Death to the scoreboard.

"Death to the scoreboard."
Dean Hood, Eastern football's head coach, spoke that phrase to his players earlier this week in practice.
It's an odd phrase when it first rolls off the tongue.
But when taken into context the way Hood preached it to his team, those four words make perfect sense.
And maybe, just maybe, Hood is on to something.
"I told the guys if I had one wish, it would be to put that scoreboard to death," Hood said in an Ohio Valley Conference teleconference Tuesday. "Because that really shouldn't be the standard. The standard should be excellence. I think it's a much better thing to live by than the scoreboard because that will help them more in life, as a dad, as a husband, as an employee and as a neighbor."
What?

For more, see this link: http://www.easternprogress.com/sports/real-life-lessons-from-the-gridiron-1.2644728#.TqW0uHIbUaA

Hope, Socccer, and Haiti

A nice story at CNN.com.

Are College Sports a Sham?

Taylor Branch's article in The Atlantic Monthly argues that the NCAA denies the rights of athletes by treating them as students and not wage-earning, revenue-generating employees. Here is Frank DeFord's commentary. Is this the beginning of the end of the NCAA?

Sport for the Common Good

Life After the NFL

From cnn.com:

During the NFL lockout this year, some startling numbers came to light as many players were forced to consider what their lives would be like without football.
• The average NFL career is 3.52 seasons;
• The average age of retired NFL players is 28;
• Within five years of leaving the league, 75% of NFL players end up broke, divorced or unemployed;
• 65% of NFL players leave the game with permanent injuries;
• At least 20% of players reading this are clinically depressed;
• The average life expectancy for retired NFL players is 53-59 years.

Fantasy Football

I've got a post over at Ethics for Everyone that may be of interest to readers of this blog:


http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ethics-everyone/201109/whats-wrong-fantasy-football

Philosophy and the Sports Fan