JamaNetwork – In a convenience sample of 202 deceased players of American football from a brain donation program, CTE was neuropathologically diagnosed in 177 players across all levels of play (87%), including 110 of 111 former National Football League players (99%).
So you might have seen this startling, extremely disconcerting news come out yesterday. Some scientists did a study where they tested 202 brains taken from deceased former football players, across all levels of play. Out of those 202, 177 were diagnosed as having chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. The study defines CTE as “progressive neurodegeneration associated with repetitive head trauma” and I like that definition because even for science-stupid people like me it’s easy to digest. Basically if you get hit in the head over and over again your brain and neurological functions are apt to, well, degenerate. Fall apart, in other words.
A lot of people are putting a ton of emphasis on the NFL aspect, which is even more eye opening. Out of 111 brains tested from former NFL players, 110 were diagnosed with CTE. 110/111. 99%. If you ever watched an NFL game, there were a total of 106 players you could have possibly seen play. Think about that long and hard. Just mind blowing stuff.
Honestly though? I’m a little more concerned with the still extremely high rate (about 74% if I’m doing my math right) of CTE found in non-pro players. Men who went on to other careers and lives that just got the short end of the stick and probably had no idea what was going on with them. Imagine not even considering your high school glory days when you’re wondering why you can’t remember what you had for breakfast or why you got so mad at the dog?
Maybe the worse part of all this is you really can’t test for CTE in a living person. It has to be looked for in a brain, extracted from a dead person. You can’t know until it is way too late to do anything about it. I also think about the other misunderstandings regarding CTE, one in particular. Look again at the definition. See that word “repetitive”. A lot of people think CTE comes from taking a handful of huge shots, and that certainly does not help, at all. I’m sure we all saw that image of Luke Kuechly crying on the back of that stretcher and thought “fuck that can’t be good”. In reality, it doesn’t take a big pop. The term “punch drunk” comes from boxers with what is now known as CTE who maybe or maybe not got knocked out a ton but got jabbed and countered and hit even with pillow-fisted crosses over and over again, fight after fight. And those shots added up. Remember Muhammed Ali’s arm shaking as he lit the torch at the 96′ Olympic games in Atlanta? I do.
Put all this together and I really start to reflect. I played hockey from 5 to about 15, I played rugby in college, and now I kickbox ,very subparly. I have friends who followed similar recreational paths. I know Dougie played Lacrosse and now does BJJ, a sport from which a headbutt-induced concussion plagues former UFC Lightweight #1 Contender T.J Grant to this day. 4 years later. So what do we do? Do we stop participating in any of these activities? Do we not teach them to our kids? If not what the fuck do we teach our kids? I have no idea. I just know 110/111 or 177/202 aren’t good odds.
Chris Sale has been solid for the Red Sox all season. When he takes the mound at Seattle this afternoon to face the Mariners, it might be his biggest start of the season.
The Red Sox are scuffling. The Red Sox have lost four games in a row, which is their longest losing streak of the season, and are just 5-8 since the All-Star break. The Yankees, meanwhile, are 7-5 since the All-Star break. The Yankees have won four of their last five games, and recently took 3 out of 4 in Seattle to win their first series since they swept the Baltimore Orioles June 9-11.
Just a week ago, the Yankees found themselves in third place in the AL East, 4.5 games behind the Red Sox. Today the Yankees start the day in second place, just one game behind the Red Sox. If the Red Sox lose today and the Yankees win, the Yankees will finish the day percentage points ahead of the Red Sox for first place in the division.
The big problem on the field has been the Red Sox offense. The Sox have been outscored by their opponents 50-44 since the All-Star break, and it doesn’t even feel that close at times. On the season the Red Sox have hit just 100 home runs in 102 games. That’s 27th in the big leagues and dead last in the American League.
