The NFL has a problem. They're the Big Kahuna of professional sports with legions of fans devoted to rough-and-tumble action. But there's also a growing undercurrent of those annoying people who look at the game and see, not the young current players, but the old, infirm, and brains-turned-to-mush veterans. The problem of aging veterans' severe physical health issues has been conveniently ignored for decades but it's getting harder to ignore the problems of a mental nature. While the league set up committees, issued press releases and made some comforting noises about reducing the effects of getting hit on the head again and again, the league is also a bully and is behaving true to form. For the past 14 months, ESPN and the PBS Frontline people have been working on a two-part documentary on concussions and brain damage in football. I had hopes this collaboration would result in a fair assessment of the problem; Frontline may like to sensationalize but ESPN makes bundles of cash from football and wouldn’t want to unnecessarily rock the money boat. But ESPN just abandoned the project. Why? Well, according to several sources, the NFL called ESPN into its offices and said something like “That's a nice TV deal you have there, ESPN; wouldn’t want anything to happen to it, would you?” We'll still get the documentary we assume but the league can claim bias and look the other way.
This is chuck bolland and that’s the way the ball bounces.