A day of lies, side shows, facades
In other words, it’s the Super Bowl
Two days before Super Bowl XLVII, it was hard to figure out what were the biggest lies, and what was really important.
Was it NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who answered the first question of his state of the league news conference by saying, “Well, the issue of player health and safety has always been a priority in the NFL”?
Or was it Mitch Ross, the deer-antler-velvet-extract spray salesman from Florida, standing on the sidewalk outside the media centre saying humans have two brains, and that he could cure post-concussion syndrome and perhaps ALS?
Either of Ross’s startling revelations would probably really help Goodell out, though it seems unlikely that will be the case.
It was, in the end, a day full of sideshows and facades, which is how the NFL works.
The majority of Goodell’s 22-question news conference queries were regarding safety and concussions, and he responded with his usual platitudes and boilerplate.
He was asked about the NFLPA survey that showed 78 per cent of players did not trust their medical staffs by expressing disappointment with the players; he refused to rule out an 18-game schedule, which the players have objected to due to the increased risks of injury.
At times, Goodell sounded like a man trying to be the health and safety commissioner of a league that can be neither healthy nor safe. At others, he merely sounded like a man making public statements.
The kind of comments that would one day be entered into evidence in the class-action lawsuits that have been launched against the NFL by fully one-third of their 12,000 living retired players.
“I would tell you that I believe safety is all of our responsibilities,” said Goodell. “I can’t appoint (a chief safety officer) who’s going to make the game safer as an individual. That’s all of our responsibilities. I’ll stand up, I’ll be accountable. It’s part of my responsibility, I’ll do everything. But the players have to do it. The coaches have to do it. Our officials have to do it. Our medical professionals have to do it. All of us are going to have to do that.”
A couple hours later Ross was out on the sidewalk in a black skullcap and a sleeveless grey T-shirt holding up his deer antler spray. He was the subject of a Sports Illustrated story earlier in the week that reported that while supplying various athletes with his products, Ross had sent deer-antler extract — which contains IGF-1, a byproduct of human growth hormone, and is banned — to Baltimore linebacker Ray Lewis to help him recover from his triceps tear this season.
Lewis has called the allegations “the trick of the devil.” Ross, meanwhile, said God told him he needed to come to New Orleans, and said he never saw Lewis use the spray, and apologized for Lewis for the distraction.
Ross’s primary objection, though, seemed to be being labelled as a snake oil salesman, which he then attempted to refute by talking about hologram stickers — or chips — that promote energy, and saying that the second human brain is located in the colon area. He really did seem to believe all of it, so there’s that.
So Ross threw out a blizzard of unproven claims about players and teams he had worked with — Brett Favre in 2009 for chips, 600 chips sent to the Ravens and 150 more to the Patriots last year, deerantler spray for several players, and so forth. (The chips are not banned.)
It was a mess of contradictions and denials and accusations that Sports Illustrated had, in the current vernacular, catfished him.
“I’m not calling any man a liar,” said Ross.
“Well, you’re calling the people who wrote that story liars,” pointed out one reporter. “Well, they are,” said Ross. Later, Ross asked, “Do I look and act and sound like a goofball to you?” “Little bit,” said a reporter. “Really?” said Ross. “That sucks.”
In the course of this outbreak of what looked like madness, Ross talked about having products that could help manage ALS symptoms, and said former NFL fullback Kevin Turner was his first subject.
Kevin Turner was upstairs, actually. He was sitting in a director’s chair, and someone else was holding a microphone for him because he couldn’t hold it himself. He has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and has stopped working with Ross, and he was one of six current or former NFL players who were joining with the concussion-focused Sports Legacy Institute in calling for limits in off-season and practice contact drills for high school football players.
“The only reason this isn’t in place is that high school athletes don’t have an opportunity to negotiate,” said Tennessee quarterback Matt Hasselbeck.
“We love football,” said former Saints and Rams offensive lineman Kyle Turley, wearing sunglasses due to his post-concussion symptoms. “We want it to be fixed. We demand that it be fixed.”
At least 29 states do not ban off-season full-contact practices, and none limit full contact during the week in-season. (Under the new collective bargaining agreement, the NFL only allows 14 fullcontact days in a season, and none in the off-season.) SLI co-chair Dr. Robert Cantu, who is the senior adviser to the NFL’s Head, Neck and Spine Committee, has recommended that children not play football at all until age 14, at the earliest.
So quarterback Matt Hasselbeck noted that when his father was playing in the NFL, they didn’t allow water breaks. Former Bears linebacker Hunter Hillenmeyer noted that children are put on strict pitch counts and forbidden to throw curveballs in baseball to save their elbows or shoulders, but have nothing in football to protect their brains. Every man on the dais talked about how football had damaged their brains, and how the kids playing football need to be protected while their brains are growing and vulnerable. It was inarguable. It was important.
But the Goodell show played to hundreds of reporters, and Ross’s tales of deerantler spray attracted a big crowd, and a mess of attention. The ex-players trying to make the game safer for children saw fewer than 25 reporters in the expansive room.
Turner looked around, University of Alabama hat on his head, the microphone being held in front of him, and said in his ALS-slowed drawl, “It’s just a no-brainer to me ... A couple years ago we had this news conference, and there were (three reporters). I was hoping it would be a little more full today, but at least it’s growing.”