#in the game even now that we know and understand cte. hockey players finish a shift on broken legs

[umflowers]

re: lewis' comments about qatar, please remember this is a man known for being exceptionally thoughtful about his actions and how they impact others, who nonetheless posts pictures of his very sculpted professional athlete's body, pinching the literal skin on his stomach with captions about how it's stubborn fat that he can't seem to exercise off. professional athletes do not view their bodies as bodies, which deserve care and concern. they view their bodies as the key to their high performance and ability to win, which they are addicted to. it quite literally doesn't occur to them to slow down and recognize what the body needs to be healthy. no professional athlete should be trusted with their own safety.

[betterdaysareatoenailaway]

RANDOM REVIEW #2: ANY GIVEN SUNDAY (1999)

“This game has got to be about more than winning. You’re part of something.”  Any Given Sunday (1999), directed by Oliver Stone and featuring Jamie Foxx, Dennis Quaid, Cameron Diaz, Al Pacino, LL Cool J, James Woods, and Matthew Modine, is my favourite sports movie of all time. Of all time.

I’m not betraying my favourite sport by saying this. The Mighty Ducks is a kid’s movie. It’s okay, but it’s not a timeless classic. I don’t like the Slap Shot series, Sudden Death is fun but silly, and the Goon movies were a missed opportunity. The only truly good scene in Goon is the diner scene where Liev Schreiber tells Seann William Scott: “Don’t go trying to be a hockey player. You’ll get your heart ripped out.”

  Such is the sad circumstance of the hockey enforcer. They all want to play, not just fight. Here’s a link to a video in which the most feared fighter in the history of the NHL, Bob Probert, explains that he wanted to be “an offensive threat...like Bobby Orr,” not a fighter: https://youtu.be/4sbxejbMH4g?t=118 Heartbreaking. But not unusual.

Donald Brashear, Marty McSorley, Tie Domi, Stu “The Grim Reaper” Grimson, Frazer McLaren: they all had hockey skills. But they were told they had to fight to remain on the roster, so they fought. As Schreiber says in the film: “You know they just want you to bleed, right?”  If the players don’t bleed, they don’t get to stay on the team. So they fight, and they pay dearly for it later. Many former fighters have CTE or other head injuries that make day-to-day life difficult. The makers of Goon should have taken that scene and run with it. I was so disappointed they didn’t, especially given what happened right around the time the film came out, with the tragic suicides of Wade Belak, Derek Boogaard, and Rick Rypien, all enforcers, all dead in a single summer. So Hollywood hasn’t even made a good hockey movie, let alone a great one. Baseball has a shitload of good films, probably because the slower pace of play makes it easier to film. Moneyball has a terrific home run scene, Rookie of the Year does too. Angels in the Outfield was a big favourite of mine when I was a kid, plus all the Major League films, and Bull Durham. 

Football has two good movies: The Program (1993) and Rudy (1993).    

And football has one masterpiece. The one I am writing about today.

A young Oliver Stone trying not to die in Vietnam. ^ Now, I know Stone is laughed at these days, given his nutty conspiracy theories and shitty behaviour and the marked decline in the quality of his films (although 2012’s Savages was underrated). I know Stone is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, but do you want a football movie to be subtle? Baseball, sure. It’s a game of fine distinctions, but football? Football is war. And war is about steamrolling the enemy, distinctions be damned, which is why Any Given Sunday is such an amazing sports film. I love the way it shows the dark side of football. In fact, the film is so dark that the NFL withdrew their support and cooperation, forcing Stone to create a fictitious league and team to portray what he wanted to portray.

