Grandpa, What Was Football?

 Outcries about football have been around a long time. 

One round was in the 1890s. It took President Teddy Roosevelt to save the game. 

This time there may be no such salvation. Not with the damning CTE research published yesterday in the British Medical Journal. The game will end. And it will be through the bottom-up collective force field of power. 

Obviously. reform from those in the loop hasn't solved the CTE problem. It's growing. So much for rule change and better helmets. 

So how could this bottom-up happen?

That could be abruptly. There has been such a surge of commentary in legacy media and social media. The death of beloved Dolly Parton didn't suck attention from that story.

So, fans can just back off. Big money is in broadcast. No one watches. Also, boycott the products/services of the advertisers. Will sports bars stop airing those channels? The promo for a mass campaign could be: A brain is a terrible thing to get banged, over and over again. 

Parents don't sign permission slips for their kids to play the game. That dries up feeder pools for the pros.

Institutions of higher education halt football programs. The sector is already on the defensive. 

Former players, as with the 2011 class action litigation, keep suing. Defense lawyers for the NFL at a firm such as Paul, Weiss likely will take more heat. I contacted Paul, Weiss about the recent CTE research. As yet there has not been a response. Right now, only the NFL is doing the talking. And it isn't much, of course.

Current players find another channel for their ambitions. And podcast about that. They might connect the dots that they could be pawns. I ghostwrote for a man who realized just that after being sidelined by an injury. He had chased what he considered his only route to fame and fortune. As he put it, "When he hung up his cleats," the cheering stopped. An Ah-Ha moment filled with despair.

No longer unthinkable is that future generations will only know of football as a mass craze from a very different time.

In coaching, I explain how powerful any human being can be. That can start with not hosting a Super Bowl party.

Careers. Forget all that. It’s about earning a good living, no matter what.

Complimentary consultation with Jane Genova, StreetSmart Coaching (janegenova374@gmail.com)



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wachtell Partner Romancing Associate in Central Park: Let's Talk About Power

  Would red-haired 40-something Nathaniel Cullerton be so appealing to a 20-something if he hadn't been a partner in an elite law firm and she was an underling at that firm?  That's what most of the coverage of the kissing incident in Central Park by the two Wachtell lawyers doesn't touch. Here is the video by Tik Toker Jay Guapo of their romantic break in the day. It was foreign-policy expert Henry Kissinger who observed: "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."  Since then, organizations have recognized how that reality can create major problems in the workplace. Typically, those take the form of a manager type engaging in an intimate relationship with a subordinate or at least a person with less status. Another issue is that such arrangements can breed favoritism. The subordinate gets goodies others don't. The rest of the organization seethes in resentment.  In addition, it can also trigger penalties for "non-compliance." The subordinate resists th...
Read more

America Not Hiring in 2026: Back to Golden Age of Solopreneurs?

 For hiring, 2025 was a brutal year to search for a job. The Wall Street Journal reports that 2026 could be worse: "At a gathering of CEOs in Midtown Manhattan this month organized by the Yale School of Management, 66% of leaders surveyed said they planned to either fire workers or maintain the size of their existing teams next year. Only a third indicated they planned to hire." The WSJ adds that pullback from adding manpower could be temporary. But given shareholders' demand for cost-efficiency and the continual improvements in AI, chronic unemployment could become standard. However, there is a solution. An old-fashioned one. That's becoming a solopreneur, that is setting up your own business without partners or employees. The model dates back to ancient times.  The golden age of the solo business owner in America had been from the late 1800s to about the mid 1920s.  There had been a wave of immigrants, discrimination against them and few jobs. They drove pushcarts ...
Read more

Scott Barshay's Leadership at Paul, Weiss Torpedoed, PR Nothing But a Joke, Sympathy for Brad Karp

  Last week was a bad, gone worse and worse, one for law firm Wachtell.   This week starts out as what could upend the new leadership of Scott Barshay (The Decider) at Paul, Weiss.  Today's very long-form article in The New York Times  by Michael Schmidt and Jessica Silver-Greenberg depicts Barshay negatively. Understatement. He is rolled out as one-dimensionally power-driven, abrasive, divisive and downright naive about the power of the media. About the latter, he blew off any concern about the media's response to the law firm's removing from the website the Center to Combat Hate.  An example of the beating delivered Barshay? Here is the NYT coverage of the response by some at Paul, Weiss when Barshay was hired: "But there was unease among some at Paul Weiss. Partners and associates learned from lawyers at Cravath that some people there were not unhappy to see Mr. Barshay go. His ego made him difficult to work with, the Paul Weiss lawyers were told." No ambigu...
Read more