You know not to talk to them when they assume the famous penalty-taking pose.
Thứ Hai, 30 tháng 11, 2015
After two decades with the NBA, Bryant wrote a poem to the sport saying that he will retire at the end of the 2015-2016 season.
Jeff Chiu / AP
Kobe Bryant, who plays for the Los Angeles Lakers, announced that he is retiring from the game in a poem titled, "Dear Basketball."
The 37-year-old posted the poem in The Players' Tribune on Sunday, writing about his love for basketball since he was just a young boy, but that he is "ready to let go."
Bryant had said he was considering making his 20th season his last in recent weeks, according to the Associated Press.
In April 2013, Bryant tore an Achilles' tendon, which was followed by knee and shoulder injuries that have limited his playing the last two seasons, the Los Angeles Times reported.
"My heart can take the pounding, my mind can handle the grind, but my body knows it's time to say goodbye," Bryant wrote.
During the past two decades, Bryant has earned 17 All-Star selections, five championship rings, and two Olympic gold medals, the AP reports.
Dear Basketball,
From the moment
I started rolling my dad's tube socks
And shooting imaginary
Game-winning shots
In the Great Western Forum
I knew one thing was real:
I fell in love with you.
A love so deep I gave you my all —
From my mind & body
To my spirit & soul.
As a six-year-old boy
Deeply in love with you
I never saw the end of the tunnel.
I only saw myself
Running out of one.
And so I ran.
I ran up and down every court
After every loose ball for you.
You asked for my hustle
I gave you my heart
Because it came with so much more.
I played through the sweat and hurt
Not because challenge called me
But because YOU called me.
I did everything for YOU
Because that's what you do
When someone makes you feel as
Alive as you've made me feel.
You gave a six-year-old boy his Laker dream
And I'll always love you for it.
But I can't love you obsessively for much longer.
This season is all I have left to give.
My heart can take the pounding
My mind can handle the grind
But my body knows it's time to say goodbye.
And that's OK.
I'm ready to let you go.
I want you to know now
So we both can savor every moment we have left together.
The good and the bad.
We have given each other
All that we have.
And we both know, no matter what I do next
I'll always be that kid
With the rolled up socks
Garbage can in the corner
:05 seconds on the clock
Ball in my hands.
5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1
Raphael Cohen climbed into the ring, through the gap between the taut ropes, one leg first, before snaking his torso through and then pulling his other foot in. His cornermen, Benny Carroll and Jimmy Halloran, who worked with him shoveling coal for the engines, held him by the shoulders, as cornermen do, and they would have steered him and kneaded his shoulders and rubbed his arms.
As he entered the ring for the first round and heard the roar of the men, his secret was surely apparent — this was Cohen’s first time in an actual boxing ring, and that moment of recognition can’t be blustered. Yes, he may have fought on street corners, and sparred and brawled in the hidden corners of the warship, but this was different. The ring was enormous. It dwarfed the space where he shoveled coal, where he had worked for precisely 614 days. And he had never stood before all these men like this, as they laughed and clapped and whistled.
He must have had the nervous panic and impatience of any first-time fighter. Boxers suffer stage fright just as actors do. Too hot, then too cold. Hands clammy in the foul-smelling 5-ounce boxing gloves borrowed from another ship. And the formal minutes before a fight, the deafening clamor of the jeers and the shouts, the panic one has to bluff and swagger through, they were new to him.
The light was dim, though the boxing ring was lit by the most advanced electric Navy deck lights of the day, 32 candlepower lamps. (A modern car headlight is 5,000 candlepower.) Diagonally across the ring, Cohen could see Jordan Johnson, a black man, calm and silent, an experienced fighter, waiting in his corner.
It was shortly after 9 p.m. on July 8, 1905. The captain of the USS Yankee, Edward Francis Qualtrough — 55, overweight, fond of liquor — looked down at his ship’s foredeck. He was entertaining a fellow skipper, and, watching from the bridge, he must have felt an irritating lack of control at what was happening on his own ship. In a makeshift boxing ring, a black man and a Jew, bare-chested in the Caribbean heat, were pummeling each other.
The fighters, both small and fast-moving men, sparred. Around them, the ship was crammed, virtually infested with spectators: Marines and sailors from every ship in the squadron languishing in the doldrums off the coast of the Dominican Republic. Six hundred men in uniform, standing, sitting, perched on the rigging and the rails, watching and laughing.
Edward Francis Qualtrough
A spectacle like this — a chaotic boxing fight taking over the ship — wouldn’t have occurred so overtly back when Qualtrough graduated the Naval Academy in 1871, 34 years earlier. But now, with Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency and his public passion for the manly art of boxing, captains were to encourage matches aboard their ships. They were called "smokers." Of course, the irony was that this smoker, between the Jewish sailor and the black sailor, conflicted with Roosevelt’s other passion, the mythology of Anglo-Saxon Teutonic America and its place in history.
It was also clear to Captain Qualtrough from 40 yards away that the black man was the far better fighter. His name was Jordan Johnson, a gunner’s mate from the USS Olympia, and as he stood in the dim but harsh artificial light and the heat of the tropical night, he displayed the chiseled physique of a Greek god, similar to those of the bronze nude statues that Qualtrough’s wife collected, back in Washington, D.C.