This is not to say the movie is fresh or original. Quite the opposite. Any Given Sunday has every single sports film cliché you can think of. But precisely because it tries to stuff every single cliché into its runtime, the finished product is not a cliched mess so much as a rich tapestry, a dense cinema verite depiction of the dizzying highs and depressing lows of a professional sports team as it wins, loses, parties, and staggers its way through a difficult season.  Cliché #1: The aging quarterback playing his final year, trying to win one last championship. (Dennis Quaid) 

Sample dialog: Dennis Quaid (lying in a hospital bed severely injured): Don’t give up on me coach. Al Pacino: You’re like a son to me. I’ll never give up on you. ^ I know this sounds awful. But it’s actually fuckin’ great. Cliché #2: The arrogant upstart new player who likes hip hop and won’t respect the old regime. (Jamie Foxx) 

Cliché #3: The walking wounded veteran who could die if he gets hit one more time. Coincidentally, he needs just one more tackle to make his million-dollar bonus for the season. (Lawrence Taylor) 

Cliché #4: The female executive in a man’s world who must assert herself aggressively in order to win the grudging respect of her knuckle-dragging male colleagues (Cameron Diaz). Diaz is fantastic in the role, though she should have had more screen time, given that the main conflict in the film is very much about the new generation, as represented by her and Jamie Foxx, trying to replace the old generation, represented by Al Pacino, Dennis Quaid, Jim Brown, and Lawrence Taylor. Some people think Diaz’s character is too calculating, but here’s the thing: she’s right. Too many sports GMs shell out millions for the player an individual used to be, not the player he presently is. “I am not resigning a 39-year old QB, no matter how good he was,” she tells Pacino’s coach character, and you know what? She’s right. The Leafs’ David Clarkson signing is proof positive of the perils of signing a player based on past performance, not current capability. Diaz’s character is the living embodiment of the question: do you want to win, or do you want to be loyal? Cuz sometimes you can’t do both.

Cliché #5: The team doctor who won’t sacrifice his ethics for the good of the team (Matthew Modine).

Cliché #6: The team doctor who will sacrifice his ethics for the good of the team (James Woods) 

Cliché #7: The grizzled, thrice-divorced coach who has sacrificed everything for his football team, to the detriment of his social and familial life, who must give a stirring speech at some point in the film (Al Pacino…who goes out there and gives the all-time greatest sports movie “we must win this game” speech) 

Cliché #8: The assistant or associate coach who takes a parental interest in his players, playing the good cop to the head coach’s bad cop (former NFL star Jim Brown). 

Best quote: “Who wants to be thinking about blitzes and crossblocks when you’re holding your grandkids in your arms? That’s why I wanna coach high school. Kids don’t know nothing. They just wanna play.” 

Cliché #9: The player who can’t stop doing drugs (L.L. Cool J).

Okay, so the first thing that needs to be talked about is Al Pacino’s legendary locker room speech.  Now, it’s the coach’s job to rile up and inspire the players. But eloquence alone won’t do it. If you use certain big words, you lose them (remember Brian Burke being endlessly mocked by the Toronto media for using the word “truculent?”). The coach must deliver the message in a language the players understand, while still making victory sound lofty and aspirational. This is not an easy thing to accomplish. One of my favourite inspirational lines was spoken by “Iron” Mike Keenan to the New York Rangers before Game 7 against the Vancouver Canucks in 1994. “Win tonight, and we’ll walk together forever.” Oooh that’s gorgeous. But Pacino’s speech is right up there with it. 

