11 ms·

NBC took Bob Costas off the Super Bowl for speaking out about concussions

267 points by smacktoward 8y ago

foobaw 8y ago
Disastrous PR incoming. Did NBC not foresee this biting them back?
- throwaway5752 8y ago
  It must be a PR coup for those responsible, because you are blaming NBC, rather than the NFL.
  - eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
    Wha? We can blame both. But the NFL is in the business of that sport specifically. NBC has all sorts of ties to being a news network. And it's not just MSNBC, because they broadcast journalism under the "NBC" brand and they're basically denying science here. NFL can deny science all they want, they are in the business of smashing heads together for entertainment. I think that should probably be their position -- this sport is dangerous and it might ruin you, sign this release form -- because football is going nowhere in America.
  - deminature 8y ago
    How are NBC not at least partly culpable in this?
    - bredren 8y ago
      Not that I believe this but the article says "McCarthy says the NFL did not ask NBC to remove Costas from the Super Bowl."
- protomyth 8y ago
  I doubt it will do anything PR wise. Costas already did his morality lectures during football games, so I wouldn't worry much about fans actually caring. Heck, a lot of fans will be relieved they kept him out of the booth so they didn't get some lecture during the game.
- Dirlewanger 8y ago
  Eh, nothing will happen. It's also hilarious to see ESPN doing the shit-flinging here because they did the exact same thing to Bill Simmons in 2015. He called out the NFL's gross mishandling of the Ray Rice debacle, and a couple months later, ESPN announced they weren't renewing Simmon's contract. Nothing really happened to ESPN then, nothing will happen to NBC now.
kareemm 8y ago
Sometimes it becomes obvious whether you'll be on the wrong side or right side of history. When we look back on this in 20 years it's become clear to me that the NFL's stance on CTE and Kaepernick will have them squarely on the wrong side of history.
- ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
  Yep... but 25 years from now they will have "Kaepernick Day" once a year, and give everyone a free bobble head and everyone will be free to celebrate the NFL guilt free. Despite the fact that most of the teams will still be owned by the same individuals, and definitely the same families.... IF I was a conspiracy guy I would almost think that all the flag waiving and controversial decisions are designed to distract us from the fact that the NFL is the world's sketchiest non-profit. Not only does it not pay taxes as an entity despite its CEO's $31 million dollar salary, but the teams receive billions in tax payer funds to build the new stadiums they require. And they must have these new stadiums to stay competitive with the other NFL franchises... who just got new stadiums. It's a crazy arms race to keep your NFL team, and no one is talking about that fact that we could also level the playing field by having all the states agree NOT to build stadiums with tax payer dollars, instead of letting the NFL play different tax bases off each other to extract the maximum dollars from us.
  - tonyztan 8y ago
    > "The NFL is the world's sketchiest non-profit." While I don't disagree with the rest of your post, I'd like to point out that the NFL is no longer a non-profit: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tax-season/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tax-season/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2015/04/28/the-nfl-is-dropping-its-tax-exempt-status-why-that-ends-up-helping-them-out/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2015/04/28/t...
  - jedberg 8y ago
    The NFL isn't as bad of a tax scam as you make it out to be. The central coordinating organization doesn't pay taxes, but that's because they distribute all the money they make to the teams, which DO pay taxes, and lots of them. That's why cities are happy to subsidize them. Because with the revenue sharing, they get taxes on money that wasn't even made in their state. Building stadiums with public money and then charging the public to enter is really crappy, but in the end it does in fact benefit the location in some cases. And you can see the pushback already starting. San Diego and Oakland wouldn't build new stadiums, so those teams moved. One went to LA, where they are building a new stadium with Olympics money which will be used by the Chargers, and Las Vegas was happy to bring in all the extra people to gamble. So in both cases those stadiums will probably be net positives for their cities.
lupire 8y ago
Anyone who simultaneously: a) knowns about concussion / CTE issues b) disapproves of NBC's actions c) watched the Super Bowl is being hypocritical
- nsxwolf 8y ago
  Then everyone is a hypocrite. Every product that people consume, at some level, has some known "problematic" aspect in its production. Usually people don't move out into the mountains and become hermits because of this.
  - Loughla 8y ago
    That just feels like a hand-waving bullshit statement though. It appears to me that it's just a way to get out of any sort of personal responsibility to say 'well everything is garbage, so what does it matter?' KNOWING about the problematic issues and choosing to ignore them is much different than not knowing at all.
    - nsxwolf 8y ago
      You really think everyone had a responsibility to not watch the Super Bowl? You think that was going happen?
      - justtopost 8y ago
        Happened pretty well in Orleans Parrish.
  - TheOperator 8y ago
    You're not qrong thst everybody is a hypocrite on some level. That doesn't mean we can't raise a fuss about a man getting fired for speaking an uncomfortable truth.
- skh 8y ago
  There's no other option than boycott if one falls into a) and b) and wants to not be hypocritical? There's a lot of social pressure to watch the Super Bowl for a large portion of the population. I fall into a) and b) and did watch the Super Bowl. I'm freely admit that I'm a hypocrite just not sure if this should be considered part of my hypocrisy. I know about horrendous foreign policy actions of the United States Government. I disapprove of coverups done by the government and I actively benefit from said government. I haven't fled the country. Is that hypocrisy?
deogeo 8y ago
Good excuse to link my favorite, insightful comic about free speech: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/ /s
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
biesnecker 8y ago
I strongly believe that the NFL will cease to exist as a major sports league in the foreseeable future (< 25 years). It increasingly seems that CTE is an unavoidable side effect of the game, and as that reality really registers with parents the steady supply of young players is going to dry up. I've heard people say that it will end up a niche sport like boxing (which has its own obvious brain trauma problems), but you need a lot more potential football players to maintain a viable league than you do potential boxers to maintain the level of professional boxing we have today. edit: typo