But the on-field issues have taken a back seat as of late to the clubhouse soap operas. By now you’ve probably read Dan Shaughnessy’s account of what happened between David Price and Dennis Eckersley on the Red Sox’ June 29th flight to Toronto (if you haven’t used up your free articles for July). Shaughnessy’s story portrays Price as oversensitive and petty, which is not surprising. What is surprising is that, according to Shaughnessy’s story, many players applauded Price’s dressing down of a broadcaster who is essentially a team employee.
Then on WEEI yesterday, after evading the question several times, Manager John confirmed that he had not apologized to Eckersley since the Price incident. The second David Price media explosion of the month. John Wayne Manager John is not. Manager John is afraid he’ll lose the clubhouse if he simply asks one of his highest paid players to stop acting like an unrepentant asshole.
Normally with the team in a tailspin the last week of July, trade deadline blockbusters would seem less likely. But, the Red Sox still have the second-best record in the American League. The Red Sox certainly don’t look like a World Series contender right now, but who will stop them? The Houston Astros are the favorite to win the American League right now, but they aren’t your traditional juggernaut. They’ve made the playoffs once in the last dozen years. Don’t tell me they couldn’t be beat in a series.
Which leads me back to my original point. Today is a big day for Sale and the Red Sox. If they win, they have tomorrow off and come home for a 10-game homestand that starts Friday. If they lose, does John Farrell get on the same plane as the 25 players? Or does Dave Dombrowski try to find a no-bullshit manager to try and right the ship for two and half months?
Now mind you I’m not that huge of a baseball fan so I don’t really follow the Sox with a great amount of zeal until the playoffs/a tight end of year playoff race, but I keep tabs on them enough to know that there have been a couple of long ones recently. I also am on social media and listening to the radio enough to know that people love nothing more than to humblebrag about having “stayed up for it” only to see them lose.
I’m here to tell you this: if you stay up until “3:00am”, “2:00am” etc. for an extra innings baseball game, win OR lose, you have no one to blame but yourself. There are 162 baseball games a year, all of them count the same, and you know if you have work the next day, so it is on you and you alone, a Goddam adult, to make the decision if you want to stay up to watch one specific game. More to the point, watching a game through extra’s and then bitching about it is like if movie goers of yore walked out of the theater bitching about how they sat all the way through 3 hours of “Titanic” only to watch Jack die and then went home and wrote one of the first dozen scathing Rotten Tomatoes reviews about it. You decided to see this through. Keep your whining to yourself.
As I mentioned before this card is fuckin staaAAAAaaaAAcked so I’m going to write a little about it each day (nerdgasms everywhere) and then do the usual preview Friday. Today I’m going to cover up and coming featherweight Jason Knight, and the future of the 145lb division.
At the tail end of 2015, a young, little known featherweight from the backwoods of Mississippi debuted in the UFC, dropping a unanimous decision to Tatsuya “Crusher” Kawajiri. Since then that same fighter has gone 4-0 with 2 finishes, over arguably the 2 toughest of those 4 opponents, and 3 post-fight bonuses. That fighter is Jason Knight.
Jason Knight’s official nickname is “The Kid”. However, a growing number of endeared UFC fans refer to him as “Hick Diaz”. Knight is long and lean, and quite tall for his division as well standing at 5’10. At age 14 he took up martial arts to divert himself from the street fights and general mischief he was getting into. He likes to stand, trade, and talk some shit. Knight is also accomplished on the mat, a brown belt under retired UFC middleweight contender Alan Belcher with 13 submission victories on his resume, the last of which was over Alex Caceres and earned him one of those aforementioned bonuses. Any of this sound familiar? Maybe a little like a couple of fiercely independent, supremely talented brothers from Stockton? I thought so.
Overall, Knight has an 80% finishing rate over his 20 wins, 15 of them coming before the start of Round 3. He is a brash, talented upstart with a ton of potential who, at UFC 214, is going into the biggest fight of his career against Ricardo Lamas, the top-15 opponent he demanded after knocking out respected veteran Chas Kelly in the 1st round in May. Should he impress against Lamas, Hick Diaz’s brand of “Mississippi Mean” might be ready for the big time.