“You know, when you get old in life…things get taken from you. That’s parta life. But you only learn that when you start losin’ stuff. You find out…life’s this game of inches. So’s football. In either game – life or football – the margin for error is so small. I mean…one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it…one half second too slow, too fast, you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when we add up all those inches that’s gonna make the fuckin difference between winnin’ and losin’! Between livin’ and dyin’!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_iKg7nutNY  Somehow, against all odds, Any Given Sunday succeeds. It is the Cinderella run of sports movies. You root for the film as you watch it. The dressing room scenes are incredible…the Black players listen to the newest hip hop while a trio of lunkhead white dudes headbang and scream “Hetfield is God.” There is a shower scene where a linebacker, tired of being teased about the size of his penis, tosses his pet alligator into the showers where it terrorizes his tormentors. There is a scene where a halfback has horrible diarrhea, but he’s hooked up to an IV so the doctor (Matthew Modine) has to follow him into the toilet cubicle, crinkling his nose as the player evacuates his bowels. There is a scene where someone loses an eye (the only scene in the film where Stone’s over-the-top approach misses the mark). There are scenes that discuss concussions (which is why the NFL refused to cooperate for the film), where Lawrence Taylor has to sign a waiver absolving the team of responsibility if he is hurt or paralyzed or killed. I wonder how purists and old school football fans reacted to the news that Oliver Stone was making a football film. If they even knew who he was (not totally unlikely…Stone made a string of jingoistic war movies in the 1980s) they probably thought the heavy hands of Oliver would ruin the film, take the poetry out of every play. But the actual football is filmed perfectly. The camera gets nice and low for the tackles. It flies the arcs of perfect spiral passes. It shows the chaos of a defensive line barreling down the field. When Al Pacino asked quarterback Dan Marino (fresh off his own Hollywood experience acting in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective) what it was like to be an NFL QB, Marino said: “Imagine standing on a highway with traffic roaring at you while trying to read Hamlet.” A great explanation. Shoulda made the movie. So the football itself is fabulously done. Much better than what Cameron Crowe did in the few football scenes in Jerry Maguire. The Program had some great football, as did Rudy, but neither come close to the heights of Any Given Sunday. In one of the film’s best scenes, Jamie Foxx insists that his white coaches have routinely placed him in situations where he was doomed to fail or prone to injury, and we believe him because white coaches have been doing that to Black players for decades. Quarterback Doug Williams, who led his Washington Redskins team to a Superbowl victory in 1987, was frequently referred to by even liberal media outlets as a “Black quarterback,” instead of just “quarterback,” as if his skin colour necessitated a qualification. Even now, in 2021, the majority of quarterbacks are white, although the gap is gradually closing. The 2020 season saw the highest number of starting Black quarterbacks, with 10 out of a possible 32.  Quarterback is the most cerebral position on the field, and for a long time there was a racist belief that Black men couldn’t do the job. Foxx’s character is a composite of many of the different Black quarterbacks who came of age in the 1990s, fighting for playing time against white QBs beloved by their fan base, fawned over in hagiographic Sports Illustrated profiles, and protected by the good ol’ boys club of team executives and coaching staff. Foxx’s character isn’t demoted because he can’t play the game. He wins several crucial games for his team en route to the playoffs. He’s demoted because he listens to hip hop in the dressing room, because he recorded a rap song and shot a video for it, and because he’s cocky. Yes, the scene where he asks out Cameron Diaz is sexist, as if her power only comes from her sexuality, not her intelligence and business acumen, but it’s meant to show how overly confident Foxx is, not that he’s a sexist prick. Any Given Sunday isn’t a single issue film. It’s basically an omni-protest piece. It gleefully shows football’s dark side, and there is no director better than Oliver Stone for muck-raking. He’s in full-on investigative journalist mode in Any Given Sunday, showing how and why players play through serious brain injuries. How because they are given opiates, often leading to debilitating addictions (this happens in all contact sports...Colorado Avalanche player Marek Svatos overdosed on heroin a few years after retiring from injuries). As to why, Stone gives two reasons. One, team doctors are paid by the team, not the players, therefore their decisions will benefit the team, not the players. And two, the players themselves are encouraged to underreport injuries and play through them because stats are incentivized. James Woods unethical doctor argues with Modine’s idealistic one because an MRI the latter called for a player to have costs the team $20k. But the player in question, Lawrence Taylor, plays anyway because his contract is stat incentivized and if he makes on more tackle he gets a million dollars. Incentivizing stats leads to players playing hurt. And although I loathe this term, a lazy go-to for film critics, Stone really does give an unflinching account of how this shit happens and why. When Williams is inevitably hurt and lying prone on the field, he woozily warns the paramedics who are placing him on a stretcher to “be careful…I’m worth a million dollars.” It’s tragic, yet you’re happy for him. The film really makes you care about these guys.  