Johnson also would have been one of the only black men in sight, anywhere. All those jeering faces in the crowd, visible in the dimness, though the sun had just set — nearly all those faces belonged to white men. Black men had been shunted out of the Navy under Roosevelt. Those who remained worked in the mess halls or as obsequious servants for the officer cadre; they were made virtually invisible on the decks.
For Captain Qualtrough, too, this disappearance of the black men in the fleet was new, because when he first came aboard as an ensign in 1870, black sailors were common. But now, from his perch high on the bridge, Qualtrough could have heard the crowd of sailors under his command hissing at the bare-chested young black man in the ring.
During this period, a Jew and a black man boxing on a U.S. warship would have been seen by many as objects of ridicule — performing clowns, rather than gladiators.
As for the Jewish fighter, Raphael Cohen, he was a sailor on Qualtrough’s Yankee, though the captain never met him. Cohen worked shoveling coal in the boiler room for the engine, unskilled hard labor that didn’t bring much of a promise of a future, though it did build a distinctively muscular physique. Cohen’s torso was hairy and a pale white, but his face and arms were stained black with coal dust. In fact he and the men he worked with were known as “the black gang” aboard these coal-powered warships, and his face, dark against pale lips, must have looked like a grotesque attempt at blackface. During this period when the Navy was scrubbing itself of African-Americans, a Jew and a black man boxing on a U.S. warship, no matter how they fought, would have been seen by many of the men as objects of ridicule, perceived as performing clowns, rather than gladiators.
The Yankee was deployed to the Dominican Republic not in defense of American land or liberty, but rather on a new form of gunboat diplomacy enforced under the brash President Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s project: to take over the finances of a foreign country whose crime was that it owed money to a powerful American company. It launched a new era in American military intervention — an expedition for profit, not principle.
Indeed, Roosevelt’s influence is threaded through this story: Not only did he send the fleet on its mission, but he was also an impassioned champion of boxing in the military. And whether the idea originated with him or not, he presided over the systematic removal of black Americans from Navy life.
That boxing match between a young black sailor and a Jewish sailor aboard an American warship, and the death of one of the fighters, caused a scandal 110 years ago, threatening the careers of powerful men. Newspapers across the country picked up the story, citing lurid allegations that the bout was held “for the edification” of the officers, and that the fighter who died had pleaded that he was sick and was forced to box, even after he’d been hit so hard that an artery in his brain tore, flooding his brain with blood. It was testament to a mix of grit, glory, and stupidity. Or perhaps just obstinate greed by a crew of men hoping to win a cash prize.
And the victor, who had literally grown up in the Navy, a man who had spent nights in chains in harsh discipline, who’d been handed to the military by his parents when he was only 15 years old, he was soon ushered out of the service, abandoned and destitute in a civilian world he didn’t know.
The fight, and the fighters, are long forgotten now, but the records — the ship’s logs, transcripts of military inquests, the enlistment reports — illuminate a dramatic turning point in American ethnic and military history.
USS Yankee
Raphael Cohen was born in 1880, at 15 Suffolk St., a tenement building full of more than 50 Russian Jews who had been part of the beginning of the migration over from the old country. Tobias, Raphael’s father, had been in the first wave, arriving from Russia in 1866, via Germany, right after the Civil War, and became a successful tailor. The seven Cohen children all grew up in one of the most crowded neighborhoods on earth.
Journalist Jacob Riis, a social reformer of the era, explored the area in 1890 when Cohen was 10 years old, and in his book How the Other Half Lives Riis called the neighborhood “Jewtown.” He wrote that “the manner and dress of the people, their unmistakable physiognomy, betray their race.” “Thrift is the watchword of Jewtown,” he added, “as of its people the world over.” Riis captured the core of the American ghetto: “Life here means the hardest form of work almost from the cradle,” he wrote.
Of course it’s a place that survives now as imagined kitsch, evoked on the walls of Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse, and countless delis with their knishes and lox and herring. But even those foods meant something other than what they do now. “Pickles are favorite food in Jewtown,” wrote Riis. “They are filling, and keep the children from crying with hunger.” He recounts walking the streets at night, when a “dirty baby, in a single brief garment,” as he describes it, “tumbles off the lowest step, rolls over once, clutches my leg with unconscious grip, and goes to sleep on the flagstones, its curly head pillowed on my boot.”
It was a noisy neighborhood, and it evolved fast as Cohen grew up, just around the corner from the giant Beth Hamedrash Hagadol synagogue. A former Baptist church, it was transformed into a thing of the Old World by the immigrants from eastern Europe. The hulking building still stands, derelict now, after years of Hasidic prayer.
Down the street from Cohen’s building on Suffolk Street was Sach’s Café; the place was the unofficial headquarters for the radicals and atheists of the day. Emma Goldman, the fiery anarchist, held court, loud and fast in Russian and Yiddish.
Then, in 1898, when Cohen was 17, a patriotic fervor washed through the Lower East Side. Youngsters started dreaming of being soldiers. War with Spain was coming. The Hearst newspapers provided daily accounts of Spanish atrocities to the rest of America, and so did the Yiddish newspapers.
It was so over-the-top that the Commercial Advertiser in the spring of 1898 ran a story titled “Ghetto War Spirit,” with a subheading: “Jews Bear Spain an Old Grudge — Manila a Victory for Israel — ‘God Gave America the Job of Smashing Spain.’” Somehow the Spanish-American War, the reporter found, was now seen as a vehicle for vengeance against Spain for its atrocities of centuries past, for Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand’s old war against the Jews, and the crimes of the Inquisition. America — through this war — was offering its new Jewish immigrants not just the chance to remake themselves, but the chance to seek vengeance against the old, cruel Europe that had treated them so disdainfully.
