I was driving around yesterday and something popped into my head that I wanted to write about. Something very interesting that would be a lot better than, “gee, it’s supposed to be hot today.” Unfortunately I can’t remember what the f*ck it was. Sorry. It was gonna be good, too. This getting old shit sucks. But I can only think of one way to stop getting old, and that’s not particularly desirable either. <\/p>\n
I did, however, hear the “week in sports” segment on Weekend Edition (I think that’s it – the one with Scott Simon and what really is beginning to sound to me like his fake and overly-exuberant laugh) and some guy who wasn’t Stefan Fatsis. They did stories on the upcoming World Cup Football (I’m feeling European this morning) match between the US of A and Brazil and, um, some other apparently less-than-memorable (see above) shit. What they didn’t think was worth mentioning was that John Mackey passed away this week. <\/p>\n
OK, so maybe I only care because he went to SU, but it still seems like his death was at least worth a passing mention.<\/p>\n
Never mind that John Mackey redefined the position he played. He took a lot of shit when, as head of the NFL Player’s Association, he did something nobody had ever done before – he stood up to the Mackey also fought for the “old-timers,” and it would seem both newsworthy and sadly ironic that, at a time when brain injuries in football are making the news, he suffered from frontotemporal dementia – which almost certainly resulted from his years of playing. And it would also seem rather shameful that an NFL Hall-of-Famer<\/a> (whose induction was delayed until 1992, most likely due to the feathers he ruffled by his union activism) couldn’t pay his medical bills, forcing his wife of 47 years, Sylvia (Mackey’s college roommate – a guy by the name of Ernie Davis – leant him $5 and the keys to his car so John could take Sylvia on their first date), to go back to work at the age of 56 as a flight attendant.<\/p>\n But I guess John Mackey’s story wasn’t compelling enough to warrant a mention on NPR. Maybe Scott Simon couldn’t fake a laugh over it. <\/p>\n Oh, and gee, it’s supposed to be hot today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was driving around yesterday and something popped into my head that I wanted to write about. Something very interesting that would be a lot better than, “gee, it’s supposed to be hot today.” Unfortunately I can’t remember what the f*ck it was. Sorry. It was gonna be good, too. This getting old shit sucks. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5816"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5830,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5816\/revisions\/5830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}slave<\/del> NFL owners, orchestrated a player’s strike in 1970, and led a successful antitrust challenge to “The Rozelle Rule” – ushering in the modern era of free agency (which I suppose you can like or dislike – I’d be willing to admit that, from a personal, selfish standpoint, I think sports were a lot better when teams more or or less stayed together and players didn’t move around like mercenaries playing for the highest bidder, though I can’t imagine I’d find it acceptable if I<\/em><\/strong> couldn’t go and work for whatever employer I thought offered the best deal for me and my family – but at the very least, it seems like a significant development). <\/p>\n