Thanks to the smartly written script, the viewer knows that Williams has four kids, and you’re pleased he made his bonus because, in all likelihood, after he retires, his injuries will prevent him from any kind of gainful employment (naturally, they give the TV analyst jobs to retired white players, unless Williams can somehow land the coveted token Black guy gig). Stone is not above fan service, a populist at heart, and he stuffs the film with former and then-current NFL players, a miraculous stunt given the fact that the NFL revoked their cooperation. Personally, I think this was a good thing because it meant Stone didn’t have to compromise (the league wanted editorial say on all issues pertaining to the league…meaning they would have cut the best storyline, which is the playing hurt one). It also meant that they had to rename the team and the league. While I’m sure this took away from the realism for some fans, I’m cool with it. It also allowed the moviemakers to name the team the Sharks, a perfect name for this roving band of predatory capitalist sports executives. In another example of fan service, the call-girl Pacino’s quintessential lonely workaholic character rents a girlfriend experience from is none other than Elizabeth Berkley of Showgirls, who had been unfairly blacklisted after the titular Verhoven/Esterhaz venture, a movie my wife showed me one day while I was dopesick, which I became so transfixed and mesmerized by that I forgot I was. As mentioned above, the only misstep in the film is one of the offshoots of the Playing Hurt arc, where a player loses an eye on the field. Not because he gets poked, but because he gets hit so hard his eye simply falls out. A medic runs onto the field and puts the white globe on ice. Stone cast a player with a glass eye in order to achieve this effect. No CGI! Still, the scene is unconvincing, a tad too over-the-top. But this is Oliver Stone. At least Any Given Sunday’s sole over-the-top moment is a throwaway scene lasting all of thirty seconds. It easily could have been a secondary plot-line in which government officials try to sneak a Cuban football prodigy out of Castro’s communist stronghold but the player is brutally murdered the morning the officials arrive at his apartment to escort him to the private plane. Or else the team GM is revealed to be a massive international cocaine dealer. Or the tight end is one half of a serial killer couple. The film follows its own advice, focusing more on the players growth, particularly Beamon’s (Foxx). The anonymity of the title, Any Given Sunday, elevates the game, not the players. Thank God, the movie doesn’t force Beamon to assimilate into Pacino’s mold. He buys into the team-first philosophy without renouncing his idiosyncratic POV or his fierce individuality. This is a triumph. One of my biggest problems with sports is the flattening effect it can have on creative individuals. Players take media training in order to sound as alike as possible during media interviews, a long row of stoic giants spouting cliches. It’s boring. Which is why media latch onto a loudmouth, even while they scold him for it. All sports are dying for an intelligent mouthpiece who can explain his motivations in a succinct, sound-bite-friendly, manner. Sports are entertainment. As much as I love Sidney Crosby, in my heart I have to go with Alexander Ovechkin because Ovechkin is far more thrilling, both on and off the ice. Unlike almost every other NHL star before him, all of whom were forced to kneel and kiss Don Cherry’s Rock Em Sock Em ring, Ovechkin defiantly told the media he simply did not care about Cherry or Cherry’s disgusting parental reaction to one of Ovie’s more creative goal celebrations (called a “celly” in the biz). On the play in question, Ovechkin scored the goal, then dropped his stick and mimed warming his hands over it, as if his stick were on fire. As cheesy as the celebration appeared to the naked eye, it’s both a funny and accurate notion. Ovechkin was the hottest scorer in the league for many years and his stick was on fire, metaphorically speaking. The only celly I can think of that matches up in terms of creativity and entertainment value came from Teemu Selanne in 1993, who scored a beauty of a goal, threw one of his gloves straight up into the air, then pumped his stick like a shotgun while “shooting” his glove. Of course, Cherry took exception to it. Cherry’s favourite goal celebration features Bobby Orr putting his head down and refraining from raising his hands over his head. Cherry’s idea of an appropriate goal celly is no celly at all. This from a man who claims “we’ve got to sell our game.” But when an arrogant player shows up and he’s not white, he’s in for a shitload of bad press. Foxx’s Beamon illustrates this beautifully when he yells at Pacino after Pacino cuts him for an older QB who has lost four games this season. “Don’t play that racism card with me,” Pacino warns. “Okay…okay…” Foxx nods, “Maybe it’s not racism. Maybe it’s ‘placism’…as in…a brother got to know his place.”