A tailor quoted in the article said, “They tortured the Jews and banished them from their land and now the God of Israel is getting even with them. It is an old story, more than four hundred years old, but the High One never forgets.”
Cohen's enlistment papers
It was in this environment that, in May 1898, Cohen's father accompanied Isidore, Raphael’s older brother, to the recruiting office. Because Isidore was a minor, a witness had to sign. The recruitment document shows that the witness was Moritz Tolk, a notary, and later an alderman, who operated out of his brother’s saloon down on Canal Street, where he helped sweatshop workers get their papers.
Isidore enlisted in Troop I of the 4th Cavalry, although it is impossible to see how he could ever have ridden a horse in his life. He was sent off to Kentucky for basic training and from there he joined his unit to steam to the Philippines. In the end, he was too late to fight the Spanish, who abandoned the troublesome colony to America shortly after the U.S. invaded.
Instead of vengeance for the Jews for the atrocities of the Inquisition, the 4th Cavalry just did battle with angry Filipino rebels. U.S. troops used the “water cure” — known today as waterboarding — to get the rebel captives to talk; they sometimes killed prisoners. But while his brother fought jungle warfare in Mindenao, Raphael, back in New York, just worked as a day laborer.
He got married in March 1903 to a girl from the neighborhood, a block away, named Sadie Shasam. The two didn’t live together for long. It’s unclear what went wrong, because the records on him go blank for some months, right after the marriage. But in September, he walked to the doors of the big Navy recruiting station down on 319 Market St. in Philadelphia. On his enlistment form, as he signed up for a four-year stint, Cohen wrote “single.”
The records show that he was given a cursory physical examination. Height 5 foot 4½ inches. Eyes brown and hair black. Weight 123 pounds. “Hirsute,” wrote the Navy surgeon who examined his hairy body, when Cohen was standing naked.
“Circumcised,” the doctor noted, too.
Bill Bragg for BuzzFeed News
Just as the noise from the crowd was overpowering, in that instant, after the bell rang, was when Cohen stopped hearing it. Cohen rushed in hard and fast, all intensity of a spider, not fine boxing but bullying. He tried to buffalo Johnson into a corner with a right swing and then a left.
A zbokh, they might have said in Cohen’s old neighborhood, on the alley near Grand Street, if he landed a punch, Yiddish for a hard hit. And then a zetz. Wild swings.
But Johnson slipped both punches with ease, sidestepping with the gentle ballet steps of a fighter, and his move left him wound up like a spring to unleash a powerful left hook to Cohen’s head. A klap, as they would have said.
A sudden hammer of pain. Cohen staggered, and Johnson moved in closer with a right, then a left, and Cohen toppled to the platform.
In the end, it would have been better if Cohen had stayed down.
The fight might have ended then, after the first few seconds. Cohen was down. The crowd hissed at Johnson, who headed to the neutral corner, leaning on the ropes, and they laughed at the little Jew lying there. The referee, George Pettingill from over at the USS Detroit, began the slow count as Cohen lay groggy.
As he lay there, knocked down that first round, the bright deck lights were above Cohen, set against the night Caribbean sky and the silhouette of the bridge and the 5-inch guns. Pettingill was silhouetted there too. And Pettingill counted loud and slow. “One!” he said. “Two!” “Three!” “Four!” Five! Six!” Cohen scrambled to his feet finally.
Pettingill waved the fighters together again. They fought hard to the end of the first round, but Johnson kept Cohen heading back, retreating, and retreating.
In the end, it would have been better if Cohen had stayed down. If he had, he might have lived.
Good game, good game, goo game, goo game, g’game, g’game, game, game, game.
Comparing bruises.
instagram.com / Via instagram.com
Enjoying the super gross moment when you take off your shin pads and see what's underneath.
instagram.com / Via Twitter: @HarryandGin
Giving each other gruesome stud injuries and having no hard feelings.
Taking a billion bus rides together and never getting bored.
Murray beat Belgium’s David Goffin to take the cup home for Britain for the first time in 79 years.
Andy Murray has won the Davis Cup for Great Britain for the first time since 1936.
Reuters Staff / Reuters
Murray beat Belgium's David Goffin 6-3 7-5 6-3, allowing the British team to walk away from the tournament in Ghent with a victorious 3-1 lead.
The final match of the best-of-five series will therefore not need to be played.
A series of triumphs including Murray and brother Jamie's winning doubles match against Goffin and Steve Darcis on Saturday, and his prior singles win on Friday meant Murray entered today's match in the lead.
The annual knock-out tournament, run by International Tennis Federation, is considered to be the most important international event in men's tennis.
The Scottish champion was cheered along by wife Kim Sears and cousin Josh Murray.
Clive Brunskill / Getty Images
Murray appeared emotional as he clinched the title for Britain for the first time in almost 80 years.
John Thys / AFP / Getty Images
Chủ Nhật, 29 tháng 11, 2015
Wladimir Klitschko (L) defends against Britain's Tyson Fury during their WBA, IBF, WBO and IBO title bout in Duesseldorf
Patrik Stollarz / AFP / Getty Images
Britain's Tyson Fury shocked the boxing world after he defeated renown fighter Wladimir Klitschko to become heavyweight champion of the world Saturday.