- cooperadymas 8y ago
  I've been hearing this for 10-15 years now. Meanwhile, not only is the NFL still exceedingly popular, but there are new football leagues popping up everywhere, giving even more people the chance to play at a professional / semi-pro level.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    It's got so much cultural momentum behind it at so many levels - college, high school, even younger - it's like trying to stop that 400 lbs lineman. It seems to be the best way small town America can create heroes and legends for itself.
    - Kye 8y ago
      It only takes one generation. Parents might be able to force kids into it for a while, but that won't sustain it to the pro level if other things draw their interest. Kids these days seem to be more about making stuff in games and meeting people all over the world in eSports than knocking heads together. And their parents seem to be okay with it.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - ZacharyPitts 8y ago
    At the same time, high school participation is way down over the past 10 years: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/jan/30/high-school-football-numbers-drop-brain-trauma https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/jan/30/high-school-fo... (plus many more articles with just a quick search). Locally, a couple of high schools dropped varsity football because they couldn't get enough recruits for brain injury.
bredren 8y ago
>"I recall the phrase, 'It's a six-hour, daylong celebration of football, and you're not the right person to celebrate football,'" Costas says. The odd thing was if you watched the Superbowl the culture of the event had obviously changed. You rarely saw cheerleaders, unless in the background of a play. None of the commercials offered up exploitation of women at least nothing on the scale of GoDaddy and Paris Hilton had in the past. Budweiser's main hook throughout was that they did not use high fructose corn syrup in their ingredients! That's a long way from the bro-y bikini image beer companies have made the Superbowl to be about for so long. So when I read that this was a celebration of the culture of Football, what is that now? Is it this more progressive, more healthy sport EXCEPT when it comes to brain trauma? I think eSports, particularly DOTA2's TI is far, far more relevant to young men than Football at this point and has true global appeal. Football and the Superbowl seem like so many boomer institutions where this old guard is doing everything to slow down the bleeding for as long as possible.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  > Is it this more progressive, more healthy sport EXCEPT when it comes to brain trauma? The problem, I believe, is that to have a concussion free football game is to not have football. You can redesign the helmets, you can try and catch em early, but unless the dynamics of the game change from two amazingly explosive 350 lbs men running into each other, concussion won't go away.
  - deanCommie 8y ago
    Is that true? Do rugby and Australian Rules Football have the same problem? The substantial difference is the lack of padding in those sports. They are still physical. There is still tackling. But human beings behave differently when they don't think they and the target of their tackle are wearing a suit of armor.
    - QuotedForTruth 8y ago
      No the substantial difference is the huge difference in the rules of the games. American football stops 100 times a game and sets everyone up to match up with someone and hit them. Concussions dont just happen in tackles. They happen in blocking too (no blocking in rugby or aussie leages afaik). There are an order of magnitude more blocks than tackles in any play or game. Some of the football concussion studies have shown that many sub concussive hits is horrible for the brain too. [1] A football player expierences tens of thousands of these over their career. Take the armor away and you'll just have people dying instead of getting concussions. Knees to the head arent uncommon and are certainly not intentional by the kneeer or kneed. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/01/18/578355877/repeated-head-hits-not-concussions-may-be-behind-a-type-of-chronic-brain-damage https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/01/18/5783558...
resters 8y ago
For anyone who has ever wondered why American Football is so popular in the US in spite of being fairly boring to watch (and in spite of being fairly unpopular nearly everywhere else in the world), the NFL receives significant funding every year from the US Government and is part of the PR strategy to promote military enlistment as a patriotic act (1). I'd argue that many Americans view watching football to itself be a patriotic act. NBC removing Costas for speaking out about the injuries is significant because increased awareness of concussive and spinal column injuries would have no negative impact on the entertainment value of the sport. Nobody wants to see athletes who have worked their entire lives to get to the NFL suffer career ending injuries. So why suppress Costas? His effort to spread awareness was viewed as undermining the foundation of the game. The idea that the athletes are extremely tough, etc. Worrying about injuries makes the game less manly, and it is the association with manly duty and physical strength that makes the tie-in with military and patriotism so powerful. It's really absurd how Football announcers have these gruff, hyper-masculine voices and how the entire sport coalesces nearly every negative aspect of masculinity and bro culture (2). In reality, the NFL has blocked overhead cameras from the telecast (3) because they would reveal significant coaching and execution mistakes that would make the sport seem far less professional. 1) https://thinkprogress.org/nfl-dod-national-anthem-6f682cebc7cd/ https://thinkprogress.org/nfl-dod-national-anthem-6f682cebc7... 2) http://theconversation.com/big-game-days-in-college-football-linked-with-sexual-assault-92725 http://theconversation.com/big-game-days-in-college-football... 3) https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/01/what-the-nfl-wont-show-you/252240/ https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/01/wh...
- edejong 8y ago
  Too bad a cogent argument with references is doenvoted without discussion.
  - EpicEng 8y ago