Here is the original theatrical trailer, featuring Garbage’s classic “Push It.”

Above Lawrence Taylor begs Matthew Modine for Cortazone.  There’s also a great scene where Pacino is trying to figure out where he has gone wrong and Diaz just looks at him. “You got old,” she says simply. No enterprise is more cruel to an aging human being than sports. And this movie makes football a big giant corporate machine that chews players up and spits them out, injured and drug addicted, after four or five years. Those who play for a decade are lucky. This is still how the NFL works. And the NHL is increasingly becoming a young man’s game. Experience matters less and less.

When I started watching hockey in the 90s, players regularly competed into their late 30s. Not so anymore. Players peak at 23-24 now, and are often out of the league by age 35. Thornton and Chelois are exceptions, not the rule. After more than two hours, Any Given Sunday finally lurches across the finish line, bravely refusing to give its viewers a traditional happy ending, in the great tradition of underdog sports films like Rocky and Rudy. The bombshell dropped by Pacino’s character at the end feels less surprising than inevitable, but by now the movie has explored so much of professional sports' seedy underbelly that you're glad it's over. The film is great but exhausting. Stone seems to be advancing the notion that the sport itself is pure, but the people in it are corrupt. If money weren’t involved, the game would be played for its own sake.

I agree with this. People playing pond hockey are engaging in wholesome fun, not necessarily practicing to make a professional league. Commerce corrupts the purity of the game, and the extent to which it corrupts is directly proportional to how badly the individual in question needs the commerce. Of course, the sport is highly racialized, with people in positions of authority white, and those being told what to do with their bodies Black.

Any Given Sunday is an important film, but it never sacrifices entertainment for the sake of moralizing. That it pulls off such a strong moralistic stance is a testament to the actors, who are all incredible, and the material, which is among the strongest of Stone’s career.

He never really made a great movie after this one. So check it out sometime.

[flauntpage]

Your Wednesday Morning Roundup

The Phillies won’t finish the season with 100 losses. Another small good thing in a pretty bad season.

They defeated the Washington Nationals 4-1 thanks to a two-run double by Cameron Rupp in the third inning. Starter Jake Thompson had a strong outing, going five innings and giving up one run on four hits while striking out five. The Phillies’ bullpen struck out nine in four innings of work.

Record-wise, this season was worse than last year’s 71-91 record, but there have been plenty of bright spots to show the near future. Ever since the arrival of Nick Williams in July, the team has started to become somewhat watchable. Will this change in 2018? I hope. But there’s still plenty of work that needs to be done.

Phils and Nats go at it one final time in 2017 tonight at 7:05. Mark Leiter Jr. goes for Philadelphia, while Tanner Roark opposes him for Washington.

The Roundup:

The best thing I read yesterday was Philly.com’s wonderful article of the oral history of the 2007 Phillies’ regular season finale.

Aaron Nola’s numbers have quietly been some of the best in baseball, from Ryan Lawrence of Philly Voice:

The fact that we’re in the final week of the 2017 season and talking about where Nola ranks among baseball’s best pitchers is somewhat remarkable given where we were a year ago, or even just six months ago with the 24-year-old right-hander. Nola missed the final two months of the 2016 season with an elbow injury and no one was still quite sure what to expect when he began making regular turns in the Grapefruit League back in March.

It’s safe to say Nola has quieted the pessimistic critics. And it’s also fair to say that Mackanin has been more than pleased to have a pitcher like Nola slotted anywhere in his rotation going into 2018.

While Rhys Hoskins is in a home run drought, Nick Williams is currently in a hit drought.

