As far as brain injuries, what else are you going to ban - riding in cars? bicycling? taking showers? drinking alcohol?Pushing back is local politico Stu Levitan, misspelling Meade's first name and gratuitously insulting him:
Lawrence, are you really asserting that the number of brain injuries from showering equals the number of brain injuries from football? My, you are a silly little fellow!Meade is all:
Stw, what I am asserting is that football is only one of many activities which can lead to traumatic brain injury. Your question reflects poor reading comprehension. Is it possible that you bumped your head while playing Chutes and Ladders when you were a child?This is what it's like in a clash of who-knows-how-damaged male brains of Madison.
Or maybe you didn't play that game. Maybe you, Cowboy Stu, and your family played Go To The Head Of The Class. You probably should've worn a helmet.
Like Dave!
AND: If you've got a craving for any old-time kids' games, please use the Althouse portal to Amazon. And I recommend Candy Land. Because they don't want you to eat candy.
Posts
96 comments:
The Amazon segue in this post is Harveyesque.
Perhaps it's my imagination but over the past few years it seems like there's been far more fretting over injuries in both college and professional sports. It's so bizarre how people can turn non-problems into problems, or very small problems into critical issues that demand solutions.
It's like one of my state's Senators, Chuck Schumer. He's always looking for some ridiculous cause and turn it into a big issue.
WAIT A MINUTE!!!!
Some douche is gratuitously insulting Meade!
That's our job. How dare he!
This will not stand!
I love Chutes and Ladders!
The president of Univ of Penn makes almost $1.5 Million per year. Does Mayor Dave see a problem with that?
Joe Biden has been in The Imperial City for the last 40 years and been paid probably over $8 Million in that time while the country's finances went down the drain. Does Mayor Dave have a problem with that?
Jamey Gorelick was paid over $10 Million by Fannie Mae while housing prices were going bonkers and its mortgages were tanking. Does Mayor Dave have a problem with that?
Contra Meade, though, it's not a free market. The (thoroughly corrupt) NCAA is a government protected monopoly that prevents the players from getting paid from sources outside the university. The vast majority of players have no salable football skills and are getting well compensated (by their scholarships) for their time. But the NCAA binds them and restricts their freedom with ridiculous rules. And the elite few can't take compensation from the NFL or even hire an agent to explore their options. You can't do that to a math or chemistry or law student. When they get outside compensation for the skills we are teaching them we BRAG about it.
The NCAA should be disbanded tomorrow.
Football players and other college athletes should be paid up front and enough with the hypocrisy of them having to go to school.
And if they get hurt so what? It is the price they pay for the free ride at the ridiculously over-priced second rate universities like Wisconsin
It pains me to see Meade (even though he demoted me to #2 seal) lower himself to the syntax of the trolls.
Cmon Bob- it is a free market. People want to watch football and they pay for it. No one that I know wants to watch chemistry or math majors do whatever they do so there is no league rules with which they have to abide. Come the day people will pay to watch them I guarantee there will be league rules and the competitors will not even be allowed to accept a free pocket protector from coprorate sponsors.
"Perhaps it's my imagination but over the past few years it seems like there's been far more fretting over injuries in both college and professional sports. It's so bizarre how people can turn non-problems into problems, or very small problems into critical issues that demand solutions. "
Haven't you read about all the unemployed lawyers these days ? Law schools are churning out more ambulance chasers than there are ambulances. Entrepreneurial spirit !
The best suggestion I've seen is to away with helmets. Then there would be fewer "spearing" incidents.
I'm eating candy as I read this.
If you want to go to the best school for Chemistry or Chemical Engineering,you must go to UW. There are like situations for other "real" majors at other schools which have wasted too much on sports.
@AJ. Sure, it's a free market for the people who watch, but not for the people who play. Why do football players need the NCAA's "protection" when the math and chem majors don't? Would Althouse kick someone out of her class for having a paid internship? Would the student be ineligible because she was no longer an amateur lawyer? Why can't we treat athletes the same way?
Why would a lefty want anybody (including college football players) to make evil profits? That'll only lead to their future demand that those rich bastards give up their profits in the name of fairness.
Stw...Hilarious!! I'm sure it sailed right over his head.
It seems that newspapers pick arbitrary issues, and then someone feels that they must solved.
Yesterday, the local newspaper was asserting that the artillery range at Fort Lewis was pushing the Mazama Pocket Gopher to extinction. The article went on to state that the Tacoma Pocket Gopher was already extinct.