Fury, 27, bought Ukrainian Klitschko's nine-year reign as world champion to an end at the match in Dusseldorf.
Fury, who was awarded the fight 115-112, 115-112, 116-111 on the judges' scorecards, is now the WBA, IBF and WBO champion, the BBC reported.
There was a rematch clause in the fight contract, but it is yet to be decided whether Germany or the UK will host it.
Wladimir Klitschko after the match
Patrik Stollarz / AFP / Getty Images
"I lost the battle but the fighter is still in me," said Klitschko, 39.
"We'll soon work out when and where the rematch will take place and let you know."
Fury, from Manchester, is the United Kingdom's fifth bona fide heavyweight world champion after Bob Fitzsimmons, Lennox Lewis, Frank Bruno and David Haye.
Tyson Fury celebrates
Patrik Stollarz / AFP / Getty Images
Speaking to BBC 5 Live after the fight, Fury said: "I always said what I'd do and I've delivered tonight. I didn't have this confidence for nothing. I knew I could come here and upset the apple cart.
"I knew all along I could win the fight. Wladimir knew, his full team knew tonight.
"I saw in his eyes tonight he was going to lose the fight and he saw the new, hungry champion in me."
Thứ Sáu, 27 tháng 11, 2015
Thứ Năm, 26 tháng 11, 2015
Courtesy Of Columbia Pictures.
Forty minutes into Concussion, Dr. Bennet Omalu, played by Will Smith, turns to his future wife, Prema Mutiso, played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and tells her: “God did not intend for us to play football.”
Sitting on the couch in their apartment, watching a clip reel of NFL hits and falls on a small television in front of them, Omalu shows Mutiso a peach in a mason jar full of water that is meant to represent the way human brains float unprotected in our skulls. He shakes the jar back and forth, punctuating each motion to indicate separate hits. The peach begins to break down, and the camera toggles back to NFL footage.
Concussion is Sony’s upcoming adaptation of the true story of Omalu, a Nigerian-born neurologist, who discovered chronic traumatic encephalopathy — or CTE, a degenerative brain disease — in beloved Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster.
The discovery led to the revelation that the NFL worked to conceal brain injuries caused by playing football, plunging the league into a public relations and legal crisis. The film is based on “Game Brain,” a 2009 GQ story by Jeanne Marie Laskas — credited as a screenwriter for Concussion — that told how the NFL tried to discredit Omalu’s research and intimidate him into retracting his findings.
Though not in the credits, the story clearly draws heavily from League of Denial, the 2013 book by ESPN investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru. Omalu’s language in some Concussion scenes is drawn directly from the book, which was adapted into a PBS Frontline documentary in 2013.
When Sony’s emails were hacked and uploaded online in 2014, the NFL pushed back hard on Sony executives — who were meticulous in making the film airtight “in its representation of the “science and history.”
That revelation led to concerns that Concussion would water down the NFL’s treatment of Omalu — this was, after all, a story the NFL did not want to be made public. But, for the most part, that didn’t happen when it came to the final product: Concussion is unflinching in its portrayal of the CTE crisis. And attention on the disease will only pick up steam after Wednesday's revelation that NFL legend Frank Gifford suffered from it.
To borrow a line from the film — spoken by Allegheny County Coroner Cyril Wecht, played by Albert Brooks, to Omalu — “The league has kept everyone in the dark, and you’ve turned on the lights and given its biggest boogeyman a name.”
Concussion, out Christmas Day, does just that.
Melinda Sue Gordon / photo credit Melinda Sue Gordon
The film begins with an adaptation of a speech Webster (played by David Morse) delivered during his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1997. The role of the center on an offensive line is both cerebral and physical: He makes the decision on how his fellow linemen should be set, snaps the ball to the quarterback with precision, and then an instant later blocks defensive linemen from the most central route to the passer.
Webster is then shown — years later — ragged and living out of his truck in an industrial corner of Pittsburgh, homeless and away from his wife and family. To put himself to sleep, he sniffs ammonia and tasers himself repeatedly in the leg. He visits Dr. Julian Bailes (played by Alec Baldwin), a longtime trainer with the Steelers, and confronts him violently, telling him he can’t control the demons in his head and he needs a cure. Bailes tranquilizes Webster, looking at him with sympathy, but without a solution.
Webster died in 2002 at age 50, only five years after his Hall of Fame induction. Omalu was the pathologist on shift at the Allegheny County Coroner’s Office the day Webster’s body came in. A throng of fans and reporters showed up at the office with Omalu, perhaps one of the few Pittsburghers who knew nothing of Webster’s 17-year NFL career.
Smith plays a convincing role, though his heavy accent has been criticized as a generic mix of sub-Saharan accents. Omalu’s Nigerian heritage is used in the film to tell the story of a man pursuing the American dream, but what mostly helped Omalu hold the NFL accountable, noted in Concussion, is his status as an outsider. Football is an inextricable part of modern American culture. But Omalu harbored no love for or knowledge of the game, allowing him to pursue the science without personal conflict.
Examining Webster’s body on a coroner’s table, Omalu looks at the former NFL star and says to him: “I need your help to tell the world what happened to you.”
When Omalu examines Webster’s brain, he sees no signs of abnormality, which strikes him as absurd. The man had been acting as if he had dementia in his forties, and Omalu knew there was no pre-existing literature on the condition that led to Webster’s death. Against the discouragement of his colleagues, and on his own dime, Omalu dissects Webster’s brain and takes slides of internal matter and examines it at his own kitchen table.