—

The Eagles brought back a familiar face in Kenjon Barner to replace Darren Sproles on a one-year deal. Barner recorded 129 rushing yards, 42 receiving yards, and two rushing touchdowns in 13 games with the Eagles last season.

Even without Sproles in the mix, the team can still have a diversified running game.

ESPN’s Tim McManus writes about Doug Pederson’s two analytics assistants that help him decide whether or not to go for it on fourth down:

Pederson named one of them at his day-after news conference — coaching assistant/linebackers coach Ryan Paganetti, a Dartmouth grad with a degree in Economics who spent two years as an analyst for the team. Offensive coordinator Frank Reich told ESPN there is a second voice that can be heard over the game-day communications system when it comes to such matters — director of football compliance Jon Ferrari.

The pair weighs in throughout the game, Reich said: after just about every touchdown on whether to go for one or two; during the final two minutes of each half to discuss timeouts, etc.; and when the team gets into what is considered fourth-down territory — usually around midfield and beyond. Sometimes Pederson initiates the dialogue; other times, the men upstairs do.

Carson Wentz now owes Jake Elliott a game check. But he may have worked out an alternative:

Well that escalated quickly…

but don't worry, @jake_elliott22 and I got this worked out…

— Carson Wentz (@cj_wentz) September 27, 2017

An Eagles fan claims Giants wide receiver Brandon Marshall spat at his face.

—

After losing in overtime at MSG on Monday, the Flyers won the second leg of a home-and-home against the New York Rangers 4-3. Travis Konecny had the game-winner in the extra session.

It was Sam Morin’s turn to be the top young defenseman. The former first round pick scored the Flyers’ first goal and had a team-high four hits.

“I really don’t put pressure on myself. I know I belong here,” said Morin, a first-round selection (11th overall) in the 2013 draft. “I think I’m ready for the NHL, to be honest. I just have to keep working hard and show those guys I can make it.”

With the Flyers in a 2-0 deficit, Claude Giroux  — who again played left wing on Sean Couturier’s line — raced into the right circle, pirouetted, and dropped a pass to the on-charging Morin in the high slot. The big defenseman put a wrist shot behind Pavelec with 1:24 remaining in the first.

“I just saw ‘G’ had the puck and when he has the puck you have to be ready for the pass,” said Morin, who barely missed scoring a second goal when his backhander from the doorstep went wide midway through the third period. “I was coming from the bench and I just shot the puck toward the net and sometimes the puck goes in.”

Is Morin behind his fellow 2013 draft counterparts in terms of development?

Sam Carchidi is not a fan of protesting the National Anthem.

After spending a couple years in the AHL and some limited experience in the NHL, Jordan Weal is part of the young Flyers core.

Make no mistake, Weal was a darling of the Flyers fan base last season. They wanted him to make the team out of training camp. But the coaching staff thought Weal left a lot of meat on the bone in camp a year ago.

“He’s earned [his spot this season] and he’s kind of earned it the old-fashioned way,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “He spent more than a couple years in the AHL. The reality is he probably didn’t have the type of camp that he had hoped last year, but he went to Lehigh and earned it.

“He was arguably the best player in that league for several months. He’s earned the opportunity to be in a different spot [this year]. He works at his game and competes really hard. Right now, like any player, he’s working to get his game to a regular season level a week from now – and he’s earned that.”

—

The Sixers officially opened up training camp in Camden. After practice, head coach Brett Brown said he wants the team to make the playoffs:

“As I said to the group, our goal is to make the playoffs,” Brown said. “There are several other teams … they are in a room saying something similar. So to me, let’s talk about what that really means.”

The fifth-year head coach was speaking in terms of what his team needs to do to make a playoff berth possible. That’s understandable. But before Tuesday, Brown spoke of the challenges that will come with starting two rookie ballhandlers in Ben Simmons and Markelle Fultz. He never publicly mentioned trying to make the playoffs. Simmons and Fultz have done a great job of that, while Brown and the Sixers’ front office downplayed the heightened expectations.

