I’m thinking especially of “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” Ben Fountain’s shaggy novel, the winner of last year’s National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Here now is a book by Nate Jackson called “Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival From the Bottom of the Pile,” and it’s everything you want football memoirs to be but never are: hilarious, dirty, warm, human, honest, weird.
Mr. Jackson played six seasons (twice as long as the average National Football League career), from 2002 to 2008, with the San Francisco 49ers and the Denver Broncos, mostly at tight end. He managed to escape with some brain cells intact. He’s that unicornlike rarity among former football players: He can write.
A lot of the tragicomedy in “Slow Getting Up” springs from sex, mostly empty sex, a pastime even lowly N.F.L. players are able to pursue avidly. On a typical night in a club, Mr. Jackson and a few of his Bronco teammates turn around to find that “women have emerged from the fog, pulled toward us by our oversized pituitaries and our cave man libidos, vibrating the floorboards like a Dr. Dre bass line.” He remarks: “Now everything is open wide: arms, doors, and legs. We are young, physically powerful men with money.”
Mr. Jackson is frequently grateful for these women. At other times, he calls them “a mob of bloodthirsty jersey chasers” or “approachable vampires.” A bit of imagined dialogue goes this way. Her: “But you’re on the practice squad!” Him: “But you’re a slut!” You will learn more in this book about N.F.L. player’s hotel-room masturbation practices than you will soon be able to forget.
Mr. Jackson is just as observant about almost everything — injuries, coaches, drug tests, agents, reporters, violence, pranks, self-loathing. He ...
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...hould remove marijuana from their banned substances list. Don’t tell anyone about it: just stop testing for it. Pain is a big problem in the N.F.L.”
He continues: “No one ever overdoses from weed. The problem is pills and booze. A joint can alleviate the need for either and plant buttocks firmly on the couch, where a ‘MacGyver’ marathon takes on epic proportions.”
About pain and the media, he notes how players are schooled to talk to reporters. “Do say: We’re taking this thing one game at a time and we’ll see what happens. Don’t say: Man, I really would like to go home and eat a heroin sandwich.”
Mr. Jackson says he saw no evidence of steroid use in the N.F.L., but by the end of the book, injured and with his career in the balance, he briefly injects himself with human growth hormone before abandoning the idea.
He loves football; he thinks it’s a beautiful game,
Nate uses many rhetorical questions that evoke emotions in the reader. Nate starts of the article with a rhetorical question in the second sentence that says, “How can they avoid brain injury while still getting run over by the gravy train (Jackson, 1)?” Nate also uses similes throughout his article, but this one in particular has a lot of emotion in it. “Blaming the NFL football player for a hit is like blaming a bullet for a homicide (Jackson, 1).” Jackson, really gets to his reader’s emotion with this sentence that talks about the player’s health: “The threat that concussions pose to football is really a threat to its promoters. The game will live on despite them, and will morph to meet the sensibilities of an ever-changing national conscience (Jackson, 3).” Jackson also makes another great point with the last two sentences of the article: “We are making a generation of tough boys; it is true. But what good is toughness without brains (Jackson,
named after him. As readers we begin to learn the type of man that Jackson indeed
On March 13, 2006, members of the Duke Lacrosse team attended a party at the home of the team’s co-captains: Evans, Flannery, and Zash. One of the hosts invited two exotic dancers, Mangum and Pittman. The dancers arrived and briefly performed from about midnight until 12:04 AM. Approximately 40 minutes later, both women left together in Pitman’s car.
Athletes come and go, but there are a great few that are remembered for having made a bigger impact than normal on the sporting world. A few of those athletes names are Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, and Bo Jackson. Many people don’t know very much about Bo. This is because he wasn’t playing for very long. Although his career came to an abrupt end, Bo Jackson is still considered one of the best athletes ever because of the impact he was able to make while he was healthy. Knowing what he accomplished in his short time in professional sports makes many wonder, what more could he have done?
To do so, Levy turns to the experiences of several young women whom she interviews. From her interpretations of these experiences, Levy reaches the conclusion that these women’s sexual nature revolves around their need to feel wanted and to gain attention rather than to satisfy their own sexual needs (Levy, 194). But by drawing her experiences from only a small subset of the population, her analysis is ultimately restricted to that of a simulacral woman: specifically, one constructed from the characters that actively participate in raunch culture.
Bo Jackson is a former baseball and football athlete who has spent his time in college wisely and finished school with a bachelor’s degree in… while playing for the raiders Bo Jackson dislocated his hip, which enabled him to play professional football. However, he continued to play professional baseball but could not perform at the level he did before his injury occurred. In addition, due to his hip injury both his professional football and baseball career was cut short. His commitment to finish his education Bo Jackson has established himself as a successful businessman and lives a financially stable
“The Football Player” shows how physically draining this obsession can be. NFL quarterback Matt Leinart eerily describes the drain ...
