Still Not Watching Football

Last year I quit watching NFL football.  After about 30 years rooting for the NY Giants (and the Baltimore Colts before that), I had had enough.  First, the Ray Rice mess threw up in our faces the fact that football players at all levels consider women to be nothing but toys, for them to use when they want, break when they want.

Then there was the insane abuse of those players themselves by their teams and league in the matter of the impact (!) of repeated collisions to the brain.  Junior Seau's suicide was carefully planned to preserve his brain for study.  He knew what they would find in there.

Now the NY Times reports that Sony listened to the league and softened their new movie Concussion, to make sure nothing would really have to be done in response.

Another email on Aug. 1, 2014, said some “unflattering moments for the N.F.L.” were deleted or changed, while in another note on July 30, 2014, a top Sony lawyer is said to have taken “most of the bite” out of the film “for legal reasons with the N.F.L. and that it was not a balance issue.”

Of course not.  Balance is the last thing on anyone's mind when beer money is at stake.

The NFL was probably planning to make sad puppy eyes and throw up some papier-mâché reforms, and let the whole thing continue to roll like water off a duck's back.  Now, at least, that ploy is blown for them.

My Sunday afternoons remain blissfully free.

h/t BoingBoing