As a quick prologue to all this, Knight is a part of a growing list of young, promising featherweights, such as Doo Ho Choi, Brian Ortega, Mirsad Bektic (all 26), Yair Rodriguez (25), and Andre Fili (27) that should make 145 division one of the more exciting for years to come, especially when you factor in the champ, 25 year old Max Holloway. Ortega will actually be fighting on the 214 card as well against another prospect, 28 year old Renato Carneiro.
So tune in Saturday to see if Jason Knight makes the leap. Don’t be scared, homie.
I have outdone myself this time. We just started rolling out some more t-shirts at The 300s and what better to slap on a shirt than the hottest phrase of the 2017 Red Sox season. Dennis Eckersley incidentally started a war with David Price by uttering this one word and setting off the $30M/year starter on an F-bomb filled tirade. Yuck indeed.
So Game of Thrones aired its second episode of Season 7 Sunday night titled “Stormborn” which is an obvious nod to Khaleesi AKA Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen,First of Her Name, the Unburnt, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea,Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons. So yea, Stormborn was an easier title for an episode. Anyways lots to break down so LETS GET IT.
House Greyjoy
Lets not beat around the bush, how about that absolute hellacious Pirate Invasion by Euron on the open seas? This guy really is a psycho huh? Starting to see hints of what the actor who plays him said in interviews before the season about how Euron would make Ramsay Bolton look like a little kid. Yikes.
The Greyjoy fleet of Theon and Yara is basically toast. Its like any fleet that leaves Dragonstone is destined to be burned to the fucking ground a la Stannis at Blackwater Bay. We got Theon falling back into bad habits too. It seems like the crazy violent and torturous way of Euron (i.e. ripping out dudes tongues) and his Iron born gave Theon a hard reset back to his Reek days, which sucks. Silver lining though he is alive soo maybe he redeems himself again? Running out of episodes here Theon, lets pick it up.
Half of the Targaryen alliance just burned up on the open seas as the Dornish leader Ellaria and her daughters the sand snakes were all either killed or taken captive. This really screws up Khaleesi’s plan of taking Kings Landing using the Dornish army so she’ll probably be looking for more Houses to partner up with. Lucky for her the King of the North is on his way down to Dragonstone.
House Stark
Jon knows he needs Khaleesi, her army, and her dragons if the North has any chance against the White Walkers, but the last thing the northerners want to do is put their faith in the daughter of the goddamn Mad King. Jon’s point is that they need the mountain of Dragonglass that is under Dragonstone, not to mention the three large dragons that Khaleesi has, if they are to stand any chance against the Night King. But Sansa makes a pretty damn good point saying “Do you not remember what happened to our grandfather?” Long story short – the Mad King once called Jon Snow’s grandfather, Rickard Stark, to come down to King’s Landing and “bend the knee” except when he got there the Mad King burned the guy alive. The Mad King also later killed Jon’s uncle Brandon Stark too. So you’ll forgive Sansa for not being overly excited to send the freshly minted King of the North down south to meet another Targaryen to once again bend the knee.
I think Jon has learned a lot in a very short period of time, taking counsel from those around him and internalizing a lot of what people are saying to him, whether the others realize it or not. One thing Sansa said to Jon recently was that he needs to not be stupid like their father and Rob or he’ll be killed just like them. Pride, honor and really stubbornness to their ways are what ultimately got Rob and Ned killed. So while going to Dragonstone is definitely a risk, holding up shop in the North because of stubbornness is a sure fire way to die.
Something I am stoked to see though is if Khaleesi truly needs Jon Snow to bend the knee. While it doesn’t seem like he has any real aspirations to sit on the Iron Throne, if you remember his days with the wildlings, Jon grew to respect and idolize, really, Mance Rayder the King beyond the wall.
Mance awakened Jon to a lot of things beyond the blinders the Night’s Watch had put on him, among them the fact that some traditions of the 7 kingdoms are arbitrary and ridiculous.
