I Am Not Watching Super Bowl This Year
Saturday, 28 April 2018
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The Korean is boycotting the Super Bowl this year. In fact, the Korean will never watch the NFL again, unless the league finds a way to dramatically reduce the level of brain damage that the players suffer. If this means American football no longer exists in the current form--instead evolving into something like touch football or rugby--I'm fine with it. If this means the death of football in America, I am ok with it.
Here is why.
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One of my fondest memories from law school involves 1987 Chicago Bears. Not that I watched the Chicago Bears in 1987--more accurately, the memory involves a virtual simulation of the '87 Bears.
In law school, my closest friends--let's call them JA, RT, and SW--and I wasted a lot of time together. RT had bought a hacked Xbox from eBay, which came pre-loaded with many classic NES games. One of the games was Tecmo Bowl, a video game from 1988 that primitively simulated the NFL at the time. RT and JA would play Tecmo Bowl together, while SW and I would watch the game, drink beer and crack jokes.
RT favored San Francisco 49ers, which featured a fearsome aerial attack with Joe Montana. JA would always play Chicago Bears, relying on Walter Payton's running game. But--because we were idiots--the absolute highlight of the game featured neither of the Hall of Famers. For us, the moment we always waited for was when Chicago's safety made an interception of Montana's pass. Then the cheesy, 1980s NES graphics would flash this across the top of the screen: "INTERCEPTION!!!!!" This would be followed by these following letters: "DAVE DUERSON!!!!!!!"
None of us has ever heard of Dave Duerson, who was a safety for the Chicago Bears in Tecmo Bowl. But that did not stop us from cracking jokes--mostly juvenile puns involving the last name "Duerson." The longest running joke was that each time Duerson made an interception, he would "Duer" RT's mom. The joke kept running because the virtual Dave Duerson would make plays like clockwork. Duerson in our Tecmo Bowl games would make about 10 interceptions a game, largely because of RT's overconfidence in the Niners' West Coast Offense. With SW, a masterfully funny guy, this joke expanded into the ones featuring various places and manners in which Dave Duerson would have sex with RT's mother.
For one Super Bowl, we decided that the four of us should kill 100 cans of Coors Light that day, and play more Tecmo Bowl before the game came on. With about five beers in, I foolishly declared that I would shotgun a can of beer each time Duerson made an interception. I don't remember how many cans of Coors Light I drank in what could not have been more than a 20 minute span, but they were enough to make me black out for the entire Super Bowl game, muttering: "Dave Duerson, you did this to me, you're awesome."
(More after the jump.)
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
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| Dave Duerson, S, Chicago Bears (Duerson was bankrupt, with less than $20,000 in assets. It is hardly a stretch to think that chronic traumatic encephalopathy--or CTE, which causes early onset dementia, depression, and God-knows-what-else-because-we-have-no-idea-how-brain-works-exactly--interfered with Duerson's business judgment. As Miami New Times put it: "Dave Duerson was once a millionaire and a CEO. When he took his own life in the throes of dementia, his most valuable asset was a nine-year-old car." Dave Duerson was 51 when he killed himself. Would Ed Reed be thinking about what his life will look like in 15, 20 years? Would an aspiring young NFL player be thinking about his life when he is 50? How could you possibly plan for your life in the future when you are no longer yourself, and you have no idea how you will change? Can you imagine how your life would be if you were dumber and more forgetful? How about if you were more impulsive and violent? Would you trust yourself to have a job, or run a business? Would you trust yourself around your wife and children? As my mind was processing Duerson's death, I had a flashback of many awful head injuries I have seen while watching live football on television. I remember Jahvid Best falling on his head while scoring a touchdown. When I saw his body stiffening up, I thought he died or at least would never walk again. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzKKUJ5eRxo). I remember when Cal's Tom DeCoud clocked a UCLA player during a DeSean Jackson punt return--the UCLA player got up, took a few steps, and collapsed again like his legs suddenly turned into paper. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo9e2Jf7R0o) (At 1:40 mark.) I remember seeing Pat White--one of my favorite college QBs ever--not falling, but dropping like a brick after getting hit in the head. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9asg-by8Yc&feature=fvst) In my life, I must have watched more than twice as many hours of basketball than football, and three times as many hours of baseball than football. But only in football I thought--more than a few times--someone just died on the field. Can I stop watching football? Even with all these things swirling in my head, I actually had a hard time answering no, because I love football. I love the under-appreciated cerebral nature of the game. Shoot, I love the hard hits too. I love the way football puts me through the emotional highs and lows like no other sport. I love the fact that football connects me to a larger community of like-minded people. I love the fun tailgates, the time spent with my friends and fellow fans. I love the visual memories that football gave me. The view of the sun setting into the San Francisco Bay, seen from the Tightwad Hill overlooking the Memorial Stadium, will forever be one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my life. I couldn't quit cold turkey, so I hung on. I kept watching football through the 2011-2012 season, although less frequently and less joyfully.
Then came the last straw. On May 2, 2012, Junior Seau killed himself. Like Dave Duerson, Seau shot himself in the heart. By following the news, I belatedly learned that Ray Easterling, the lead plaintiff in the class action lawsuit against the NFL, also committed suicide on April 19, 2012. (Autopsy showed that both Seau and Easterling had CTE.) I also learned that the number of plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit was greater than a thousand. More than a thousand brain-damaged plaintiffs, all former NFL players. The list of players include Super Bowl MVPs, Hall of Famers, multiple Pro Bowlers. And I knew that, in my lifetime, many of my favorite NFL players will end up on the same list, as long as we cheer them on to ram their heads against each other over and over and over. I could not take it any more. In the last season, I did not watch any NFL game, did not play fantasy football, and did not read any NFL-related sports news. I declined all invitations I received for a Super Bowl party. This Sunday, I plan to cook a nice dinner for my wife instead. The television will be off. Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com. Sumber http://askakorean.blogspot.com
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