We must do it for Gaia!!
You can eat candy, but don't for Heavens' Sake, drink a Big Gulp Soda.
FWIW, I don't see why Barry is getting extra pay.
When you are a supervisor, and one of your underlings goes away, you have to pick up the slack. It's part of your job, i.e., your compensation, for being the Boss.
What the hell is Meade talking about? Someone complains about a government-run institution and he responds that it's a free market? Someone calls him out for comparing football to less dangerous pursuits, and he responds by pointing out that there are other ways to get injured besides football? Does this guy know the difference between a good argument and a bad one? Does he care?
Btw, I'll be damned but I could not figure out Mayor Dave's math re Barry's extra pay for coaching for one month.
"Stw"
in response to:
"Lawrence"
I see what you did here! lol
"Stw"
in response to:
"Lawrence"
I see what you did here! lol
Haven't you read about all the unemployed lawyers these days ? Law schools are churning out more ambulance chasers than there are ambulances. Entrepreneurial spirit !
Agreed. I guess lawyers as a profession fall under a kind of repairman's paradox. Someone who makes their living fixing things won't have any work if everything is fixed. It is in their interest for things to be broken. An auto mechanic fixes cars, so if a car was invented that never broke down it would be bad for all auto mechanics.
Similarly, lawyers exist to fix problems between people. It is in their interest that problems continue to happen between people. And if all the big problems are resolved, it is in their interest to find (or create) new problems. Politicians exist under the same paradigm.
If they want to do something to improve the state of football in the state of Wisconsin they should ban the Green Bay Packers.
I mean think of the all the head injuries when their deluded fans bang their heads against the wall when they lose the big games to the New York Giants.
Stop the concussions! Stop the brain damage! Ban the Packers!
Bob R:
The players each get the same thing no matter the difference in what they contribute to the effort. So I kinda agree with you - in a free market, each player would cut his own deal. Unless they are in unions!
Baron:
You forget that cheese, as used & worn in Wisconsin, is an excellent buffer which protects against head injuries!
"[I]n a free market, each player would cut his own deal. Unless they are in unions!"
Right, because players' unions are famous for opposing free agency.
It's almost certainly true that showering causes more traumatic brain injuries than football. A tiny chance of injury from something everyone does all the time is almost always results in more injuries than a larger chance of injury from something a very small number of people do part of the time.
The best numbers I could find showed that falling caused more than twice as many traumatic brain injuries than being struck/striking something.
AF - I was making a joke about the state of Michigan and its news re ordinary labor unions.
My husband was raised by neo-hippies and they thought competitive sports were ugly because competition is ugly.
I suspect this new-found fear of head injuries is just a new way to attack the same old nemesis, competition.
"For the month of December, Alvarez will receive 90 percent of Bielema’s monthly football coaching salary ($195,000) plus 10 percent of his current athletic director salary ($8,500), for a total of $203,500, which represents a one-time $118,500 increase in his monthly salary."
The money will come from Arkansas' buyout of Bielema's contract.
Bottom line - You're only paying your AD $85,000/year. What's wrong with you people?
Wisconsin is well aware of brain traumas among their students. Monte Ball got one for walking around campus.
I heard that the Law Students coming through Althouse's Con Law class are waived passing the State Bar exam to practice in State. The Bar understands that her teachable moments can cause head traumas to the unprepared.
Which shows to go you how tough Sir Meade is in a debate.
Bicycling is a major source of head injuries. Number 1 for kids 14and under.
BTW - I have a hard time saying athletes don't get paid. My son gets nearly $30,000 a year for tuition, room and board and books to play football.
You should have been around the email war between Meade and Aunt Jemima over the proper way to make pancakes.
It was epic I tell ya! Epic!
Hahaha, Edutcher thinks everyone who doesn't agree with him is a troll, don't ya know Meade is the troll over there?
One of my degrees is from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, which has no intercollegiate football program -- but does have one for hockey. I can only imagine Stw's horror at that thought.
Stw,
Someone
Somewhere
Is having good time
Go
Go now
Quick like a bunny
Stop them!!!!
Your mission is clear
Even if your reading comprehension
Is not
Stop the fun
It must be done
The War on Brains
Must be won
Outlaw football
Burn down Candyland
Helmets must be worn
While walking, blogging, and also
During sex
Also, no quaaludes, dudes
While you're out killing joy, we will delight in the spectacle of Meade v. (for violating) Citizen Dave w/o your idiotic interventions and distractions.