    My guess is because of this: >For anyone who has ever wondered why American Football is so popular in the US in spite of being fairly boring to watch... I'd argue that many Americans view watching football to itself be a patriotic act. I love football and don't find it boring at all. The GP is writing off millions of people as irrational, overly patriotic morons. The comparison to the rest of the world is silly as well because a lot of us find soccer to be about the most boring thing ever behind NASCAR and golf, but obviously many disagree with me. >> It's really absurd how Football announcers have these gruff, hyper-masculine voices and how the entire sport coalesces nearly every negative aspect of masculinity and bro culture (2). Yeesh, spare me. Yeah, it's insane how most announcers have "gruff, hyper-masculine voices" considering the majority of them were players themselves. Players in a sport which attracts the most athletic and physically gifted men in the country. How could it be? It's almost as if high levels of testosterone are correlated with higher levels of strength, athletic ability, and a deeper voice.
kevin_b_er 8y ago
We can see that "legendary" means nothing in the face of perceived profits. Greed is the only true factor that rules that everyone wants to pleasantly ignore. But it means all of NBC is compromised by the NFL. Their reporting is compromised by money. They cannot be trusted to truthfully and fully report on the real implications of American football and its danger to health. Its shame to see honor and professionalism dying in news to in favor of greed, but with money bound to sports it was bound to happen there sooner than later. Costas just had enough history and was from a better era, to delay the impact of greed over integrity.
Shivetya 8y ago
The CTE issue will probably be settled out of court with some fantastic number paid to the player's union to be doled out and managed through that organization effectively silencing the issue. they may even be so nice as to have short little spots about how the NFL is the "leading supporter" some time down the road. So its good see Bob Costas take off. Far better to get out than sell out. The NFL other damage to people and communities is all the tax money that goes into funding their stadiums, the juicy tax and concession deals beyond financing, and even have the tax payers pay for security at the recent Superbowl in Atlanta. Don't just vilify the owners, the player's union and the players themselves, aren't here for anything but glory and money, lots of money. They have been riding high on the back of the tax payers for far too long; they are not the only sport that does this.
- oflannabhra 8y ago
  Unfortunately, former NCAA players have no such recourse, even though they'll probably have similar results. I mostly blame the NCAA's illusion of "student athlete" which allows them to pretend that athletes are not professional despite massive profits from their labor. It also allows their exclusion from worker's compensation requirements.
- josefresco 8y ago
  The CTE issue was already "settled" in court: http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/15229132/appeals-court-upholds-1-billion-nfl-concussion-settlement http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/15229132/appeals-court-up... >The settlement would cover more than 20,000 NFL retirees for the next 65 years. The league estimates that 6,000 former players, or nearly three in 10, could develop Alzheimer's disease or moderate dementia. Fewer than 200 of those retirees opted out of the settlement, while 99 percent approved.
tengbretson 8y ago
Why do we think football players are incapable of weighing the risks when choosing whether or not to play?
- gknoy 8y ago
  I don't think it's about pro football players -- we're pretty sure the players in the NFL know the risks (well, now they do). Rather, it's about educating FUTURE potential players so that they too can make an informed decision, or the parents of kids who might say, "you know, I don't want my kid to have a bunch of concussions, because that's been proven to have permanent significant damage".
- EliRivers 8y ago
  People in general are bad at judging risks, worse still at trying to judge the risk of head trauma decades down the road from now, especially with the number of people involved loudly pitching for their views to take sway. I've no doubt some of them have the training and understanding to examine the data (math majors in college - must be some, I'm sure), run the statistics and pick out noise from signal, which I expect wouldn't be an easy thing given the long stretches of time and the many confounding factors involved, but I expect few of those capable of it even try, so the majority are left with the same vox-pops and media segments everyone else has on the subject. Couple that with the macho attitudes and self-image in the sport, and that the entertainment needs to keep working for the sport to keep making money (nothing entertaining about permanent head trauma), and that the people having to judge these risks are young males being offered life-changing opportunities and sums of money, and it seems that the default position here should be that we consider football players incapable of weighing the risks (much as we should, by default, consider people bad at judging risks). Why would we think they are somehow especially capable of judging the risks?
  - tengbretson 8y ago
    Making poor eating decisions can cause bodily harm much quicker and more severe than repeated concussions from playing football. Should the default position also be that we don't deem adults to be capable of weighing the risks when choosing what food to eat?
cooperadymas 8y ago
If we set aside the concussion issue for a moment, the story boils down to a sports announcer that admittedly said, " I decided long ago that I had misgivings about football, and I tried to use the forum they gave me to make those points." In other words, Costas doesn't like football and used his air time during football games to talk about how he doesn't like football. Why would anyone keep him on the air? I don't think we need to brew some crazy conspiracy theory to explain this.
- scarmig 8y ago
  The implicit assumption here is that a news organization has the duty to provide only favorable coverage to its subjects. Presumably for fear of alienating them with bad coverage.
hart_russell 8y ago
As someone who played football in pop warner, high school, and Div.3 NCAA for 12 years, I worry about the long term damage to my brain. If I have boys, I will absolutely not allow them to play football in its current state. If the NFL cared about its future, it would immediately get rid of helmets à la rugby. People will not hit with their head if they don't have a hard plastic case around it.
- MBCook 8y ago
  Wouldn’t the optics there be worse? If someone was hit they may start to bleed quite a bit. And you don’t want that on camera. Even if they’re much safer overall because it’s just a split eyebrow.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- chrisrogers 8y ago
  Rugby players face worse concussion risk than NFL players. https://www.brain-injury-law-center.com/blog/head-injuries-rugby-vs-football/ https://www.brain-injury-law-center.com/blog/head-injuries-r... Football helmets evolved precisely because players were facing gruesome head injury risk without them. I can't fathom how removing helmets from NFL play would be a smart move.
