The nation is going down the drain financially, fighting two wars against terrorism (man-caused disasters, actually, according to Homeland Security Chief Napolitano, the nation’s highest-profile female chauvinist), and suffering all other adverse consequences connected to the last general elections. The Congress is naturally tuned-in and turned-on with respect to the great affairs of state, domestic and otherwise…cap-and-trade, for instance, or health-care or where to non-water-board the Christmas-day “skivvies-bomber,” whose well-heeled family has been air-lifted in to convince the young idiot to sing like a canary, though he may know little more than how to effect a hot-crotch-caper.
Well…not all the time. The House Judiciary Committee, headed by Michigan’s John Conyers, has been having hearings on an actually serous problem – concussions suffered by football players across the board but especially in the NFL. One wonders why this subject isn’t covered under a committee having to do with health and welfare but, of course, the National Football League has antitrust immunity and thus the financial aspects of the matter – much better than those of the nation – just have to be examined in light of the concussions. Make any sense? Of course not, but this is Congress, remember.
The big deal in professional football, contrary to all the poop about playing the game with integrity, etc., is how to win since winning is good for all the extra earnings the big guys can make as outlined in their contracts, worth multi-millions. In any “contact sport,” the best way to win is to knock the opponent senseless, thereupon reducing him to wondering where he is and what month it is instead of figuring out at the same time how to preemptively knock the other guy senseless and reducing him to wondering why there are two of everything in sight.
The main man on any team is the quarterback, the guy who calls the offensive shots that are called by the man upstairs (in the press box, not the other). He gets the ball on virtually every play and makes disposition of it, either by giving it to someone else to be knocked silly or throwing it downfield to someone who often is knocked into the middle of next month, totally senseless and wondering why, when he looks straight ahead, he sees only clouds.
So…genius-level thinking is not required in order for the coach or other partner in crime to ascertain that reducing the quarterback to babbling about the stars floating through his range of vision is the best way not be scored-upon, to dangle a preposition in collusion with a verb for emphasis. The solution, obviously: CONCUSSION! In other words, get to the q-back BEFORE he can get rid of the ball and set his brain to sloshing around inside his skull instead of planning how to get rid of the ball before he gets killed.
Even better would be a skull-fracture but that sounds so…well…cruel, even though it might foreclose ever seeing that quarterback again. Also looking bad would be an obvious attempt to break a q-back’s arm or leg...right in front of that huge crowd and all. But a hard lick to the head, besides not upsetting small children, is hardly noticed – just a “ding,” as it’s called in the trade. By no mistake is such a “ding” called a “sack,” since it amounts to total destruction the same way as cities and towns were “sacked” by Attila the Hun.
Perhaps the NFL equivalent of Attila is a guy, among others, named Ray Lewis, a linebacker with the Baltimore Ravens, who was fined at least twice this season for purposely inflicting bodily harm to other players, mainly to their craniums, notwithstanding the supposed-protection of otherworldly-type helmets worn these days. His modus operandi – the same for any linebacker worth his salt – is to run at full speed toward his objective and slam his head topmost (and prepared) into the side of the other (unprepared) player’s helmet, thus bouncing the sides of his brain off all that separates it from the atmosphere. Dislocating a vertebra or two in the process is simply icing on the cake.
Tackling used to be done well below the head-area, but the style now could be called the body-slam, same as in professional wrestling, literally slamming full-body into the unsuspecting opponent and knocking him flatter than the proverbial pancake. One suspects that mixing a concussion with a rib-cracking body-slam is probably worth an under-the-table bonus in the locker-room. That’s why q-backs today wear all that armor under their jerseys. “It’s all about my life, stupid!”
Okay, Lewis paid $25,000 for one such afternoon and $5,000 for the other. Since he earns about $6.5 million a year, it’s easy to see why he figures to profit from the SKULLduggery! A playoff game – maybe a couple – or (gasp) a Super-Bowl bonus can be worth a lot. As for the guys whose brains get scrambled – tough, they knew what they were getting into, didn’t they?
It remains to be seen if old John and his committee can stop this CONCUSSION antitrust profiteering by such as Ray Lewis and the team-owners, but the odds are that the carnage will roll on!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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