As we all saw, Jon loved a wildling woman, saved the wildlings from Hardhome, literally got MURDERED by his peers for letting the wildlings through the Wall. Is it that crazy to assume a central ideology of one of his mentors sticks with him? We do not kneel. Or is this the Stark stubbornness I just mentioned that derails Jon Snow?
With Jon heading south, Sansa is now in charge of the North and that sound you just heard was Littlefinger’s erection smashing into the table. And Jon Snow knows it and does NOT like it, despite Littlefinger saving his ass with the Knights of the Vale. Jon Snow is WOKE on Baelish.
I’ve been waiting for this moment for 5.5 seasons and I am a fucking nerd for typing that sentence I know. This is a pivotal moment for Arya as we’re starting to witness her blind determination starting to waiver. When she first landed in Westeros she axed the entire Frey clan and was single-mindedly riding towards Kings Landing to kill the queen. Now she sees her direwolf for the first time in years, the same one she had to chase off in season 1 to save her after Nymeria bit that sonofabitch Joffrey. It really is quite impressive they recognize each other after all this time. Doesn’t seem like Nymeria is ready to be anyone’s pet as she’s currently running the goddamn jungle as a wolfpack leader, but I doubt we’ve seen the last of her. I keep telling people this, but Thrones does not waste a second of dialogue and very rarely leaves loose ends (looking at you Gendry).
Oh and Hotpie’s alive too.
BTW, Anyone else notice Arya’s mannerisms now? When talking to Hotpie she is eating, speaking and acting JUST like the Hound. Real short. No niceties. — “Got any ale?”
House Targaryen
Moving on, props to Varys for the most badass speech in his character’s history to convince Khaleesi he’s here to help. I don’t think she necessarily trusts him, but she understands his motives. All she asks is if you think I’m doing a shit job, tell me, don’t sail to Essos and plot a coup.
Olenna Tyrell is still a badass old lady who gives no fucks, asking the Mother of Dragons “Your grand plan was to march down here and use our armies?” The lady is fearless, have to give her that. And I think Khaleesi realizes she can learn a lot in the ways of Westerosi politics from Olenna. “You’re a dragon. Be a dragon.”
House Lannister
Cersei is calling in her bannermen and spin zoning the SHIT out of Khaleesi’s history (murdering the noblemen AKA the slave masters and feeding them to her dragons). She needs everyone to get her back to help fight off Khaleesi and the only way to do that is to play to people’s fears of the Mad King and the Targaryens in general. Without that, people will just flop to whoever they think will win. But Tyrion makes a GREAT point back on Dragonstone, saying they only way to RULE the 7 kingdoms vs just simply conquering them is with help from the Westerosi people themselves. By working with the Houses that already live there they can truly overthrow the regime, not just smash everything to ashes.
Also, laughed out loud at Jamie trying to get House Tarly to be his No. 1 general and Tarly basically tells Jamie to fuck himself. Welp, back to the drawing board Kingslayer.
WRAP IT UP BOX
I’ve noticed a LOT of loooong scenes this season like the Sam bedpan scene in last week’s episode and this week’s scene of Sam removing Jorah’s gray scale, slowly and painfully, not to mention the overly long Grey Worm sex scene. I don’t know if its due to new directors on Season 7, but the pacing feels out of place. Maybe they’re trying to lull us into a false sense of security because with the long, quiet, drawn out Grey Worm scene I was fully expecting someone to get knifed.
Did anyone notice in the GoT opening credits that at the end of the Wall the water is actually frozen?
No need to climb the Wall when you can walk right around it. Not to mention, if Benjen was right, maybe the White Walkers can’t pass through the wall since it was forged with ice and magic, so going around it seems to be a pretty good solution. Who knows though. When Bran was messing around and got touched by the Night King it allowed him to come into the One Eyed Raven’s cave (and murder him) which he could not do before. This also got Hodor, a bunch of the children of the forest and not to mention Bran’s direwolf killed. So good job Bran.