  - hart_russell 8y ago
    From what I understand, single concussions are not necessarily the main cause of CTE. Repeated blows to the head, the average kind you get in practices and games, are the main cause.
- oweqruiowe 8y ago
  Yea I played pop warner for 3 seasons from 10-12, started getting anxiety at 19, dealt with depression ever since. Thinking about CTE gives me much anxiety haha, it was hard to even read the comment section here. Very scary.
wnevets 8y ago
As someone who used to religiously watched, this is just another reason why I'm glad I stopped watching the NFL several years ago. Between the awful viewing experience with annoying commercials, cliche talking heads, concussion cover ups, highly questionable refs, rampant cheating, the kneeing debacle, etc. I'm surprised more folks my age haven't bailed on the NFL.
- astura 8y ago
  I don't follow football, can you elaborate on "rampant cheating?" Are you talking about deflategate? Or is there more cheating controversies I'm not aware of? EDIT: Yeesh! I didn't know how much of an issue PEDs are in the NFL.
  - sjg007 8y ago
    There are a lot of "missed" calls basically and some that are invented. Pass interference is the big one that can change momentum.
    - favorited 8y ago
      But is there any evidence that debatable calls (or no-calls) are cheating? Or is it just human error, compounded by the facts that (A) the rules are too complicated, (B) not everything is reviewable, and (C) officials aren't full-time NFL employees?
  - wnevets 8y ago
    deflategate, peds, spygate, etc https://yourteamcheats.com https://yourteamcheats.com is a decent collection.
  - bseidensticker 8y ago
    This site compiles all cheating violations: https://yourteamcheats.com/cheaters/ https://yourteamcheats.com/cheaters/
    - 8y ago
oflannabhra 8y ago
Some of the most refreshing coverage I've heard of football, the NFL, and even CTE has surprisingly come from Freakonomics (the podcast). They had an episode covering CTE [0] entitled "How Much Brain Damage Do I Have?" that was sparked by Brian Urschel withdrawing from the NFL after a CTE study came out. Recently, they did an entire series on athletes, and their full interview with Dominique Foxworth [1] was also enlightening from a business / incentive perspective. He's a former player, and former COO of the Player's Union. One thing that gets lost in all of the discussion of the NFL are the vast majority of former players who were amateur (although it is debatable if NCAA players are amateurs), who are likely to experience a similar result as NFL players, but without the enormous cash-generating machine or potential future settlement money. [0] - http://freakonomics.com/podcast/brain-damage/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/brain-damage/ [1] - http://freakonomics.com/podcast/domonique-foxworth/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/domonique-foxworth/
- bardam 8y ago
  Also of interest, Malcolm Galdwell's podcast* "Revisionist History" had an excellent episode on CTE in football. He made an analogy to smoking. Evidence had long suggested that smoking was dangerous, but it was only that -- evidence, not hard proof. Evidence continued to pile up, but so did the counter evidence (primarily from tobacco firms and those they funded). At what point do we say -- OK, maybe the evidence isn't 100%, but isn't there enough evidence to suggest something is wrong? * http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/22-burden-of-proof http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/22-burden-of-proof
  - minikites 8y ago
    >the counter evidence (primarily from tobacco firms and those they funded) One of those that they funded was Malcolm Gladwell himself: https://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/ https://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/
baumy 8y ago
Adding some context since I suspect much of the HN crowd may be unfamiliar - this is being published by ESPN, who previously have suspended and fired employees for calling out the NFL and its commissioner [0][1]. Not saying there isn't a story here, but to me this reads like a very hypocritical hit piece. [0] https://www.si.com/nfl/2014/09/24/espn-bill-simmons-roger-goodell-suspension https://www.si.com/nfl/2014/09/24/espn-bill-simmons-roger-go... [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2015/05/08/bill-simmons-is-leaving-espn/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9b5fd8dc6fb4 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2015/05/08...
draw_down 8y ago
Betcha won't see this brought up when people talk about employers firing their employees for saying the wrong thing.
Kye 8y ago
I only knew of him as that guy who wouldn't stop talking over the 2008 Olympic opening ceremonies. I never tried watching again when I found out NBC owned the rights for years. This is one thing where he should be allowed to talk.
xkfm 8y ago
I've recently started getting into watching football. There's a great amount of tactical depth, and I really appreciate that it's one of the few sports where the coach has a very noticeable impact on the outcome of the game. It's essentially like watching a physical version of chess. In light of the whole concussion thing, it's somewhat interesting that there are two new football leagues launching in the US soon. The AAF (aaf.com) recently launched this past weekend and is positioning itself as sort of a minor league to the NFL. There's also the XFL, which is a relaunch of sorts (it existed briefly in the early 2000s), and seems to be setting itself up to be a faster version of the NFL. Both of these new leagues do have rule changes that are there to speed up the game, and marginally improve player safety. Eventually, I would suspect that NFL teams will be able to send some of their practice team players, and players they want to get another look at before cutting, to the AAF for more development. The AAF seems to have had a moderately successful weekend launch. At least to the extent that there were no catastrophic failures. A lot of the players who like playing football seem to really like playing football (i.e. they had opportunities to go pro (getting paid actual money) or semi-pro (college in the US) in other sports, and still chose football over them), so I don't think it'll go away entirely unless middle and high schools stop offering the game completely.
- Apocryphon 8y ago
  The AAF got rid of kickoffs as a safety measure, though it's allowing hard-hitting tackles against QBs. The league is investing a lot into game data for betting, as its business model: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129902
  - xkfm 8y ago
    That would make sense. The app was working fairly well, and you could guess what the offense was going to do on each play. It's going to be interesting to see where the league goes.

267 points by smacktoward 8y ago

foobaw 8y ago

Disastrous PR incoming. Did NBC not foresee this biting them back?

throwaway5752 8y ago
It must be a PR coup for those responsible, because you are blaming NBC, rather than the NFL.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
  Wha? We can blame both. But the NFL is in the business of that sport specifically. NBC has all sorts of ties to being a news network. And it's not just MSNBC, because they broadcast journalism under the "NBC" brand and they're basically denying science here. NFL can deny science all they want, they are in the business of smashing heads together for entertainment. I think that should probably be their position -- this sport is dangerous and it might ruin you, sign this release form -- because football is going nowhere in America.
- deminature 8y ago
  How are NBC not at least partly culpable in this?
  - bredren 8y ago
    Not that I believe this but the article says "McCarthy says the NFL did not ask NBC to remove Costas from the Super Bowl."
protomyth 8y ago
I doubt it will do anything PR wise. Costas already did his morality lectures during football games, so I wouldn't worry much about fans actually caring. Heck, a lot of fans will be relieved they kept him out of the booth so they didn't get some lecture during the game.
Dirlewanger 8y ago
Eh, nothing will happen. It's also hilarious to see ESPN doing the shit-flinging here because they did the exact same thing to Bill Simmons in 2015. He called out the NFL's gross mishandling of the Ray Rice debacle, and a couple months later, ESPN announced they weren't renewing Simmon's contract. Nothing really happened to ESPN then, nothing will happen to NBC now.

kareemm 8y ago

Sometimes it becomes obvious whether you'll be on the wrong side or right side of history. When we look back on this in 20 years it's become clear to me that the NFL's stance on CTE and Kaepernick will have them squarely on the wrong side of history.

ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
Yep... but 25 years from now they will have "Kaepernick Day" once a year, and give everyone a free bobble head and everyone will be free to celebrate the NFL guilt free. Despite the fact that most of the teams will still be owned by the same individuals, and definitely the same families.... IF I was a conspiracy guy I would almost think that all the flag waiving and controversial decisions are designed to distract us from the fact that the NFL is the world's sketchiest non-profit. Not only does it not pay taxes as an entity despite its CEO's $31 million dollar salary, but the teams receive billions in tax payer funds to build the new stadiums they require. And they must have these new stadiums to stay competitive with the other NFL franchises... who just got new stadiums. It's a crazy arms race to keep your NFL team, and no one is talking about that fact that we could also level the playing field by having all the states agree NOT to build stadiums with tax payer dollars, instead of letting the NFL play different tax bases off each other to extract the maximum dollars from us.
- tonyztan 8y ago
  > "The NFL is the world's sketchiest non-profit." While I don't disagree with the rest of your post, I'd like to point out that the NFL is no longer a non-profit: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tax-season/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tax-season/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2015/04/28/the-nfl-is-dropping-its-tax-exempt-status-why-that-ends-up-helping-them-out/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2015/04/28/t...
- jedberg 8y ago
  The NFL isn't as bad of a tax scam as you make it out to be. The central coordinating organization doesn't pay taxes, but that's because they distribute all the money they make to the teams, which DO pay taxes, and lots of them. That's why cities are happy to subsidize them. Because with the revenue sharing, they get taxes on money that wasn't even made in their state. Building stadiums with public money and then charging the public to enter is really crappy, but in the end it does in fact benefit the location in some cases. And you can see the pushback already starting. San Diego and Oakland wouldn't build new stadiums, so those teams moved. One went to LA, where they are building a new stadium with Olympics money which will be used by the Chargers, and Las Vegas was happy to bring in all the extra people to gamble. So in both cases those stadiums will probably be net positives for their cities.

lupire 8y ago

Anyone who simultaneously: a) knowns about concussion / CTE issues b) disapproves of NBC's actions c) watched the Super Bowl is being hypocritical

nsxwolf 8y ago
Then everyone is a hypocrite. Every product that people consume, at some level, has some known "problematic" aspect in its production. Usually people don't move out into the mountains and become hermits because of this.
- Loughla 8y ago
  That just feels like a hand-waving bullshit statement though. It appears to me that it's just a way to get out of any sort of personal responsibility to say 'well everything is garbage, so what does it matter?' KNOWING about the problematic issues and choosing to ignore them is much different than not knowing at all.
  - nsxwolf 8y ago
    You really think everyone had a responsibility to not watch the Super Bowl? You think that was going happen?
    - justtopost 8y ago
      Happened pretty well in Orleans Parrish.
- TheOperator 8y ago
  You're not qrong thst everybody is a hypocrite on some level. That doesn't mean we can't raise a fuss about a man getting fired for speaking an uncomfortable truth.
skh 8y ago
There's no other option than boycott if one falls into a) and b) and wants to not be hypocritical? There's a lot of social pressure to watch the Super Bowl for a large portion of the population. I fall into a) and b) and did watch the Super Bowl. I'm freely admit that I'm a hypocrite just not sure if this should be considered part of my hypocrisy. I know about horrendous foreign policy actions of the United States Government. I disapprove of coverups done by the government and I actively benefit from said government. I haven't fled the country. Is that hypocrisy?

