Man, is the NFL having a bad week. Or month. Or millennium. Ken Murray's story in this morning's Sun tells of the resignation of the doctor who has headed the NFL's concussion committee for all 13 of its years in existence. Here's the ESPN the Magazine story (subscription only, unfortunately) Ken refers to, which picks the ex-head apart for his lack of experience, his allegedly shoddy research and his apparent role as league rubber-stamp.

You don't need a subscription to read this follow-up by the story's author, written after the revelation last month that ex-Eagle Andre Waters, who killed himself last November, had suffered catastrophic brain damage likely due to all his concussions as a player. The scary part? According to this story, the NFL released a statement reacting to the Waters report that mentioned it "will begin studying retired players later this year.'' Later this year? No rush, I guess. Maybe you can study them posthumously easier than you can when they're alive.

(UPDATE: In a reader reply to this post, an executive with a Massachusetts medical lab passed along info about the mouthguard mentioned in the ESPN story that the NFL concussion committee appears not interested in checking out. It's the Maher mouth guard. Almost as good, he passed along a link to the original ESPN Mag story that you don't have to pay to read. Good job by the network to capitalize on the news - and to GIVE KEN MURRAY AND THE SUN CREDIT FOR THE SCOOP.)

For what it's worth, this topic came up with John Mackey's wife, Sylvia, the week before the Super Bowl, when she talked about her husband's jersey number and about the "No. 88 Plan'' of benefits for retirees with brain injuries that she got the NFL to buy into. She said she probably will never know exactly what injuries caused Mackey's current state of dementia - and does not plan to pursue it, or to sue anybody over it. "It's too late,'' she said. "I'm not trying to fight someone to get two or three million (dollars). I'm happy with what the results are now; I'll be happier when the results pan out for all the others ... (and) that their expenses are taken care of.''

Posted by David Steele at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
                    

From today's Albany (N.Y.) Times-Union:

"ORLANDO, Fla. -- A downtown pharmacy was raided by a law enforcement task force on Tuesday, the climax of a large New York state grand jury investigation into Internet drug sales that could expose widespread illicit steroid use by professional athletes and thousands of people across the nation.''

OK. So, like, who? Gimme some names. A real name. Someone we'd recognize.

"The customers include Los Angeles Angels center fielder Gary Matthews Jr., according to sources with knowledge of the investigation.''

C'mon, David, not ex-Orioles outfielder Gary Matthews Jr., who never panned out here but went on to become an All-Star in Texas and then sign a five-year, $50 million free-agent contract?

Yup, that one.

As well as Evander Holyfield, a team physician for the Pittsburgh Steelers, and - YIKES! - Jose Canseco. And - double YIKES! - Jason Grimsley.

Posted by David Steele at 5:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
                    

In this week's podcast (which should be posted this morning), Milton Kent, Joe Burris and I talked about the Pacman Jones situation from two weeks ago at NBA All-Star Weekend - where the Titans defensive back might be connected to shootings at a Vegas strip club that left three injured, including one paralyzed.

A couple of updates on it (besides the one link above, in which the strip club owner essentially claims that Jones actually took money for himself that was thrown on-stage at the dancers):

Jones is being represented by the same Atlanta law firm that represented both Ray Lewis in 2000 and Jamal Lewis in 2004. Good choice, you'd think, since both avoided serious jail time.

Also - as was suggested in the podcast - the NBA is somehow getting some of the blame for the whole mess, just because it happened during its marquee event. It's not as if no one saw that coming; it's par for the course in the NBA, where the worst is always assumed no matter how distant the connection is. By comparison, Tupac Shakur was shot to death in Vegas after a Mike Tyson fight 10 years ago, yet never a word was uttered that it was the fault of Tyson, the promoters or the sport of boxing for holding the fight there. And there are few more unsavory blends than Tyson, boxing and Vegas.

Yet apparently, the NBA's reputation is worse than all three combined. Evidence of that: in at least two previous All-Star sites - Philadelphia in 2002, Denver 2005 - local residents and many of the media reacted to the arrival by saying, essentially, "Lock the doors, hide the women and children, put the cops on overtime, here they come.'' Never heard such pronouncements when the Super Bowl has shown up, not even last month in Miami.