He focuses on what appears to be splotchy neural matter to the untrained eye — but in the slides he sees something the film does not name, but is now known as “tau proteins,” which should not be found in the segment of the brain Omalu observed. He paces, contemplating his discovery, as shots of Webster’s football career flash in his mind. The discovery, publishing, and naming of the disease are presented in a gripping 15-minute portion of the film, complete with dramatic music and aerial shots of Heinz Field. Omalu called it chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and he was excited to share his knowledge with the world.
This is how researchers at Boston University (where there is now a CTE Center led by top researchers in the field) define CTE:
“A progressive degenerative disease of the brain found in athletes (and others) with a history of repetitive brain trauma, including symptomatic concussions as well as asymptomatic subconcussive hits to the head. CTE has been known to affect boxers since the 1920s. However, recent reports have been published of neuropathologically confirmed CTE in retired professional football players and other athletes who have a history of repetitive brain trauma. This trauma triggers progressive degeneration of the brain tissue, including the build-up of an abnormal protein called tau. These changes in the brain can begin months, years, or even decades after the last brain trauma or end of active athletic involvement. The brain degeneration is associated with memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse control problems, aggression, depression, and, eventually, progressive dementia.”
A recent report by Frontline said that CTE has been found in the brains of 87 of the 91 former NFL players examined by the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University. It’s a non-scientific sample size and the disease can only be diagnosed postmortem; it does not show on a CAT scan.
Concussion sticks closely to story reported in “Game Brain” and League of Denial, editorializing infrequently but effectively. The science of CTE is simplified, but portrayed accurately. Director Peter Landesman benefited from the compelling nature of the true story but struggled to capture the full context of the disease and subsequent crisis in a tidy two hours. Concussion is not the story of CTE in full, but it will be an impactful elevation of the science and silence behind the crisis in public consciousness.
Will Smith, the real Bennet Omalu, and director Peter Landesman.
Melinda Sue Gordon / photo credit Melinda Sue Gordon
When the NFL was made aware of Omalu’s science, they first tried to discredit it by presenting conflicting information from doctors who were not trained neurologists, and then attempted to intimidate Omalu into silence. The league denied any connection between their sport and the prevalence of CTE in its former players.
In a scene in the Coroner’s Office, Dr. Wecht is straight with Omalu, who still struggles to understand why the NFL would not prioritize the safety of its players:
“Bennet Omalu is going to war with a corporation that has 20 million people on a weekly basis craving their product. They own a day of the week: the one that the church used to own.”
Throughout the film, Omalu makes as many allies as enemies. Dr. Bailes, the former Steelers trainer who saw Webster before his death, enthusiastically joins Omalu. The two men try to recruit Dr. Joe Maroon (Arliss Howard), a neurosurgeon who has been a member of the NFL’s Head, Neck and Spine Committee since 1994, to their cause after he tries personally to scare off Omalu. Maroon struggles with a foot in each camp — the NFL and science — but explains the NFL’s central fear of Omalu’s research: “If only 10% of mothers in America begin to conceive of football as dangerous, that is the end of football.”
The same quote was attributed to Maroon in League of Denial. The pipeline to the NFL will dry up without youth football, Maroon asserts.
One day at home, Omalu receives a phone call from a man who appears to be a football fanatic, but is not explicitly connected to the NFL: “You wanna puss-ify this country?” the irate fan asks, echoing the legions of fans who associate player safety with an apparently offensive feminization of sport culture. “You wanna vaginize it? Get the hell out, or it’ll be your autopsy.”
Intimidation tactics against Omalu and his family from the NFL and fans are used to show Omalu’s perseverance and confidence in his work. But by the end of the film, Omalu has received some recognition and the NFL has begun to realize the story of their players’ health is no longer in their control. The American dream narrative that follows Omalu through his research and battle with the NFL concludes neatly, but with a heavy hand.
When Concussion is released, the NFL will be in the prime of its season — just about to wrap the regular season and head into the playoffs, punctuated by Super Bowl 50 in the league’s shiniest new stadium in Santa Clara, California. For many avid football fans, the story of the CTE crisis as presented in Concussion is not new or revelatory. But for many fans, Concussion will be the light that shines on the NFL’s darkest spot.
Concussion will certainly change more than a few minds and hearts on the moral value of watching football on Sundays, and the NFL was right to be concerned about its release.
Brad Barket / Getty Images
NFL legend Frank Gifford has been diagnosed with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) by a team of neurologists following his death at 84 years old in August 2015, his family said in a statement Wednesday.
CTE is a degenerative disease caused by repetitive sub-concussive hits to the head that can only be diagnosed post-mortem and has been found in the brains of many deceased football players.
His family explained they had an idea that he might be suffering from CTE before he died:
After losing our beloved husband and father, Frank Gifford, we as a family made the difficult decision to have his brain studied in hopes of contributing to the advancement of medical research concerning the link between football and traumatic brain injury.
While Frank passed away from natural causes this past August at the age of 84, our suspicions that he was suffering from the debilitating effects of head trauma were confirmed when a team of pathologists recently diagnosed his condition as that of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)–a progressive degenerative brain disease.
Symptoms of CTE, according to leading researchers at Boston University, include "memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse control problems, aggression, depression, and, eventually, progressive dementia."
CTE, and its connection to football — and the NFL — are the subject of Concussion, a feature film starring Will Smith as Dr. Bennet Omalu, the Nigerian doctor who discovered the disease in the brain of Steelers legend Mike Webster in 2002.
For years, the NFL denied the connection between repetitive high-impact hits on the field with the neurodegenerative disease, but in recent years have begun to address the issue and have implemented new safety protocols for handling players' brain injuries.
Gifford played twelve seasons in the NFL, all for the New York Giants. He missed the 1961 season — in the middle of his career — after taking a hard hit and suffering a brain injury. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1977.
Following his NFL career, Gifford became a broadcaster, and spent much of his career as an announcer for Monday Night Football. He married Kathie Lee (Gifford, neé Epstein) in 1986.
In Wednesday's statement, his family said they will continue to support the game Gifford loved:
We decided to disclose our loved one’s condition to honor Frank’s legacy of promoting player safety dating back to his involvement in the formation of the NFL Players Association in the 1950s. His entire adult life Frank was a champion for others, but especially for those without the means or platform to have their voices heard. He was a man who loved the National Football League until the day he passed, and one who recognized that it was–and will continue to be–the players who elevated this sport to its singular stature in American society.During the last years of his life Frank dedicated himself to understanding the recent revelations concerning the connection between repetitive head trauma and its associated cognitive and behavioral symptoms–which he experienced firsthand. We miss him every day, now more than ever, but find comfort in knowing that by disclosing his condition we might contribute positively to the ongoing conversation that needs to be had; that he might be an inspiration for others suffering with this disease that needs to be addressed in the present; and that we might be a small part of the solution to an urgent problem concerning anyone involved with football, at any level.
The Gifford family will continue to support the National Football League and its recent on-field rule changes and procedures to make the game Frank loved so dearly–and the players he advocated so tirelessly for–as safe as possible.
Chalo, let’s do this.
This is Dutee Chand, a 19-year-old sprinter from Odisha.
Via bitgiving.com
In July, 2015, she won a landmark case against rules that banned her from competing in women's events because she had a high level of testosterone.
Rafiq Maqbool / AP
She recently launched a crowdfunding campaign to help pay for a four-month visit to the Chula Vista Olympic Training centre in the U.S.
Via rockinmama.net
Several people have been tweeting out in support of Chand's dreams.
Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Johnson in Creed.
Barry Wetcher/Warner Bros.
There’s a moment in Creed, the new Rocky spin-off of sorts, where Adonis Johnson knocks the living daylights out of a local rapper who mocks him by calling him Baby Creed.
The up-and-coming boxer is the son of legend Apollo Creed — who had an affair with Adonis's mother — but Adonis is pissed. He’s worked hard to get to where he is, to make a name for himself, and to keep the name of his father (who died in the ring fighting an unsympathetic Russian contender in Rocky IV) a secret. So when some guy — who, like the rest of the world at this point in the film, has learned of his heritage — tries to belittle Adonis’s accomplishments, as if he’d be comfortable riding on someone else’s coattails (or stars-and-stripes shorts), he decides to start the fight before the fight.
That scene, in many ways, parallels where the actor who portrays Adonis, Michael B. Jordan, is in his career right now: He is ready for his own battle.
By all accounts, Hollywood insiders consider 28-year-old Jordan the heir apparent to the thrones that Denzel Washington and Will Smith have built. For decades, those actors have established themselves as box office champions and they’re in a very small and exclusive fraternity — black men who can land leading roles in successful, high-profile feature films.
Creed is a continuation of the beloved, long-running Rocky franchise that made Sylvester Stallone famous in the title role, and now it’s about to do the same for Jordan.
But no matter how hungry we are for the next Washington or Smith, Jordan isn’t quite ready to raise his hand for that part.
He’s got other plans.
“I don’t think I have the pressure to be the next anybody,” he said, after tossing the idea around in his head for a few minutes. “I don’t put that on myself. I need to be the best version of myself. I put that pressure on myself to be the best version of Michael B. Jordan. And whoever that person is going to be, I’m still growing. I’m not even 30 yet.” He paused to slightly laugh at himself. “So I’m going to be a different person two years from now. I’m a different person now than I was a year ago: same core values, same person on the inside, but just growing to the next stage of my life of being a man. Will and Denzel have such phenomenal careers that anybody would be in awe of. [But] I think the time has changed. I think they came up in a different era, a different generation of film and cinema, which was molded and shaped by that as well. I think now, the timing, the platform is there for me to be able to be a version of what they had at their time.”
Jordan and Sylvester Stallone in Creed.
Courtesy Of Warner Bros.
Jordan’s heard plenty of times that Creed could catapult him into a superstar stratosphere. After Warner Bros. screened the film for journalists, the consensus was unanimous: the film — and most importantly, Jordan — was fantastic. Jordan offers “the best all-around performance of his young career,” reads a USA Today review.
Creed is Jordan’s first leading role in big feature film, a victory tantamount to Adonis nabbing his first taste of certifiable respect and getting dapped up by an opponent for being the real deal, not just a flash-in-the-pan wannabe boxer hoping to score off daddy’s name. Jordan has been working to get to this moment since making his debut in a 1999 episode of The Sopranos, before finally landing his big break on HBO’s The Wire in 2002 as teen drug dealer Wallace. Since then, he’s had roles in TV series like Parenthood and Friday Night Lights, been a part of ensembles in films like 2012’s Chronicle, and showed his dramatic chops in 2013’s Fruitvale Station, also directed by Creed’s Ryan Coogler.