Brown still loves Joel Embiid, who won’t participate in 5-of-5 drills throughout camp.

There’s two Okafors at camp this season, but they’re not related. Former first round pick Emeka Okafor is trying to return to the NBA after a four-year absence:

“Being back in this environment, being back in the NBA umbrella, with the guys, the team, talking to the press, just feels so good,” Okafor said Monday. “It feels like putting on a suit that’s always been the right fit, or your favorite pair of jeans, however you want to put it. It just feels very, very natural.”

Why, if something feels so right, would he wait so long to come back? The timing wasn’t right and he wanted to continue rehabbing in a way that would promote longevity.

“Making sure I was healthy and strong and ready to come back and play the way I wanted to play,” Okafor said.

What starting lineups may or may not work for the Sixers this season?

—

Logan Marchi and Frank Nutile will battle for the starting quarterback job this week, according to Temple head coach Geoff Collins.

Villanova head coach Jay Wright reflects on his time with the late Rollie Massimino.

—

In other sports news, 10 people involved in college basketball, including four assistant coaches and a senior executive at Adidas, are facing federal bribery, fraud, and corruption charges in what could be the start of something big. And maybe the end of Rick Pitino at Louisville.

Researchers at Boston University may have a biomarker to help diagnose CTE while people are living:

In a study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS ONE, the researchers found that the biomarker, the protein CCL11, might also help distinguish CTE from Alzheimer’s disease, which often presents with symptoms similar to CTE and also can be definitively diagnosed only postmortem. The ability to diagnose CTE in the living would allow not only for the development of possible therapies to treat the disease, but also for research into prevention.

“This is a step forward from our knowledge gained in understanding CTE from brain donations,” says study senior author Ann McKee, a MED professor of neurology and pathology, director of BU’s CTE Center, and chief of neuropathology at VABHS. “It’s a hopeful step. The whole point is to understand as much as we can from the individuals who’ve fallen, so we can apply it to our future veterans and athletes.”

Dwyane Wade is expected to reunite with LeBron James in Cleveland once he clears waivers today.

DirecTV is allowing some subscribers to cancel their Sunday Ticket packages because of the National Anthem protests.

It might reach hockey as well, as Joel Ward, a Canadian, may take a knee during the National Anthem:

“It’s definitely something I wouldn’t cross out,” Ward said when asked by the Mercury News whether he’d consider taking a knee during the national anthem at an upcoming Sharks game.

“I’ve experienced a lot of racism myself in hockey and on a day-to-day occurrence. I haven’t really sat down to think about it too much yet, but I definitely wouldn’t say no to it.”

Deadspin did a feature on Raiders superfan Dr. Death and why he’s giving up on football if the Raiders move to Las Vegas.

Ric Flair claims he’s slept with around 10,000 women in his life in his 30 for 30 documentary. He now regrets saying that.

Huh:

From Michael Beasley podcast…we debated & disagreed about this (& much more) for at least 15 min. WHO IS RIGHT? https://t.co/2Bess1WpN2 http://pic.twitter.com/VrnggG7Bk1

— Taylor Rooks (@TaylorRooks) September 26, 2017

—

In the news, Twitter is expanding their character limit from 140 to 280 and it already sucks:

This is a small change, but a big move for us. 140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence! https://t.co/TuHj51MsTu

— jack (@jack) September 26, 2017

The Saudi king has lifted a ban on women drivers.

A teen is dead and three others are injured in Germantown.

The Commerce Department is slapping a tariff on Canadian planemaker Bombardier.

Aerosmith is cancelling the rest of their South American tour after singer Steven Tyler suffered “unexpected medical issues.”

Dave Roberts on CBS tonight will feel really weird:

. @VittoriaWoodill talks to @David_Boreanaz and local favorite Dave Roberts Wednesday at 11 after @SEALTeamCBS #mustseeTV ONLY ON #CBS3 http://pic.twitter.com/W8X6TRFyi8

— CBS Philly (@CBSPhilly) September 26, 2017

Your Wednesday Morning Roundup published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv