Extracurriculars » buzz bissinger http://www.wendyparker.org Discoveries, rants and comfort-food cravings of a sports omnivore Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:42:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Bissinger on Goodell’s ‘p-whipped’ NFL http://www.wendyparker.org/2013/01/bissinger-on-goodells-p-whipped-nfl/ http://www.wendyparker.org/2013/01/bissinger-on-goodells-p-whipped-nfl/#comments Wed, 02 Jan 2013 17:42:57 +0000 Wendy Parker http://www.wendyparker.org/?p=5950

On The Daily Beast today, Buzz writes that the league is trying too hard to compensate for the sport’s innately violent nature, and it’s leading to a crummy brand of football:

Football is violent because it was designed to be violent. Football hurts because it is meant to hurt. Hitting is not for the faint of heart, and I proudly number myself among the cowards after getting slammed into the ground on a missed tackle in eighth grade that I still remember.

Football still is football, but every year it edges closer to a tamped-down ersatz version thanks to Roger Goodell, the Mother Teresa of professional sports commissioners. If Mother Goodell has his way, don’t be surprised if “huddles” become “meditations,” “timeouts” turned into yoga breaks, posturpedic mattresses placed in the pocket to further protect the quarterback.

Safety is an issue; purposeful helmet-to-helmet hits needed to be made illegal. But some of the referee calls this year in which contact was so clearly incidental, defensive linemen gyrating into contorted ballet to not touch the quarterback but still getting flagged, were ridiculous.

One of the NFL’s all-time tough men, Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis, says he’s calling it quits at the end of the season

Bizzinger’s calling his six-month talk radio stint quits, saying the format is “fundamentally trivial.” There is also this:

According to one well-placed source, Bissinger was involved in two separate F-bomb-filled office confrontations that resulted in him being charged with “creating a hostile work environment.” Once CBS Corporate in New York was poised to get involved with the second incident, Bissinger resigned, says the source. Bissinger would not comment on the record about the disputes. But clearly the station knew he was volatile. It’s one of the reasons they hired him.

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