deogeo 8y ago

Good excuse to link my favorite, insightful comic about free speech: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/ /s

deleted 8y ago

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biesnecker 8y ago

I strongly believe that the NFL will cease to exist as a major sports league in the foreseeable future (< 25 years). It increasingly seems that CTE is an unavoidable side effect of the game, and as that reality really registers with parents the steady supply of young players is going to dry up. I've heard people say that it will end up a niche sport like boxing (which has its own obvious brain trauma problems), but you need a lot more potential football players to maintain a viable league than you do potential boxers to maintain the level of professional boxing we have today. edit: typo

cooperadymas 8y ago
I've been hearing this for 10-15 years now. Meanwhile, not only is the NFL still exceedingly popular, but there are new football leagues popping up everywhere, giving even more people the chance to play at a professional / semi-pro level.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  It's got so much cultural momentum behind it at so many levels - college, high school, even younger - it's like trying to stop that 400 lbs lineman. It seems to be the best way small town America can create heroes and legends for itself.
  - Kye 8y ago
    It only takes one generation. Parents might be able to force kids into it for a while, but that won't sustain it to the pro level if other things draw their interest. Kids these days seem to be more about making stuff in games and meeting people all over the world in eSports than knocking heads together. And their parents seem to be okay with it.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ZacharyPitts 8y ago
  At the same time, high school participation is way down over the past 10 years: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/jan/30/high-school-football-numbers-drop-brain-trauma https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/jan/30/high-school-fo... (plus many more articles with just a quick search). Locally, a couple of high schools dropped varsity football because they couldn't get enough recruits for brain injury.

bredren 8y ago

>"I recall the phrase, 'It's a six-hour, daylong celebration of football, and you're not the right person to celebrate football,'" Costas says. The odd thing was if you watched the Superbowl the culture of the event had obviously changed. You rarely saw cheerleaders, unless in the background of a play. None of the commercials offered up exploitation of women at least nothing on the scale of GoDaddy and Paris Hilton had in the past. Budweiser's main hook throughout was that they did not use high fructose corn syrup in their ingredients! That's a long way from the bro-y bikini image beer companies have made the Superbowl to be about for so long. So when I read that this was a celebration of the culture of Football, what is that now? Is it this more progressive, more healthy sport EXCEPT when it comes to brain trauma? I think eSports, particularly DOTA2's TI is far, far more relevant to young men than Football at this point and has true global appeal. Football and the Superbowl seem like so many boomer institutions where this old guard is doing everything to slow down the bleeding for as long as possible.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
> Is it this more progressive, more healthy sport EXCEPT when it comes to brain trauma? The problem, I believe, is that to have a concussion free football game is to not have football. You can redesign the helmets, you can try and catch em early, but unless the dynamics of the game change from two amazingly explosive 350 lbs men running into each other, concussion won't go away.
- deanCommie 8y ago
  Is that true? Do rugby and Australian Rules Football have the same problem? The substantial difference is the lack of padding in those sports. They are still physical. There is still tackling. But human beings behave differently when they don't think they and the target of their tackle are wearing a suit of armor.
  - QuotedForTruth 8y ago
    No the substantial difference is the huge difference in the rules of the games. American football stops 100 times a game and sets everyone up to match up with someone and hit them. Concussions dont just happen in tackles. They happen in blocking too (no blocking in rugby or aussie leages afaik). There are an order of magnitude more blocks than tackles in any play or game. Some of the football concussion studies have shown that many sub concussive hits is horrible for the brain too. [1] A football player expierences tens of thousands of these over their career. Take the armor away and you'll just have people dying instead of getting concussions. Knees to the head arent uncommon and are certainly not intentional by the kneeer or kneed. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/01/18/578355877/repeated-head-hits-not-concussions-may-be-behind-a-type-of-chronic-brain-damage https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/01/18/5783558...

resters 8y ago

For anyone who has ever wondered why American Football is so popular in the US in spite of being fairly boring to watch (and in spite of being fairly unpopular nearly everywhere else in the world), the NFL receives significant funding every year from the US Government and is part of the PR strategy to promote military enlistment as a patriotic act (1). I'd argue that many Americans view watching football to itself be a patriotic act. NBC removing Costas for speaking out about the injuries is significant because increased awareness of concussive and spinal column injuries would have no negative impact on the entertainment value of the sport. Nobody wants to see athletes who have worked their entire lives to get to the NFL suffer career ending injuries. So why suppress Costas? His effort to spread awareness was viewed as undermining the foundation of the game. The idea that the athletes are extremely tough, etc. Worrying about injuries makes the game less manly, and it is the association with manly duty and physical strength that makes the tie-in with military and patriotism so powerful. It's really absurd how Football announcers have these gruff, hyper-masculine voices and how the entire sport coalesces nearly every negative aspect of masculinity and bro culture (2). In reality, the NFL has blocked overhead cameras from the telecast (3) because they would reveal significant coaching and execution mistakes that would make the sport seem far less professional. 1) https://thinkprogress.org/nfl-dod-national-anthem-6f682cebc7cd/ https://thinkprogress.org/nfl-dod-national-anthem-6f682cebc7... 2) http://theconversation.com/big-game-days-in-college-football-linked-with-sexual-assault-92725 http://theconversation.com/big-game-days-in-college-football... 3) https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/01/what-the-nfl-wont-show-you/252240/ https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/01/wh...