Creed could also mean that Jordan has found a franchise that he can star in for years to come, an effort that didn’t exactly work out with the Fantastic Four reboot earlier this year. He won the part of the Human Torch — who has previously been portrayed as white, which sparked some controversy and a ton of conversation — but the movie was critically panned and a box office failure. But Creed? Critics already love it; if fans turn out, it could fall right in line with its predecessors, giving him a stability he’s yet to experience.
Coogler, Stallone, and Jordan at the L.A. premiere of Creed.
Todd Williamson / Getty Images
“This is something that I’m super proud of, and I feel like, as an origin story it could become a franchise and have success, and have multiple films. You have to be strategic,” Jordan said of Creed. “After Fruitvale Station, I started to be a little more selective. That was the first opportunity I had to think about my career moves, and really have real control over the projects that I was doing. Up until that point … with The Wire, it's not like I had a choice between six different roles. Those were the auditions that I went in for and I got.”
Coogler told BuzzFeed News earlier this summer that Jordan is “kind of like a LeBron James," saying, "Not only is this dude the perfect size, the perfect build, but he's come along at the perfect time and he has a crazy work ethic. He’s the perfect storm.”
And now, the actor is starting to work on his strategy, gearing himself to perhaps, like Adonis, defy the odds of a newly minted contender. Next up, he and Coogler will team up again for Wrong Answer, a film about the cheating scandal in Atlanta Public Schools. Jordan also wants to return to his television roots to develop and produce, and he said he wouldn’t mind giving the comic book world another go-round. “I'm interested in producing and developing a film, and a novel, a comic book, animation,” he said.
Perhaps most importantly, he’s finally at a point now where he can say “no” — a first in his career — and that means staying away from roles where his character dies, because it upsets his mother too much.
Jordan as Wallace and J.D Williams as Bodie in The Wire.
Courtesy of HBO
“She would be bawling, she used to be crying. Like, Mom, stop it! Nobody wants to see their mom cry; that’s not a good feeling, regardless of the performance. It was just traumatizing over a period of time. It’s something that people don’t think about, but a mom can’t be seeing her son die over and over and over again, in dramatic ways. I’m not going out on a hospital bed in a dramatic fashion,” he said, referencing the fact that nearly all of his onscreen deaths have been violent, starting with young Wallace on The Wire. “I need a break. And I want people to see me live, to evolve into a leading man that survives some accident. That’s very important. Audiences get the chance to see this character live and try and be victorious and have some type of closure without ending his life.”
He paused and then added: “I’m trying to break those stereotypes [of black men].”
Like he tried to do earlier this year when he played the Human Torch. Even though the film didn’t do what he’d hoped it would, he still challenged what audiences thought a superhero looked like. And now, he’s actively looking for similar opportunities to be cast in a role traditionally reserved for a white actor.
It’s a notion Jordan first mentioned in a GQ article this past September, in which he said he wanted “roles that were written for white characters.” His intention, he told BuzzFeed News, was to challenge Hollywood on its race issue and get decision-makers to think outside of the box with more color-blind castings. But readers’ negative reaction to the quote forced Jordan to clarify his words in an open letter in Essence. Jordan also felt the need to come out strong in support of #BlackLivesMatter in the same letter in an effort to debunk a bogus Snapchat about him supporting #AllLivesMatter.
He wants to be clear that he’s not shying away from his blackness or onscreen stories that feel black. If anything, he plans to go harder as his career continues and make sure that the stories he signs up for feel more universal, diverse, and, yes, black.
“There’s a lack of a black perspective in cinema. And I think it starts from perception, from the point of view of where the content is being created. You have more black writers and creators, and new developers in content that aren’t just the stereotypes that we’re used to being created or portrayed. The African-American experience is different. There are more genuine portrayals in characters that are diverse that somebody from any walk of life can play,” Jordan said. “I think that’s very important to the growth and progression of black cinema — matter of fact, people of color in film generally. The more opportunities, the more roles that are created, the more of those things you start to see, then you will start to see black actors in cinema, in movies, in television.”
Jordan running through North Philly as Adonis Johnson in Creed.
Courtesy Of Warner Bros. Picture
It’s a platform he’s taken on not just because his recent success affords him the opportunity to have that kind of power; it’s also an undeniable fact that as his star rises, more eyes are on Jordan’s every move.
And he’s well aware.
“It’s overwhelming at times,” Jordan said of his new level of fame. “Day by day you see it: Your privacy is stripped away. You start to move differently; you’re cautious. Oh man, I can’t go to the mall today. What day is it? Saturday? Ooh. Lot of people. No, I’m not going to go to the mall. No, I’m not going out. That's something that I'm getting used to, and it's happening pretty fast. I'm going to make mistakes; I’m going to learn some lessons — some things that I used to do that I can't do anymore. I have to learn how to separate Michael Jordan, the actor, and Michael Jordan, the person. There are no guidelines that exist how to navigate this journey that I’m on.”
His compass is the same circle he’s looked to for years. “I definitely rely and lean on people: my family, my friends, my mom, my parents. They are people that tell me straight; they’ll call bullshit when they see it,” he said before adding with a laugh, “I just got to meditate more.”
Of course, that gets harder when you’re on the verge of the world seeing a movie like Creed. But Jordan is ready to knuckle up and take this big step in his career — and just like Adonis, it’ll be on his own terms.
