… The sort of stories that rise above all other stories and become master narratives…
The University of Virginia gang rape story, which riveted national attention onto issues of alcohol, fraternities, and sexual violence on campus, broke only a few days ago; and now an Ohio State football player who had been complaining about the psychological effects of his sports-related concussions has been found dead in a dumpster behind his apartment building. He had shot himself.
The news coverage of this suicide has been gigantic. News coverage of the UVa rape has also been gigantic. Why?
UD has argued that the particular gang rape described in Rolling Stone magazine took off in the media because of that publication’s high profile, and because the article was extremely well-written, putting the reader at the scene with great immediacy, and in this way heightening everyone’s sense of the intimately vile and lurid nature of that form of assault. It also took off because of the great distance between the public perception of venerable honorable well-bred UVa and the reality of rapist-alcoholic UVa. The UVa gang rape has become the paradigmatic university rape story; its details are so grotesque, the damage done to its victim so grievous, that huge numbers of people know about it, make reference to it, understand the crime of rape through it.
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Similarly, the pitiable tale of Kosta Karageorge is, even in its first few hours (it just broke), becoming iconic of college football. As with the Rolling Stone piece, this is for a number of reasons.
Like the UVa story, it exhibits striking irony. This football hero’s nightmare end, his act of unimaginable despair and self-hatred, happened in the midst of football season – a time of perpetually-renewed optimism and communal excitement. Literally at the same time as Ohio State fans were rocking in their seats, a missing player from the team was dressing all in black, walking to a dumpster, climbing into it, and shooting himself to death.
So we have not only this irony, this sardonic and sickening counterpoint to the happy game-day narrative, but we have it in real time. That drama is one of the reasons why this story will carry farther than the several other CTE-related suicides we’ve been reading about.
Karageorge’s story is also about a very young man, and most of the CTE stories so far have been about older, retired players.
Defenders of football’s safety will point out that most of Karageorge’s college athletic career was about wrestling, not football. That’s true. But he has obviously been playing – practicing – football for some time in order to qualify for the team. Could the combined effects of wrestling and football smackdowns have damaged his brain?
Only the results of his autopsy will reveal whether Karageorge had chronic traumatic encephalopathy. If he did, his story will assume even more archetypal significance.
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Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, with its battered denizens of the ashbin, has covered some of this territory.
Readers tend to think the play is ridiculous. Outrageous. Impossible.
December 1st, 2014 at 2:03AM
The former NFL players, who from memory, committed suicide rather than deal with failing brains: Dave Duerson, Andre Waters, Junior Seau, Jovan, Terry Long, Mike Webster, Ray Easterling. Several college players, including this young man, who killed themselves, displayed brain trauma during their autopsies. The CFB season now lasts 12 games, not including bowl games. At some point, unis will have to be on the hook for the brain degeneration of their players, given that it’s the schools that have demanded longer seasons and more practices.
Will the athletic departments, who make much noise when claiming they’re independent from the academic side, demand that the students, taxpayers and faculty be obligated to pay when the inevitable lawsuits decide CFB is liable for all this misery?
December 1st, 2014 at 6:54AM
charlie: The legal/money stuff is already happening in the pros. But universities lack big money for those sorts of settlements. Imagine a Penn State hit up in the same year with Sandusky and a couple of concussion suits.
December 1st, 2014 at 11:29AM
UD, then it would be likely that some unis will have to declare bankruptcy, despite whatever insurance they may carry. More than likely, insurance carriers will probably decide that having universities or even high schools as clients isn’t worth the risk, and drop them form the rolls.
Ironic, ain’t it? Colleges probably won’t go under for admin malfeasance, or that institutions are delivering a degraded product. They’ll go under due to their sports obsession….