After a season of working with Pete, I have an enhanced understanding of his occupation. Throughout the season I have been striving to attain as much knowledge and experience as possible. I frequently ask questions about our professional football operations and his involvement and responsibilities to the organization, which he is always more than willing to take the time to explain. I speak with him regularly about trends in the psychological effects of injuries, as well as injury trends per sports and per football position. Through his generosity and motivation he demonstrates his knowledge and love of the profession. I have no doubt these factors have led him to be successful and desire the same things for his athletic training interns.
The plight of athletes of color in American sports has been a well-documented and heavily conversed issue throughout society. Our treatment of these athletes was unwarranted, unfair and unacceptable, but all of that seemed to be over with pioneers such as Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in the early 20th century and finally bringing athletes of color to the same playing field as their white counterparts. Today, we proudly proclaim that our major American sports are completely void of all stereotyping and racism that plagued them in their infancy. It is obvious that this is not true with various examples such as the Donald Sterling incident showing that there are some whimpers of outright racism remaining, but there also may be be an issue that is much more widespread than we realize. A phenomenon we now call “unconscious racism” explains that in modern society we have effectively internalized our racist rhetoric to the point where it is now subtle and almost second nature. This is especially clear in the National Football League in the treatment of black quarterbacks. These quarterbacks are subjected to harsher and often more unfair scrutiny than their white counterparts, despite their similar production, as a result this new breed of subconscious racism.
During Mike Webster’s autopsy, Bennet Omalu (pathologist) finds deterioration in the brain that is similar to the deterioration found in brains with Alzheimer's disease. Omalu publishes his findings in a medical journal, and quickly gets on the bad side of the NFL. As other athletes receive the same diagnosis, Omalu tries to raise awareness about the trauma.
The event’s purpose was to shine a light on a very controversial topic: football. Even though baseball is America’s pastime, football is now the most popular sport among Americans. The NFL has been in the spotlight on several occasions, most frequently being the recent discoveries of the connection between football and brain injuries. The event’s purpose was to also call into question the audience’s ethics and morality. Why is it that we continue to support a sport that is harmful in more ways than one? Is it the love of the sport? The event does an amazing job at answering this question as well as many others, but most importantly it made us think.
The narrator, Dr. Bennet Omalu is chosen to superintend his autopsy. As he analyzes the x-ray, he sees strange clots in the brain. Mind racing, he realizes that “Iron Mike” has suffered from a series of traumatic brain injuries known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). He teams up with other doctors, and publishes a report on the issue, which is quickly dismissed by the NFL. And case after case he sees players who died due to fatal brain injuries. He tries to present his findings to the NFL committee for player safety, but they don’t take him seriously, and he isn’t even allowed into the conference room. In fact the NFL ask him to stop his research saying “You’re going to war with a corporation that owns a day of the week.” They talk about him as a man who, “since he won’t be a part of America, wants to destroy it instead.” Mockery and disgust follow him everywhere. But he still fights for his cause, working closely with other members of his team. Finally, after months of blood, sweat, and tears, Congress scrutinizes the NFL, and forces them to take the issue more seriously. This shows how hard work with your team, determination, and hope can bring about any change even in the most difficult issues. Dr Omalu, through all the insults, pressed on with his work, and didn’t stop until he succeeded. Many of the
Since 1978, 32 states have abandoned the federal prohibition to recognize legislatively marijuana's important medical properties. Federal law, however, continues to define marijuana as a drug "with no accepted medical use," and federal agencies continue to prohibit physician-patient access to marijuana. This outdated federal prohibition is corrupting the intent of the state laws and depriving thousands of glaucoma and cancer patients of the medical care promised them by their state legislatures.
“Woman, what would you be like seen from the sky?” (20), Stephen Dobyns implicates through this aerial metaphor a striking sexual encounter, illustrating the theme for his poem “Roughhousing”. Indirectly, Dobyns uses multiple references to rouse the graphic nature of rough sex. With emphasis on “Rough”, the speaker provides visually appalling descriptions to eliminate a perception of deceit. Therefore, through the compound of contradicting diction, sexually severe allusions, and suggestive metaphors, Stephen Dobyns reveals perverted distractions to intensify and discredit the speaker’s attempt to conceal pseudo-sexual mutuality.
As a college student, drugs and alcohol are constantly creating temptations for individuals. In the United States, the problem with marijuana use is increasing. It is “the most used illegal drug in the world, with almost 160 million people, aged fifteen to sixty four, reporting having used marijuana in the last year” (Smith 429). Friends of users and users are constantly surrounded by the drug, but have no idea of the effects. As the years pass, marijuana is being viewed as a “normal” drug and although some disagree, they find no reason to discourage users.