“A film this size, man … it changed the chessboard. The pieces got rearranged. I just got to sit back and look at the board and figure out what’s the best move,” he said. “I’m in a very fortunate situation. It doesn’t come around a lot.” He offers another pregnant pause, then speaks again after a few silent beats.
“I’m still working, you know? I feel like I still have so much to do. As successful as I’ve been so far, and the blessings that I know I’ve had — and I acknowledge my blessings — I’ve still got so much more that I want to do and accomplish. I just want to put myself in a position to be able to create and expand and grow and be progressive, period.”
Thứ Tư, 25 tháng 11, 2015
Bailey reportedly was shot in the head while in Florida on Tuesday, but his injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.
Bailey warms up before a preseason game in Nashville on Aug. 23, 2015.
Weston Kenney / AP
St. Louis Rams wide receiver Stedman Bailey was reportedly shot in the head Tuesday but is expected to survive.
The Rams announced an "incident" Tuesday night, saying only that Bailey, 25, "is in the hospital in critical, but stable, condition."
According to both NBC Sports and NFL.com, Bailey was shot in the head while in Miami, and he is expected to survive.
LEFTSIDE. STRONGSIDE.
Rudy
Why you should watch: Because everyone loves an underdog.
What it'll get you pumped for: LIFE. Literally it will pump you up to take on life, all while chanting "Rudy, Ruudy, Ruuuudy, RUUUUDY!"
TriStar Pictures
Miracle
Why you should watch: It follows the US National Hockey Team's journey to the epic match with the Soviet Union during the 1980 Winter Olympics, where Kurt Russell delivers one of the best pump up speeches of ALL TIME.
What it'll get you pumped for: HAWWWKEY! Hot guys playing hockey. Great moments that are born from great opportunities.
Chris Large / Via Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
The Sandlot
Why you should watch: For important life lessons, like how to make the perfect s'mores, the best comebacks for when you get into a fight, how to get the girl you're crushing on, and to never play baseball with a ball signed by Babe "The Sultan of Swat" Ruth.
What it'll get you pumped for: Stirring up some shenanigans with your best friends.
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Remember The Titans
Why you should watch: Because Coach Boone is an absolute badass who took no shit at a high school where racial tensions were running high after desegregation. The movie also has one of the best soundtracks of all time.
What it'll get you pumped for: Sticking to your guns in the face of adversity. Jamming out to Marvin Gaye!
Hulton Archive / Getty Images
Turns out, Olympians aren’t completely fearless.
In the tradition of Thanksgiving and surprising unsuspecting people, BuzzFeed Motion Pictures decided what better way to interview Olympians than to surprise them with a live turkey?
BuzzFeed Video / Via youtube.com
And given that turkeys are, eh, not the cutest animals — we knew it'd be interesting.
BuzzFeed
Matt Centrowitz, track and field Olympian, said he wasn't a huge fan of turkeys when asked how he felt about them.
BuzzFeed
And Dawn Harper-Nelson, two-time olympic medalist, was immediately suspicious of where the interview was going.
BuzzFeed
Break a leg everybody!
This player who clearly got flicked in the ear:
BBC Sport/ youtube.com
This dude who clearly got smacked in the face:
ESPN/ youtube.com
This guy who was viciously tripped in the PK area.
This guy who was headbutted in the face by a savage criminal:
Well…can you?
Of the 92 teams playing in the Premier League and Football League in the 2015/16 season, there are 26 clubs with no suffix (i.e. "United", "City" etc). Can you name them all?
Note: We are not accepting clubs with more than one word in the name of their location, such as Crystal Palace and Port Vale.
Thứ Ba, 24 tháng 11, 2015
He never recovered after pulling up during the race that stops the nation.
Melbourne Cup legend Red Cadeaux has been euthanised due to injuries sustained during the running of the Melbourne Cup earlier this month.
Getty
One of the race favourites, the horse pulled up shortly before the finish of the race that stops the nation after suffering a break in its left foreleg.
Quinn Rooney / Getty Images
The stayer, who had become a Cup favourite after several near-misses in recent years was immediately rushed to a nearby vet, where it was hoped he might be saved, but Racing Victoria confirmed on Saturday that the horse had been put down.
"It is with great sadness that Racing Victoria (RV) advises that Red Cadeaux has today succumbed to complications from the injury he sustained in the Emirates Melbourne Cup at Flemington on 3 November 2015," RV said in a statement.
"The connections of the English stayer have made the heartbreaking decision to humanely euthanise the horse after irreversible complications arose with the loss of blood flow to the foot on his injured left foreleg."
"Experts at the University of Melbourne Equine Centre at Werribee, where the horse has been under veterinary care since the race, advised that there were no means by which they could successfully address the complication."
Trainer Ed Dunlop said today was his "saddest day in racing."
Vince Caligiuri / Getty Images
PEAK ADORABLE LEVELS.
A young Australian boy has turned every singers' nightmare into a delightful moment at the start of an Australian Baseball League match in Adelaide.
Ethan Hall, who is 7 years old, took to the field to sing "Advance Australia Fair" but was hit by a case of the hiccups.
youtube.com / Via ABLtv.com
You can even tell by his little face that he knows what's about to happen.
*hic*
Youtube / Via youtube.com
But our new national treasure pushed through for the entire performance...
...much to the delight of the players about to take the field.
Youtube / Via youtube.com
And of course he got a rousing reception from the crowd.
Youtube / Via youtube.com
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