Thanks.
Because they don't want you to eat candy.
When I helped my kid make a snowman on Sunday, I gave the snowman a pipe. Felt all rebellious!
The payout per team for the Rose Bowl is $22,300,000. The money goes to the school, not the players. It has to be shared with the conference.
The payout for the National Moot Court Competition is $2,500 to the winning team. The money goes to the school, not the mooters. But they don't have to share it with the conference.
Alcohol consumption causes more brain damage than football or other sports. And it happens to everyone who partakes so you don't need to adjust numbers to make comparisons.
Rabel:
maybe the Mooters could use a union.
"Mooters" - sounds like a Hooters Bar but just for dairy cows!
Bottom line - You're only paying your AD $85,000/year. What's wrong with you people?
You're off by a factor of 12.
The Stu/Stw dig should have indicated to Levitan that he was fighting out of his weight class.
It's a free market where students get to pick what school to attend. If you don't want a football school, buy a diiferent school's product.
I love that Meade's first name is spelled "Lau" instead of "Law"!
This is how my dad spells his first name (and how I spell my middle name). My late mom, who didn't get along with my dad's mother all that well, used to say that the latter chose to spell it the "weird way".
Weirdos unite!
The only reason any politician (or ex-politician, or political groupie) ever frets about someone else spending his own money is because he covets it. He want to steal it and spend it on his own interests.
It's no different than one greedy child casting envious eyes on another's ice cream cone.
"You're off by a factor of 12."
The quote from UW is off by a factor of 12.
I got the math now.
Alvarez is paid $1MM a year which is 85K per month. In the next month, he will spend 10% of his time on that job so he gets $8,500
The coach was paid way more and Alvarez gets one month of that salary x 90%.
"It's a free market where students get to pick what school to attend. If you don't want a football school, buy a diiferent school's product."
Yeah? Does that go for taxpayers too?
And how about the players? What if they don't want to play for free? They're shit out of luck because of NFL/NCAA rules.
"And how about the players? What if they don't want to play for free?"
It's all about the pussy. Money is a secondary concern.
MayBee said...
My husband was raised by neo-hippies and they thought competitive sports were ugly because competition is ugly.
I suspect this new-found fear of head injuries is just a new way to attack the same old nemesis, competition.
I don't think so. There are two reasons leftist academics hate football:
(1) They're acting from the belief that if football wasn't around they could spend that budget on their priorities. (2) Football creates a political power base inside academia that obstructs their goal of complete control.
Ann Althouse said "It's a free market where students get to pick what school to attend. If you don't want a football school, buy a diiferent school's product."
Uh, no. I guess if you consider a free market to be a place where you can choose whether to buy one product or another, then maybe. That's like observing that the heroin market in America is free.
But in the higher education market, it's not free. It's government-regulated, government-subsidized, and guild-governed. It's disgustingly corrupt.
And how about the players? What if they don't want to play for free?
Then they don't have to play. Did you have a point?
Candy Land would be better with real candy.
A friend mentioned pralines and now I'm on a praline kick.
I've been making them with cream but now I'm thinking that might be going too far with the fat. Sometimes too much fat is a bad thing! To keep the cream I might consider backing off butter. Or increasing milk solids like powdered milk. Or switch to evaporated milk like everybody else does. But I'm imagining the original dealio was cream. But then the original would have been hazelnuts or walnuts.
They're horrible. Nearly pure sugar, but I can't keep off 'em now that I know what they are.
"Then they don't have to play. Did you have a point?"
Yeah, my point is that college football and the free market have very little to do with each other. What was yours?
The school I went to didn't have football.
I went to another school one summer for a special session. I didn't know that that school had football until I saw a football shirt in the campus bookstore. I bought the shirt because I thought it was ironic.
Who are these people, and why should I care?
Candy Land would be better with real candy.
That was always the disappointing thing about Candy Land. You make it to the Candy Castle... but you never really make it. Candy, candy, candy... but no candy.
Jeez AF:
If the athletes feel they are getting screwed in a non-pussy sense, they are free to go and try and form their own leagues.
Just like conservatives feel they are getting screwed by the socialist Dems, who are temporarily in power, thus the conservatives are trying to bring back federalism in theory and in practice.
DADvocate said...
Bicycling is a major source of head injuries. Number 1 for kids 14and under.
BTW - I have a hard time saying athletes don't get paid. My son gets nearly $30,000 a year for tuition, room and board and books to play football.
