Ever since a recent, long-awaited NFL-comissioned study proved1 that a football hits lead to permanent brain damage, concussions have been a hot topic.
Malcolm Gladwell asks: is football really any more humane than dogfighting?
Alternate Title: Wake Me in January: The Chad Pennington's Throwing Shoulder Benefit Mixtape
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.
Football statheads, look no further: here’s 700-row spreadsheet full of more numerical roster information than you could ever possibly use.
Painstakingly compiled by ESPN’s Mike Sando.
Jonah Lehrer’s profile of Clay Marzo, a surfer with Asperger’s syndrome.
When I ask Clay what he would do if he couldn’t surf, he looks confused for a second, as if he’s unable to imagine such a terrifying possibility. “I don’t know,” he says. “I guess then I would just want to surf.”
The whole concept sounds like some NYT bestseller, but don’t let that stop you.
This story, from ESPN Magazine, describes the long fall of Marvin Harrison1 – probably the last dude you’d ever expect would be a hyperviolent gangster once the pads come off. It’s old – like last-year old – but it’s good.
From Esquire:
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.
More news from Ricky Williams, the Most Compelling Football Player in the World.
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.
The gist: steroids, ostensibly just a method of prolonging the best years of a player’s career into middle age – rather than sending them rocketing to the Next Level – will someday be so prevalent in age-flouting American culture that the whole asterisk debate will be moot.
Direct link to the PDF here.
David Foster Wallace in 2006 on Roger Federer’s impossibly good game.
Because I’d like to extend the streak even further, here’s a link to an (extremely entertaining) article that DFW wrote for Esquire in 1996 describing the state-of-the-art of professional tennis in uncomfortable detail.
A collection of baseball infographics and other cool visuals – like pixellated player portraits – all laboriously put together by an English dude living in Berlin.
Godspeed, Jonny Flynn.
After two years at Syracuse University, upstate New York’s favorite son is headed to greener pastures. Flynn is one of three starting players – forward Paul Harris and guard Eric Devendorf being the other two – on the Orange men’s basketball team who will enter the NBA draft this year.
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