Also in case anyone already forgot Season 7 only has SEVEN episodes and we’ve already burned through two. So theres only just over a month of Thrones left in our lives before another cold, dark winter. Goddamnit, enjoy the ride.
Some uplifting news came out yesterday regarding UFC/MMA legend Matt Hughes. As you might remember, a little over a month ago Hughes was driving his truck when it was struck by a train in Illinois. He suffered a massive brain injury and things were hairy for couple days. As you can imagine he still has a long, long road ahead of him but as longtime friend and coach Pat Miletich said in the article, he is now out of a coma and surprising the hell out of doctors, which is really no surprise at all for fans of the country strong 170lb legend. Here’s to Hughes making a full recovery. Fight on.
It seems like the topic du jour around the local sports media is whether the Patriots can realistically (or should even attempt it) go a perfect 19-0. Except there seems to be less people talking about if they can do it and more people just straight up refusing to talk about it and saying its stupid to do so. USA Today thinks its doable. But basically every other media personality wants no part of it.
As a Patriots fan, the lack of people that want to go for 19-0 personally offends me.
Guys, I know it brings up bad memories. We almost had it in 2007. It was in the palms of our hands, less than 2 minutes to go and the 07 Patriots would be crowned the greatest team of all time.
If Asante Samuel makes that interception. If David Tyree plays like the insurance salesman he really is, if Rodney Harrison somehow jars that ball lose from his fucking helmet, if the refs actually called holding on the Giants offensive line on that play. The list goes on and on.
That shit used to kill me. Used to. But I noticed something recently. The 07 Super Bowl highlights come on….and I watch them. It doesn’t make me physically ill anymore. I can watch those clips and say ah man that sucked, without smashing a pint glass off my wall like I would have done a few years ago. Winning two Super Bowls since then goes a looong way in healing that pain. Brady’s 5-2 in the SB for christ’s sake. That will always be the most painful loss of my life. I was a freshman in college and my direct roommate was a Giants fan, not to mention half my hallway. So losing in that fashion, surrounded by that many Giants fans in neutral territory as a young, inebriated boyish man, that was a tough pill to swallow.
But like I said, one of the greatest Super Bowls EVER against Seattle with the Malcolm Butler pick to seal the W was cathartic; the greatest comeback of all time against the Falcons in 2016 gave us all our swagger back. You can’t say shit to us. You can’t hurt us.
The Patriots have 5 Super Bowl rings, Tom Brady is a 2x MVP, a 4x Super Bowl MVP, he had one of his greatest seasons ever during the Deflategate saga, and then was suspended the following year only to come back, tear it up and win another fucking Super Bowl. Belichick and Brady are the. Greatest. Of. All. Time. So…what do you get the men who have everything? The only thing left. Perfection
Its the ultimate. Its the only thing left that the Patriots don’t have. And there will always be the Felgers of the world saying we as Patriots fans all have a persecution complex (is it paranoid if its true though?) and theres nothing left to prove. But, tell someone they can’t do something or don’t need something and what do they want? Exactly. We’ve conquered the AFC East, we’ve conquered fan bases in St. Louis, Carolina, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Atlanta, we’ve taken on the league and the commissioner himself and come out with one for the thumb. TB12 is 40 years old and playing better than anyone has ever played the position. Minneaposix™ is the goal, but 19-0 will always be the ultimate.
PS – Plus if the Pats do go 19-0 I can get my fucking t-shirts back stateside.
As I mentioned before this card is fuckin staaAAAAaaaAAcked so I’m going to write a little about it each day (nerdgasms everywhere) and then do the usual preview Friday. Today I’m going to cover why in the 7 kingdoms two guys from the same weight class are fighting at a catch-weight.
UFC 214 in now upon us and one fight on the FXX prelims is particularly intriguing not just for the fight or fighters, although those two things are quite firestarters themselves, but for the regulations surrounding the bout.
In the second to last fight of the prelims, Aljamain Sterling faces Renan Barao in a – I hate using this word but it fits here – pivotal fight at…..not 135 pounds. We’ll get to that in a second. First our fighters.
