I agree mays, clark and lombardi are good but I just can't be bothered with the concussions, domestic violence and kaepernick stuff. I know a lot of people don't agree but I just want to know about the teams and the games. The ringer seems to me to want to pile on the nfl whenever possible and god knows the nfl gives them plenty of ammo.
I agree on one hand. The domestic violence cluster**** is the other shoe dropping on the league: when you demand the kind of authority it now has, you become responsible for wielding that authority, and when you wield it in stupid and callous ways you're accountable for that. So no sympathy to the league for its current predicament, but I don't see the point in relitigating it every time some entitled, piece of ****, roided up moron beats his girlfriend. We're just covering the same old territory, and concluding yet again that the NFL is disproportionately comprised of ****ty, violent people, and that the league doesn't actually care for anything beyond PR purposes. We get it. It's a violent sport played by violent people
Likewise, I'm thoroughly over the Kaepernick stuff. There are legitimate football reasons not to want the guy as your backup. I respect Kaep's decision to take a moral stand that he felt compelled to take, and I like that it's spread across the league since I like politically active athletes, but I don't need to hear how he's better than the alternative every time some JAG QB sucks, because that's an overly simplistic analysis that I'm not convinced is actually true. Kaepernick is a ****ty quarterback who requires an offense to be built around his few strengths, and nobody's going to waste their time building offenses around ****ty players. It's the same roadblock that Tim Tebow ran into, and now they're both out of the league, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I disagree re: the concussion stuff, though. That's a huge issue that's literally killing these guys, and there's still too much that we don't know about the specifics of it: how far back does the brain damage go? How many years is it 'safe' to play? Etc. I can do without the other stuff, but I don't know how we can just hand-wave that away. It's a sobering realization and it's made football a lot less enjoyable to watch; I feel guilty for even enjoying it now. But ignoring that is no solution, and I think awareness is huge, at least in that it makes sure younger folks are educated on the risks they're taking before they start playing.