edejong 8y ago
Too bad a cogent argument with references is doenvoted without discussion.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  My guess is because of this: >For anyone who has ever wondered why American Football is so popular in the US in spite of being fairly boring to watch... I'd argue that many Americans view watching football to itself be a patriotic act. I love football and don't find it boring at all. The GP is writing off millions of people as irrational, overly patriotic morons. The comparison to the rest of the world is silly as well because a lot of us find soccer to be about the most boring thing ever behind NASCAR and golf, but obviously many disagree with me. >> It's really absurd how Football announcers have these gruff, hyper-masculine voices and how the entire sport coalesces nearly every negative aspect of masculinity and bro culture (2). Yeesh, spare me. Yeah, it's insane how most announcers have "gruff, hyper-masculine voices" considering the majority of them were players themselves. Players in a sport which attracts the most athletic and physically gifted men in the country. How could it be? It's almost as if high levels of testosterone are correlated with higher levels of strength, athletic ability, and a deeper voice.

kevin_b_er 8y ago

We can see that "legendary" means nothing in the face of perceived profits. Greed is the only true factor that rules that everyone wants to pleasantly ignore. But it means all of NBC is compromised by the NFL. Their reporting is compromised by money. They cannot be trusted to truthfully and fully report on the real implications of American football and its danger to health. Its shame to see honor and professionalism dying in news to in favor of greed, but with money bound to sports it was bound to happen there sooner than later. Costas just had enough history and was from a better era, to delay the impact of greed over integrity.

Shivetya 8y ago

The CTE issue will probably be settled out of court with some fantastic number paid to the player's union to be doled out and managed through that organization effectively silencing the issue. they may even be so nice as to have short little spots about how the NFL is the "leading supporter" some time down the road. So its good see Bob Costas take off. Far better to get out than sell out. The NFL other damage to people and communities is all the tax money that goes into funding their stadiums, the juicy tax and concession deals beyond financing, and even have the tax payers pay for security at the recent Superbowl in Atlanta. Don't just vilify the owners, the player's union and the players themselves, aren't here for anything but glory and money, lots of money. They have been riding high on the back of the tax payers for far too long; they are not the only sport that does this.

oflannabhra 8y ago
Unfortunately, former NCAA players have no such recourse, even though they'll probably have similar results. I mostly blame the NCAA's illusion of "student athlete" which allows them to pretend that athletes are not professional despite massive profits from their labor. It also allows their exclusion from worker's compensation requirements.
josefresco 8y ago
The CTE issue was already "settled" in court: http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/15229132/appeals-court-upholds-1-billion-nfl-concussion-settlement http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/15229132/appeals-court-up... >The settlement would cover more than 20,000 NFL retirees for the next 65 years. The league estimates that 6,000 former players, or nearly three in 10, could develop Alzheimer's disease or moderate dementia. Fewer than 200 of those retirees opted out of the settlement, while 99 percent approved.

tengbretson 8y ago

Why do we think football players are incapable of weighing the risks when choosing whether or not to play?

gknoy 8y ago
I don't think it's about pro football players -- we're pretty sure the players in the NFL know the risks (well, now they do). Rather, it's about educating FUTURE potential players so that they too can make an informed decision, or the parents of kids who might say, "you know, I don't want my kid to have a bunch of concussions, because that's been proven to have permanent significant damage".
EliRivers 8y ago
People in general are bad at judging risks, worse still at trying to judge the risk of head trauma decades down the road from now, especially with the number of people involved loudly pitching for their views to take sway. I've no doubt some of them have the training and understanding to examine the data (math majors in college - must be some, I'm sure), run the statistics and pick out noise from signal, which I expect wouldn't be an easy thing given the long stretches of time and the many confounding factors involved, but I expect few of those capable of it even try, so the majority are left with the same vox-pops and media segments everyone else has on the subject. Couple that with the macho attitudes and self-image in the sport, and that the entertainment needs to keep working for the sport to keep making money (nothing entertaining about permanent head trauma), and that the people having to judge these risks are young males being offered life-changing opportunities and sums of money, and it seems that the default position here should be that we consider football players incapable of weighing the risks (much as we should, by default, consider people bad at judging risks). Why would we think they are somehow especially capable of judging the risks?
- tengbretson 8y ago
  Making poor eating decisions can cause bodily harm much quicker and more severe than repeated concussions from playing football. Should the default position also be that we don't deem adults to be capable of weighing the risks when choosing what food to eat?

cooperadymas 8y ago

If we set aside the concussion issue for a moment, the story boils down to a sports announcer that admittedly said, " I decided long ago that I had misgivings about football, and I tried to use the forum they gave me to make those points." In other words, Costas doesn't like football and used his air time during football games to talk about how he doesn't like football. Why would anyone keep him on the air? I don't think we need to brew some crazy conspiracy theory to explain this.

scarmig 8y ago
The implicit assumption here is that a news organization has the duty to provide only favorable coverage to its subjects. Presumably for fear of alienating them with bad coverage.

hart_russell 8y ago

As someone who played football in pop warner, high school, and Div.3 NCAA for 12 years, I worry about the long term damage to my brain. If I have boys, I will absolutely not allow them to play football in its current state. If the NFL cared about its future, it would immediately get rid of helmets à la rugby. People will not hit with their head if they don't have a hard plastic case around it.