Sterling is coming off a win over Augusto Mendes (UD) after dropping two in a row to Bryan Caraway and Rafael Assuncao, both by decision, and split decision at that. Sterling thought he won both fights, which he has a case for, particularly in the Assuncao fight. To play devil’s advocate, Sterling maybe should see this as a sign he needs to go for the finish more and not play it so safe, but either way it got bad enough that at 27 and as one of the better prospects in the division, he said he was prepared to walk away from MMA had he not got the nod over Mendes. Now that he did, he looks to take a giant leap back to contendership by besting the former champion, and, sort of, returning Barao.
As I just alluded to, Barao, almost, returns to the bantamweight division after a two fight stint at featherweight. Having gone 1-2 in his last 3 bantamweight fights, losing twice to the then-champion T.J Dillashaw, Barao decided to stop wreaking havoc on his body cutting to “35” and try 145 on for size. He saw mixed results, getting outpointed by former 155er Jeremy Stephens before taking a unanimous decision from Phillipe Nover, albeit in lackluster fashion. Not seeing the returns he was hoping, Barao decided to take his talents back to the division he did not lose in for almost a decade. There was one small hiccup awaiting him, as you may have picked up on me ominously hinting at.
UFC 214 takes place at the Honda center in Anaheim, a city located in California. California has an athletic commission, like most if not all states do (you know my opinion on research. I just know not every last area they hold fights in has one). An athletic commission is a state’s governing body over, mainly, combat sports and it’s participating competitors. Basically, they make sure every fighter follows its rules and follows them the same way. In May, California’s decided to put its money where every other state’s athletic commission’s mouth was and pass very strict regulations pertaining to weight classes and more importantly weight cutting. As I detailed in my write up on Chris Weidman (I was pretty fuckin wrong about him huh?) severely dehydrating yourself to make weight can have a very negative effect on performance. What I left out (to not distract from the story, #writing) is that it is also dangerous as all holy hell. Just check out this article on former welterweight Brian Melancon who had to retire from MMA because weight cuts basically almost shut down his kidneys. So California said no mas. Beginning, June 15th fighters had to, among other things, weigh in 30 days out from their fight to make sure they were in reasonable cutting distance from their scheduled fight weight. They also added that if you gained more than 10% of your weigh-in weight back between weigh-ins and the fight, you’d be asked very politely to move up in weight. Basically, California is no longer fucking around.
Here is we arrive at our Barao-Sterling curveball. Renan Barao has to basically kill himself to make 135. It’s well documented. He even had to pull out of his first rematch attempt with Dillashaw because he passed out standing up or something. It’s sickening to think about. Guess where that failed weight cut occurred? That’s right, the Sunshine State. So with all this documented in front of them California straight up told him they would not license or allow him to fight at 135lbs and the fight was moved to a 140lb catch-weight, with Barao’s 135lb future, at least in California, to be reviewed at a later date depending on how 140 goes. The whole situation puts Barao’s career in a weird place as if he is never allowed to fight at 135lbs in California again he may be forced to go back to 145 for financial and promotional reasons. It also sort of puts the UFC in a pickle in terms of being at minor odds with an athletic commission, which they do not like to be as AC’s tend to band together and could make the UFC’s life harder than it needs to be.
All in all, it has made a very interesting fight matter a slight bit less as it isn’t being fought in an actual division. However that is a shitty way to look at what might be my MMA Nerd Fight of the Night come Friday. The perennial “almost” there vs. the prodigal son. It’s gonna be a fun one, as long as Barao wins his fight against the scale to get there.
Yesterday was Monday, so of course I was off my game and missed the Monday morning post. But I was watching a game from The Big 3 yesterday and it got me thinking back to some of my favorite ballers. Not great basketball players in the NBA, but ballers. Guys that you know were kings of the court, dominating one on one, and throwing down hellacious dunks in style. AKA Gerald Green. Lets throw it back to 2007 when Gerald Green won the dunk contest when he was just 21 years old.
The 300s 