New Yorker Article - "Does Football Have A Future"

[Atlanta Dan]

If there is one subject Goodell dreads being brought up during the Super Bowl media fest next week more than the off field conduct of the Steelerrs QB it is the issue of hits to the head. The New Yorker joins The New York Times in writing about the "football causes brain damage" issue - interesting read in which a number of Steelers and their owner are quoted - a few excerpts below

Does Football Have a Future?
The N.F.L. and the concussion crisis.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...a_fact_mcgrath

The New Yorker confirms my recollection as to how hard Alan Schwarz of The Times has been pounding this story

When I ran into Schwarz in the lobby of the InterContinental Hotel, last month, he mentioned that his story tally on the beat was at “a hundred and twenty-one and counting.”

As for the quotes

There’s no question that HD television is remarkable,” Art Rooney II, the president of the Pittsburgh Steelers, said, the week before Thanksgiving. “But it also, at times, may give us a view of something that we didn’t always have before, and in some cases it may be shocking to people, I guess.” ...

A couple of the concussive hits that Rooney referred to had been delivered by the Steelers’ linebacker James Harrison, a onetime Defensive Player of the Year, who made the mistake, in the locker room afterward, of being honest about his understanding of football, which was, after all, the same as Sam Huff’s: “I try to hurt people.”...

Troy Polamalu is about as dynamic an athlete as I have ever seen, and as soft-spoken in person as anyone I have ever met. He is football’s Dalai Lama. He has had at least seven concussions. “Honestly, it hurts both players, you know, and, whenever you see those big hits, it’s not just offensive guys lying on the ground,” he said. The statistics bear this out: defensive backs were the most extensively concussed group of players on the field this N.F.L. season, followed by wide receivers. Contact ballet can kill....

“There’s a potential lawsuit out there that’s devastating,” the Steelers Hall of Fame quarterback Terry Bradshaw said on Fox’s pregame show, the weekend after James Harrison threatened retirement. I know of two groups of lawyers preparing class-action suits, on behalf of recent players, against the N.F.L., with an eye toward filing in the first six months of this year. At issue is what the league knew and when, and, ultimately, what responsibility it has to its players, with a likely focus on the difference between two documents that were distributed in locker rooms as safety guidelines.

And we have this chilling reminder that at least one Pittsburgh sports icon recently has been on the receiving end of some hard hits as well

Hockey may now have a concussion crisis on its hands, with the N.H.L.’s best and most marketable player, Sidney Crosby, having been blindsided during the sport’s annual Winter Classic; attempting to play again, four days later, he was drilled into the boards, and he hasn’t played since

[TRH]

its a scary thing that could change the game completely. We're all for 'player safety', but these games have been going on strong for upwards of 100 years now.
Look out for activists, groups, progressive-types to also get "their say" in on this type of thing now that a window has opened.
This is also an opening for leech-like, ambulance-chasing-type attorneys. Scary stuff.