MBCook 8y ago
Wouldn’t the optics there be worse? If someone was hit they may start to bleed quite a bit. And you don’t want that on camera. Even if they’re much safer overall because it’s just a split eyebrow.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
chrisrogers 8y ago
Rugby players face worse concussion risk than NFL players. https://www.brain-injury-law-center.com/blog/head-injuries-rugby-vs-football/ https://www.brain-injury-law-center.com/blog/head-injuries-r... Football helmets evolved precisely because players were facing gruesome head injury risk without them. I can't fathom how removing helmets from NFL play would be a smart move.
- hart_russell 8y ago
  From what I understand, single concussions are not necessarily the main cause of CTE. Repeated blows to the head, the average kind you get in practices and games, are the main cause.
oweqruiowe 8y ago
Yea I played pop warner for 3 seasons from 10-12, started getting anxiety at 19, dealt with depression ever since. Thinking about CTE gives me much anxiety haha, it was hard to even read the comment section here. Very scary.

wnevets 8y ago

As someone who used to religiously watched, this is just another reason why I'm glad I stopped watching the NFL several years ago. Between the awful viewing experience with annoying commercials, cliche talking heads, concussion cover ups, highly questionable refs, rampant cheating, the kneeing debacle, etc. I'm surprised more folks my age haven't bailed on the NFL.

astura 8y ago
I don't follow football, can you elaborate on "rampant cheating?" Are you talking about deflategate? Or is there more cheating controversies I'm not aware of? EDIT: Yeesh! I didn't know how much of an issue PEDs are in the NFL.
- sjg007 8y ago
  There are a lot of "missed" calls basically and some that are invented. Pass interference is the big one that can change momentum.
  - favorited 8y ago
    But is there any evidence that debatable calls (or no-calls) are cheating? Or is it just human error, compounded by the facts that (A) the rules are too complicated, (B) not everything is reviewable, and (C) officials aren't full-time NFL employees?
- wnevets 8y ago
  deflategate, peds, spygate, etc https://yourteamcheats.com https://yourteamcheats.com is a decent collection.
- bseidensticker 8y ago
  This site compiles all cheating violations: https://yourteamcheats.com/cheaters/ https://yourteamcheats.com/cheaters/
  - 8y ago

oflannabhra 8y ago

Some of the most refreshing coverage I've heard of football, the NFL, and even CTE has surprisingly come from Freakonomics (the podcast). They had an episode covering CTE [0] entitled "How Much Brain Damage Do I Have?" that was sparked by Brian Urschel withdrawing from the NFL after a CTE study came out. Recently, they did an entire series on athletes, and their full interview with Dominique Foxworth [1] was also enlightening from a business / incentive perspective. He's a former player, and former COO of the Player's Union. One thing that gets lost in all of the discussion of the NFL are the vast majority of former players who were amateur (although it is debatable if NCAA players are amateurs), who are likely to experience a similar result as NFL players, but without the enormous cash-generating machine or potential future settlement money. [0] - http://freakonomics.com/podcast/brain-damage/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/brain-damage/ [1] - http://freakonomics.com/podcast/domonique-foxworth/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/domonique-foxworth/

bardam 8y ago
Also of interest, Malcolm Galdwell's podcast* "Revisionist History" had an excellent episode on CTE in football. He made an analogy to smoking. Evidence had long suggested that smoking was dangerous, but it was only that -- evidence, not hard proof. Evidence continued to pile up, but so did the counter evidence (primarily from tobacco firms and those they funded). At what point do we say -- OK, maybe the evidence isn't 100%, but isn't there enough evidence to suggest something is wrong? * http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/22-burden-of-proof http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/22-burden-of-proof
- minikites 8y ago
  >the counter evidence (primarily from tobacco firms and those they funded) One of those that they funded was Malcolm Gladwell himself: https://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/ https://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/

baumy 8y ago

Adding some context since I suspect much of the HN crowd may be unfamiliar - this is being published by ESPN, who previously have suspended and fired employees for calling out the NFL and its commissioner [0][1]. Not saying there isn't a story here, but to me this reads like a very hypocritical hit piece. [0] https://www.si.com/nfl/2014/09/24/espn-bill-simmons-roger-goodell-suspension https://www.si.com/nfl/2014/09/24/espn-bill-simmons-roger-go... [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2015/05/08/bill-simmons-is-leaving-espn/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9b5fd8dc6fb4 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2015/05/08...

draw_down 8y ago

Betcha won't see this brought up when people talk about employers firing their employees for saying the wrong thing.

Kye 8y ago

I only knew of him as that guy who wouldn't stop talking over the 2008 Olympic opening ceremonies. I never tried watching again when I found out NBC owned the rights for years. This is one thing where he should be allowed to talk.

xkfm 8y ago

I've recently started getting into watching football. There's a great amount of tactical depth, and I really appreciate that it's one of the few sports where the coach has a very noticeable impact on the outcome of the game. It's essentially like watching a physical version of chess. In light of the whole concussion thing, it's somewhat interesting that there are two new football leagues launching in the US soon. The AAF (aaf.com) recently launched this past weekend and is positioning itself as sort of a minor league to the NFL. There's also the XFL, which is a relaunch of sorts (it existed briefly in the early 2000s), and seems to be setting itself up to be a faster version of the NFL. Both of these new leagues do have rule changes that are there to speed up the game, and marginally improve player safety. Eventually, I would suspect that NFL teams will be able to send some of their practice team players, and players they want to get another look at before cutting, to the AAF for more development. The AAF seems to have had a moderately successful weekend launch. At least to the extent that there were no catastrophic failures. A lot of the players who like playing football seem to really like playing football (i.e. they had opportunities to go pro (getting paid actual money) or semi-pro (college in the US) in other sports, and still chose football over them), so I don't think it'll go away entirely unless middle and high schools stop offering the game completely.

Apocryphon 8y ago
The AAF got rid of kickoffs as a safety measure, though it's allowing hard-hitting tackles against QBs. The league is investing a lot into game data for betting, as its business model: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129902
- xkfm 8y ago
  That would make sense. The app was working fairly well, and you could guess what the offense was going to do on each play. It's going to be interesting to see where the league goes.