=========================
Hard to see your point when someone "gets" that for being a football athlete while another person with no skills other than being black, Muslim, and a Somalia refugee gets the same thing for free.
Naturally, elite athletes see others getting the same "free ride" but contributing nothing other than adding diversity - and begin to think "I should get more than the Somalis"
Levitan seems to have forgotten the number of boys raped while showering. It seems the perpetration of involuntary exploitation trumps the outcome of a voluntary behavior. So, yes, we should ban showers.
Meade's reading comprehension is lacking here. Dave says nothing about banning football because of head injuries. He simply points out that brain injuries [which can happen in football] possibly outweight the money that one could make playing football in the NFL. But he says it as a side note. It's not the main argument of the piece.
What Meade seems to be doing is making a comment based on nothing more than what he wants to write about.
I think Meade is wrong about universities serving the Free Market.
Or students getting an actual pick of what they want (if admitted) under the same free market.
Or their parents doing alumni contributions plus helping with costs -
You don't get to chose say, an electric engineering school that lowers costs 63% by dispensing with all the sidestuff that an engineering grad has no use for and is too busy to participate in..Meaning no sports, no Diversity Faculty, no obligated English or sensitivity courses or paid concerts...
You want an engineering education - part of that cost will be what all the "accredited universities" are required to have superfluous bells and whistles.
There is no free market seeking to align universities to lower costs to address each potential customers specific educational needs.
I do think there is something distasteful about supporting a sport(American football) whose goal is to grind up young men's bodies for entertainment.
n.n said...
Levitan seems to have forgotten the number of boys raped while showering. It seems the perpetration of involuntary exploitation trumps the outcome of a voluntary behavior. So, yes, we should ban showers.
=====================
That is just another form of helmeted spearing done by certain rogue members of the football community.
The gay pederasts.
It's a free market where students get to pick what school to attend
While this argument may work for private universities, Wisconsin receives a significant subsidy from the state.
So Meade's point is ridiculous.
Rabel said...
"And how about the players? What if they don't want to play for free?"
It's all about the pussy. Money is a secondary concern.
I wonder what the campus radicals would say if we claimed college is merely a ruse to concentrate sexually available women for the convenience of men. The sex itself is a point in favor, but there are so many more. For example, by doing so we're able to field football teams more cheaply by subsituting sexual services for money.
I bet we can get them to believe it's true if we can tie all their hot-button issues. For example, that's why we don't care that women disproportionately choose useless majors or underachieve in the workplace after graduating.
For example, that's why we don't care that women disproportionately choose useless majors or underachieve in the workplace after graduating.
But the radicals don't care either. In fact, they like that most women earn useless degrees. Keeps 'em dependent.
Inga said...
Hahaha, Edutcher thinks everyone who doesn't agree with him is a troll, don't ya know Meade is the troll over there?
No, Oop, as always, doesn't get it.
I said it pained me to see Meade resort to the conventions of trolls, not that he was one.
My God, get a 4th grader (preferably home-schooled or from a private or parochial school) to read to you from now on.
There are indeed plenty of fine schools without football teams. I went to a school whose only intercollegiate sport was croquet, in which they have often been the national champion. YoungHegelian went to another campus of the same school, which may have had no intercollegiate teams at all.
campy said...
But the radicals don't care either. In fact, they like that most women earn useless degrees. Keeps 'em dependent.
I think they like it because the more majors in useless subjects a school has the more teachers of useless subjects they need. I also think the reason we have such expansion in government and NGO employment is to find jobs for the holders of useless degrees, and academia pushes for this because if it becomes generally understood how useless the degrees are those majors and teaching staffs are going to downsize.
But the point isn't accuracy, it's just an experiment. If we made up something totally insane but blamed it on all the groups the nuts hate would they buy into it?
edutcher
Actually you originally wrote the "syntax of the trolls" not the "conventions of trolls."
They don't mean the same thing. Although, yes, they don't mean you think he is a troll.
If they want to do something to improve the state of football in the state of Wisconsin they should ban the Green Bay Packers.
What would they do with all those world championship rings? I suppose give some to the New Jersey Giants, they could use some :-)
Liberal contortions...
Leave me free to smoke pot and rot my brain with the shit... but don't allow that freedom of choice to others... because football is a game I consider distasteful.
This is what it's like in a clash of who-knows-how-damaged male brains of Madison.
There's a "Bridges of Madison County" reference buried in there somewhere. Clint Eastwood, call your office.
