson's brain was studied and in fact he did have exactly what he was concerned about: CTE.  That was confirmed, you know, when they studied his brain.

RUSH:  Now, Seau did not leave a note asking for his brain to be studied.  Already doctors are asking for the brain of Seau to study it. But how many of you laughed at me when I told you some months ago that maybe not in our lifetimes (but it's gonna be close) somebody is seriously going to suggest banning the game of football.  You can see we're heading in that direction.  Now, every suicide is due to the game. "The game is killing people!" That's already been established here.  So what's next, folks, with liberals in charge?

END TRANSCRIPT

[Chieftain]

Football was already under fire before Junior took his life. 

Granted, the suspensions and fines being handed out right now for the "bounties" that were being paid are not enough, but they are a start.  I'd like to see permanent banning from professional sports for any member of any coaching staff that had anything to do with bounties,.

Football was almost banned in American Colleges back in the early part of the 20th Century because players were being killed outright on the field during games from all of the deliberately violent hitting that went on.  Last year the NFL handed out more penalties and suspensions for unsportsmanlike conduct and illegal hits than I have ever seen in a season, and I expect that trend to continue. 

[Lipstick on a Hillary]

As the culture declines, so does good sportsmanship.

[Atomic Cow]

Soon only flag football will be allowed.

Hockey will be banned.

Basketball will be reduced to a game of "H-O-R-S-E"

Soccer will be reduced to kickball

Baseball will become Wiffle ball

Every other sport will suffer a similar fate.

We're becoming a nation of wusses, trying to legislate and regulate any and all risk out of life.

[Rivergirl]

A caller to a sports station suggested that the suicides could be the result of long term pain medication use.

Surely something to consider when it come to football players who take such physical abuse during their careers.

Think back to the abberent behavior of some of the school shooters and we find that most if not all of them were on some kind of prescribed medication.

[jmyrlefuller]

Football was already under fire before Junior took his life. 

Granted, the suspensions and fines being handed out right now for the "bounties" that were being paid are not enough, but they are a start.  I'd like to see permanent banning from professional sports for any member of any coaching staff that had anything to do with bounties,.

Football was almost banned in American Colleges back in the early part of the 20th Century because players were being killed outright on the field during games from all of the deliberately violent hitting that went on.  Last year the NFL handed out more penalties and suspensions for unsportsmanlike conduct and illegal hits than I have ever seen in a season, and I expect that trend to continue. 

The thing is, when this was a problem 100 years ago, President Roosevelt basically said there need to be some changes here. That's when they invented the forward pass-- that ended the focus on simply out-trampling your opponent and opened the game up significantly.

We're seeing an uptick in this sort of thing, especially as of late. Why? There are a number of reasons, but the game is getting much faster. It used to be, up until the 1950s or so, that you had to play both sides of the ball-- a much more physically taxing feat that slowed down the game. Now that we have specialists, they have faster, but shorter bursts of speed. Take Seau's position, for instance-- linebacker. These days a typical linebacker doesn't play more than half the downs in a series; you'll have a first- and second-down linebacker that defends the run better, and then you have a third-down linebacker that does nothing but blitz the quarterback. When you're only playing a sixth of the game, and rarely play consecutive downs, you're going to be much fresher and make much harder hits.

Couple that with the increased size of the typical NFL player, and you have a much more dangerous game.

There are some solutions, although I am sure they are quite radical. There are already numerous variations of the game, both at the high school/amateur (six-man, eight-man, etc.) and at the professional level (arena football), that have fewer men on each side, which de-emphasizes size. (You could also achieve a similar effect by increasing the number of eligible receivers.) There's also the possibility of going back to one-platoon (a là basketball, soccer, rugby, even baseball) to slow the game down. I've heard the possibility of cutting back the amount of heavy equipment the players wear to make them more aware of their vulnerability. (Indeed, other codes of carry-the-ball football, like rugby and Australian, don't seem to have as many problems with this.)

Eventually football is going to have to begin making the necessary changes to keep the game reasonably safe to play. However, the game's just too popular for it to just be banned outright.

[Chieftain]

All true Jimmy, but we still have this emerging scandal about the bounties coaches were paying for hitting Quarterbacks, and even proof that emerged last week that the New Orleans Saints had the stadium rigged with directional microphones so they could listen in to the opposing Offense and Defense when they were calling plays.

Its the institutionalized cheating as well as the deliberate infliction of serious injuries on players that is the issue today.  The equipment players wear today goes a long way toward preventing serious injuries when the game is played according to the rules, and the problems arise when players and coaching staff deliberately go around those rules for no other reason than to deliberately injure another player.  That has to stop, and the only way it will stop is by the NFL permanently banning anyone who does it, period.  Mere suspensions from a couple of games is not sufficient to stop the problem.

Again, take note of the increasing number of major penalties for unsportsmanlike conduct, un-necessary roughness, roughing the passer, leading with the helmet, and so forth.  Last year the Referees actually booted a couple of players for their extreme misbehavior, and it reinforces the point when the NFL adds on a multiple game suspension and a hefty fine on top of it.