This new(ish) article in Discover explains what happens to your neural architecture when your brain gets beat up repeatedly.

There’s a third element. And that’s the ball. The ball is not round. It has, as the French would say, it has its caprice once it bounces and it gets loose. So, how do you contain the caprice of the ball better than the other team?

Meditate on that for a moment.

In that spirit, here’s Detroit’s Matthew Stafford digging his team into a hole against Cleveland, injuring his shoulder, eluding team trainers to get back on the field and, finally, throwing the game-clinching touchdown at the last second. It’s better than the movies.

Adams was overheard asking his coaches. “Look, I know the tendencies of this defense, and the corners wouldn’t be playing so far off if they thought I had any backbone. They obviously don’t believe I have the inner strength to go deep. And you know what? Maybe they’re right.”

From The Onion.

I can hardly give up on the Redskins; but like many other oppressed peoples worldwide, I can at least fall back into exile and await regime change.

Malcolm Gladwell asks: is football really any more humane than dogfighting?

1. This conclusion has always been common sense. It’s the league that’s always played dumb.

Fueled by nothing but reheated dinner, autumnal ennui and prevailing financial paranoia, I have compiled the Playlist to fit this exact moment in football history.

Listen closely and soon you too may find yourself bouncing a bald tennis ball against the wall and singing softly to yourself. Or drinking irresponsibly while you stare out the kitchen window at your fenced-in apartment-complex yard and the looming city with a punctured sort of feeling. Somehow, through it all, absently massaging your own right shoulder, imagining what it must feel like to have it ripped apart by some fat young brute from San Diego. Hoping, beyond all reason, that next Sunday just simply fails to materialize.

Moping.

I invite you, dear reader, to come away with me on an emotional journey. All links lead to corresponding YouTube videos.

1. Van Morrison – Sweet Thing from the album Astral Weeks
2. N.E.R.D. – Sooner or Later from the album Seeing Sounds
3 Elliott Smith – Oh Well, Okay from the album XO

Had to establish a rule early on: only one Elliott Smith song allowed. A guy like that could monopolize a list like this.

4. Roy Orbison – It’s Over
5. Eric Clapton – Tears in Heaven from the album Unplugged
6. Jeff Buckley – Last Goodbye from the album Grace
7. Belle & Sebastian – Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying from the album If You’re Feeling Sinister
8. Nick Drake – Pink Moon from the album Pink Moon

I saw it written and I saw it say / Pink moon is on its way / And none of you stand so tall / Pink moon gonna get you all

9. Gnarls Barkley – Whatever from the album The Odd Couple
10. The Notorious B.I.G. – Suicidal Thoughts from the album Ready to Die
11. Tom Waits – November from the album The Black Rider
12. Elliott Smith – A Fond Farewell from the album From a Basement on the Hill

It’s OK to cry. I am.

Painstakingly compiled by ESPN’s Mike Sando.

1. He was a professional football player, for all you kids who sucked at gym class

Twenty years ago, he was guaranteed to be one of the greatest quarterbacks ever to play the game of football. Engineered to be. He was drafted ahead of Brett Favre. Today he’s a recovering junkie. This month he was arrested again. Scenes from the chaotic life of a boy never designed to be a man.

A abbreviated history: Heisman in college, rushing champion of the NFL by his third season, yoga-studying, globe-wandering retired ‘marijuana poster-child’ at age 26, reborn in CFL, resurgent in NFL and now planning for a future as a holistic massage therapist.