People coming out of most liberal schools are preponderantly brain-dead anyhow, so who cares?
Cedarford said...
That is just another form of helmeted spearing done by certain rogue members of the football community.The gay pederasts."
Which was of course the origin of the Green Bay Packers who were originally know as the "Fudge Packers" until George Halas and Art Rooney demanded they change the name.
The new versions of Candyland are kind of creepy-looking. I like the old ones with the ice cream bars and the gumdrops. My niece and nephew think one of the current characters looks like Jerry Sandusky.
I used to love playing Go to the Head of the Class when my sisters and I were kids. This post took me back, and thank you and Meade for that.
You know, it seems to me that if all of the universities dropped all of their athletic teams and competed in chess and bridge, there would be some peckandsniff member of the left wing lunatic fringe who'd complain about the kids getting calluses on their fingers.
"You know, it seems to me that if all of the universities dropped all of their athletic teams and competed in chess and bridge, there would be some peckandsniff member of the left wing lunatic fringe who'd complain about the kids getting calluses on their fingers."
But it would be fun watching them try to justify needing both male and female teams.
Althouse has evolved to referring to "they."
My only comment is to note that I found it slightly, only slightly, jarring to read that Ann wrote the phrase "and Meade is all..."
It's like when I was in High school an I would hear teachers say, "My bad." It just seems doubly incorrect.
Keep Up with the lingo and Carry On.
There are 11,000 High Schools in the United States. That means there are 11,000 graduating classes made up primarily of petty people who were jealous of athletes. And Valedictorians. And Class Officers.
Ban everything achievement-oriented activity limited to those who achieve excellence at whatever it is - because surely everything ranked by an ordered meritocracy is in some way injurious to the meritorious.
More concern trolling.
Division I players should be offered a salary worth at least one year's tuition. The bidding can be competitive, but the minimum pay should be the cash value of one year's tuition. They could use that money to pay for the tuition or a new car. Their choice. The more valuable players would probably be paid enough to afford both. No player would be entitled to play more than four years.....Under such a plan, the colleges could continue to harvest money, the NFL could continue to harvest players, and the players could be paid something of what they're worth. Cheerleaders who have sex with the players can be offered the same terms. ....No young man who doesn't have a current hit record will ever turn down the chance to play varsity football. The rules and the equipment should take note of the fact that repetitive head injuries can cause major problems later in life. The adjustments do not necessarily have to ruin the game of football. Perhaps something as simple as eliminating full contact practices will remedy many of the problems.
Stew Levitan, are you really asserting you've never heard of all the horrific shower accidents?
http://www.celebritydiagnosis.com/2011/10/ailments-of-the-aging-rock-star-steven-tyler-shower-accident-edition
Good grief. I went to college with Stu Levitan.
Back then he wore a trench coat and wrote for the college paper in Hunter S. Thompson's gonzo style. He was something of a dork but otherwise OK.
"The gay pederasts"
I'll say this on behalf of Cedarford - when it comes to pimping out ass-raping child molesters he's preference-neutral. He tried to whitewash Polanski *and* Sandusky!
Dale Earnhart and Ayrton Senna never wet their pants over head injuries.
Hemingway was right, everything else is just a game.
Rowers get spine problems. Ban UW rowing!
Cheerleaders have falls and injuries. Ban cheer leading!
Get rid of athletic scholarships. Let only students with a certain grade point, eligible to play sports. Enforce it with a fine so steep if a school cheats, that they wouldn't risk the possibility of it bankrupting them.
"Get rid of athletic scholarships."
Definitely. Then we would have ivy-league style sports, which would be a fine thing in my view. Actual students playing against each other without the corporatized big-money crap that corrupts the university and makes a mockery of the academic mission.
Universities would do just fine without big-time athletics, Diversity Directors and Offices of Sustainability. All those things are distractions from scholarship, which is supposed to be the purpose of the university.
Even the D1 schools that do not make regular bowl appearances are profit making programs. Does Stu have any ideas of where that money should come from if football were eliminated? I mean besides the usual "somebody else" liberal solution.
"Does Stu have any ideas of where that money should come from if football were eliminated?"
How about we eliminate the need for the money? It's a tail-chasing exercise anyway:
We need more money to support our sports programs. Football provides the money. Therefore, we need football.
How about: let's eliminate the money-sucking sports programs?
Speaking of games, personally I like Game of the States, a geography/capitalism game that I was introduced to by the neighbor kids back in the 60's.
My favorite game as a yout, was mumbley peg.
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