College without football is like a day without sunshine.
Ok, your kid is going to be out of the workforce for four years, you'll be giving up your retirement but your progeny is going to learn how to support his "team". And will be a better person for it. You on the other hand will be broke...that is unless you can convince your kid to go massively into depth. That's the ticket.
BTW, that CTE thing is a bunch of crap propagated by folks who don't like to have fun (& don't drink). Fuck them.
Northwestern football's next step
Coach David Braun celebrating with players. Photo: Ryan Kuttler/NU Sports
Four months after Northwestern University fired football coach Pat Fitzgerald following a hazing scandal on the team, the school is trying to move on.
Why it matters: Northwestern has promised to fix the football program and be more transparent after reports of widespread hazing rocked the university.
Driving the news: Northwestern announced this week that David Braun will be the team's official head coach, after four months in an interim role.
What they're saying: "Every decision we make, the question will be asked, 'Well, how does this affect the young men that are part of our program?'" Braun told reporters yesterday.
NU president Michael Schill said Braun took the interim job under "incredibly challenging situations and conditions."
Catch up fast: Several former players have sued the school over allegations of harassment and abuse by other players, with some claiming coaches willfully ignored the behavior.
Fitzgerald is also suing Northwestern for $130 million, citing wrongful termination.
By the numbers: Fitzgerald was expected to make more than $7 million in 2024, according to USA Today.
But it's unclear how Braun's salary will stack up. A university spokesperson declined to share how much the new coach will be paid, telling Axios the school doesn't "disclose salary."
Between the lines: Northwestern is the only private school in the Big Ten conference, so Braun's salary isn't public record, as is the rest of his peers'.
The intrigue: Under Fitzgerald's former agreement, Northwestern would have ranked middle of the pack among Big Ten football coaches' guaranteed annual pay.
Data: USA Today; Chart: Axios Visuals
The big picture: The promised transformation of the football program comes as the school is pushing an $800 million, privately funded renovation plan of its stadium, Ryan Field, including a zoning change to allow six concerts a year.
Some neighbors are fighting the plan, citing traffic and noise concerns.
What's next: Evanston's City Council is expected to vote on the Ryan Field renovation Monday after punting on a vote last week.
BTW, don't read this dribble from the NY Times. They are a bunch of stuck-up pencil-pushing dilettantes who don't know the gridiron from a George Forman Grill.
Demons of our culture
By David Leonhardt, NY Times
Nov 17, 2023
I want to make clear that the subject of today’s newsletter is especially difficult.
It involves a Boston University study of athletes who played contact sports — like football — as children and died before turning 30, many by suicide. The Times has just published an interactive article about the study, including childhood videos of the athletes and filmed interviews with their parents.
The article begins with a heartbreaking recording that Wyatt Bramwell, who was 18 at the time, made minutes before shooting himself in 2019. “The voices and demons in my head just started to take over everything I wanted to do,” Bramwell tells the camera as he sits in the driver’s seat of his car. He goes on to ask his father to donate his brain to be studied. Bramwell then tells his family that he loves them and says goodbye.
He was one of the 152 athletes whose brains the Boston University researchers studied. More than 40 percent — 63 of the 152 — had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated hits to the head. Of the 63, 48 had played football, while others had wrestled or played hockey or soccer. Some had never played beyond high school.
In the interviews with parents, they talk about what they would — or would not — have done differently.
“There is a line between the love of a game and the dangers it presents, and even those who have lost a child cannot agree where it is,” writes the team of Times journalists who produced the article — Kassie Bracken, John Branch, Ben Laffin, Rebecca Lieberman and Joe Ward. “But as we learn more about what contact sports can do to the brain, it may be harder to justify letting children play.”
Although much about C.T.E. remains unclear, the risks clearly seem to rise with time spent playing football or another contact sport. For that reason, many C.T.E. researchers recommend that young children play only touch or flag football. Some experts believe tackle football should not start until high school.
Other people, no doubt, will ask why tackle football exists at all. It almost certainly isn’t going away, however. N.F.L. games made up 82 of the 100 most watched broadcasts in the U.S. last year. Both college and high school football are beloved rituals. Several holidays, including Thanksgiving, revolve partly around football.
But if football is the country’s leading form of popular culture, it is also one that kills some of the people who play and love it. Figuring out how to make it safer remains an urgent matter of public health.
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