This comes up here because on ESPN Radio's (and TV's) Mike and Mike in the Morning show today (still airing for another hour, then available on the website), they pointed out how many people are saying, "The NBA should have known better than to hold its All-Star Game in Vegas'' - implying that such a combination made a violent crime a foregone conclusion. They vehemently disagreed, and invited callers and emailers to explain why this thought is going around.

Which brings us back to one of the points in the podcast - this is only the latest crime connected to the NFL, and it's now, finally, becoming a serious threat to the league's image, so much that the commissioner, players and union are trying to figure out how to fix it, yet its image is still pristine compared to the NBA's.

Large segments of the public are blaming a crime that's entangling an NFL player who's had multiple previous scrapes with the law, and only the latest in a long string of players getting into legal trouble for well over a year, on the NBA, which did nothing more than show up in town.

Why?

(UPDATE: Utah Jazz and former Laker and Warrior guard Derek Fisher, recently named president of the NBA players association, asks the same question.)

And we won't even get into the gleeful reporting, the lack of outrage and the absence of serious discipline in the massive brawl and subsequent retaliation in the NHL last week. It's a little harder to stir up a conversation about that than it was about that Knicks-Nuggets slapfest in December, have you noticed?

Posted by David Steele at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Not for this blog site, and not for Gary Williams' Maryland basketball team. More on that later.

As for this blog, it's almost certain to be undergoing some renovations in the next few weeks. It might be blended in with other sites on baltimoresun.com, it might change form and focus slightly, it might even get a new name. But it definitely will be more of a daily destination. It's taken about a year to really settle in with what this media format is all about; the same goes for the weekly podcast, which also will undergo some alterations (and will return later today). For those who stuck with it through the hiatuses and sporadic postings (this latest stretch of inactivity was partly because of time off from the job, and partly because transmitting from Miami the week of the Super Bowl was a daily technological nightmare), I appreciate your patience and fortitude.

And, once again, I insist, this blog was not in disarray.

See, I'm channeling Gary Williams again.

Hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. Williams told you a month ago, after the losses at Virginia and Virginia Tech, when he said this team was close and was going to be "fine.'' At that point they were 1-4 in the ACC, and that comment got ridiculed - even though anybody who has watched him over the years knows that if he thinks his team is lying down on him or underachieving, he won't bite his tongue or sugarcoat it. Think back to two years ago, for example, when John Gilchrist and Co. faded so badly at the end when only one win would've clinched a berth.

After the second loss to U-Va, at home, making them 3-6 in conference, the screaming about the game passing him by and about the program going downhill and about him probably needing to be put out to pasture got the loudest its ever been. It ticked him off. Apparently, it ticked all his players off, because they haven't lost since. Five in a row.

So much for how historically disastrous it was going to be when they got left out of the Dance for the third straight year. When. With a month to go in the season. It's as if nobody could see the obvious difference between the last two seasons and this year - no gagging down the stretch of the season, no senior leadership letting them down, no academic suspensions, no groundswell of mid-majors cluttering up the bracket possibilities, no huge separation between the top tier and next tier in the conference.

Terps fans, you made yourselves look bad on this one. You just completely lost it. Soak up this win over North Carolina, revel in the all-but-certain NCAA berth, ponder the possibilities of keeping the streak alive in the final two regular-season games and in the ACC tournament - but feel a little ashamed of yourselves for melting down the way you did a couple of weeks ago. (On the other hand, though, feel proud - no burning couches on Route 1 last night. Very nice restraint.)

No wonder Gary got all teary-eyed in the post-game on-court interview. Of course, some fan rushing the floor might have stepped on his foot.

One way or another, his feelings were definitely in disarray.

Final thought: too bad Williams didn't back up his defense of his team a couple of weeks ago by pledging to shave his head bald if the Terps didn't make the tournament. Then again, that might have raised the possibility of a sight like this:

Posted by David Steele at 7:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)