Make way for the lawsuits.
But don’t hold your breath waiting for an American university with a significant football program to stop bashing its students’ brains in.
Make way for the lawsuits.
But don’t hold your breath waiting for an American university with a significant football program to stop bashing its students’ brains in.
Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=40859
Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte
August 12th, 2013 at 9:07PM
As a former hs/college athlete from the 80’s, I can attest to massive increase in size of football players, as well as the jump in speed and quickness. More mass, more velocity = more energy, more powerful collisions and more brain damage. The linked article chronicles the mental deterioration of one CFB player, and says that it was caused partly to hits to the head.
I disagree. While head shots do happen, the most severe damage happens with the accumulation of hits that occur no where near the head. A form tackle, one that has been standard industry practice, involves coiling the body by dropping the hips, and exploding into the players midsection or sternum, with shoulder pads. That creates a whiplash affect, which in turn, causes the brain to hit the skull. The head is not involved in the collision, but this manner of tackle is taught from the time a kid begins playing FB in grade school.
The problem is that both high schools and universities are demanding that players get bigger, stronger, faster. Those institutions cannot claim that they’re not liable if in fact they create the conditions for massive head trauma. Further, I know that kids are getting on PED’s much earlier than what was available to us. Very few of the linebackers nor safeties, who are the catalysts of some of the most egregious hits when I played nearly 30 years ago in high school, were 200 pounds. Now, when I checked the rosters of some of the teams in my San Francisco scholastic league, very few of the linebackers are less than 200lbs, and many of the safeties are over 200. College, many current safeties are the size of 80’s linebackers. If one of these suits can find that the universities knew that their players were on the gear, and in fact, encouraged the use of the juice, I don’t see how they aren’t on the hook for millions….
August 13th, 2013 at 12:38PM
charlie : The contrast you draw with your own experience is really striking. I appreciate that background. UD
August 14th, 2013 at 12:03AM
Thanks UD. What I posted was in light of the reasons I heard when I pointed out the enormous increase in the size of the players from those of a generation ago, specifically, the kids train all year, the diets are better, or worse, depending on who you believe, the strength and conditioning (S&C) programs are so much more sophisticated, on and on.
To all that, the only response is, BULLSHIT!!! The S&C programs of the 80’s were the same as those of today, heavy use of compound Olympic lifts, (deads, squats, presses, etc) sprinting and outdoor exercise. All of that is what is currently used. So, no, things haven’t changed much, making the things are so much better now than then so much nonsense.
No, something else is going on, and it’s pretty apparent that the use of PED’s is almost growing and universal. We were told that if we worked out all year long, including in season, the most we could expect to gain was about 8 lbs of muscle. Reason being is that during the football season, a player is burning the muscle he gained in off season. FB is grueling, and it was the norm to lose weight/size during the season, making those 8 lbs of muscle growth for the year a real accomplishment.
But that’s not what’s currently happening, most especially for college. The guys are putting on as much as 25 lbs per year, even with season demands. That is impossible, if you’re not on PEDs. That alone is a clear sign of that most D1 players are on the gear, the muscle gains per year aren’t possible for a non-geared athlete.
Why is any of that important? Because if a guy like me knows what’s going on, it’s impossible for university athletic departments not to know. If AD’s know, academic knows. If academic knows, NCAA knows. No plausible deniability on this one. D1 AD’s, I believe, encourage the use of PED’s, making the inevitable collisions and tackles that much more brutal and brain damaging. Ex players, who aren’t even thirty, are manifesting serious brain malfunction, the epidemic will become apparent as more players come forward. The colleges will be on the hook for their reckless use of their football fodder….