Book rec

Breaking the Line: The Season in Black College Football That Transformed the Sport and Changed the Course of Civil Rights
by Samuel G. Freedman

Compelling look at the football programs at Grambling and Florida A&M from prewar origins to the late 1960s. Straightforward about the effects of segregation on college academics, sports, facilities, and on the post-college prospects of the players. It really wasn't that long ago. A fascinating, sobering read.

Links: young men who will make a difference

Even if the difference isn't immediate. Attitudes can change. Tolerance can happen.

College football player Conner Mertens comes out publicly.

NFL draft prospect Michael Sam of Missouri Tigers comes out.

Links: NFL and difference

Some interesting links to articles on difference and (in)tolerance in the NFL:

Nicholas Dawidoff: Miami's Offensive Line: What a Year Inside the N.F.L. Taught me about Richie Incognito and Jonathan Martin (The New Yorker)

Chris Kluwe: I Was an NFL Player Until I Was Fired by Two Bigots and a Coward (Deadspin)

Ian Crouch: Did the Vikings Cut Chris Kluwe for his Gay-Rights Activism? (The New Yorker)

Preseason musings

If I were in charge of NFL football on television:

• on-demand available for any regular season or playoffs game.
• on-demand season subscriptions available for any team. So if, say, you are a Buffalo Bills fan living in New Mexico, you could watch all their games and not simply hope they play an occasional game well enough for NFL Network to rerun it (edited) later in the week.
• the on-demand versions could include enhanced content to make them tempting upgrades from the ordinary Monday Night Football or Thursday Night Football broadcasts.
• regular season announcers would be replaced by the preseason announcers, who actually talk about the game they are there to announce. It is amazing to me how awful the regular season announcers are. They talk about their own careers, about players who haven’t played in the NFL for years, about whatever gossipy scandal is in the headlines, about the other games being played… In short, they talk about anything other than the game they’re at.

The NFL does offer seasonal subscriptions, of a sort, through streaming video. But even in 2013 streaming video still sucks, and I’m not certain these are entire games or just “every touchdown.” If one enjoys watching defensive plays, “every touchdown” is not the same thing as seeing a game.

Currently reading: Sports Illustrated Blood, Sweat and Chalk: The Ultimate Football Playbook: How the Great Coaches Built Today’s Game by Tim Layden.
A nice summary history of the major plays and schemes used in modern football, starting with the old “single wing” formation and moving forward. It is really interesting, although I wish there were a bit more about the various rules changes and how that affected certain plays.

I was meant to finish up some classwork today, but instead wrote 2500 words of fun stuff. I’m not sorry. I’ll attack the classwork tonight.

Relevant reading

Here's a timely interview relevant to the later chapters of Safety Net:

"Necessary Roughness" Goes Gay: http://www.buzzfeed.com/kateaurthur/necessary-roughness-goes-gay

A short list of acronyms and football-speak used in the book

For basic American football concepts and definitions, such as "quarterback," "tight end," "receiver," etc., I highly recommend Wikipedia. It has good explanations of most terms.

AFC: American Football Conference, one of the two conferences comprising the National Football League (NFL). The other conference is the NFC, the National Football Conference.  

BCS: Bowl Championship Series. A system for selecting the ten top-ranked college football teams to play in five postseason bowl games: the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, and the BCS National Championship Game.

The BCS bowls are considered the "elite" games featuring the best teams in the country, but there is endless criticism of the BCS system and its preferential treatment of certain athletic conferences and its circular reasoning in ranking teams ("teams playing in BCS bowls are the best teams because they play in BCS bowls").

D: defense; the defensive line; the defensive players.

D-Line: the defensive line.

ILB: inside linebacker.

NCAA: National Collegiate Athletic Association, the association that regulates and oversees college sports in the United States.

Athletic programs are required to follow NCAA rules and regulations. NCAA violations can lead to a range of penalties and sanctions, including shutting down a program entirely. Some recent examples of NCAA sanctions against football programs are the Penn State case and the 2010 sanctions against the University of Southern California.

NFL Combine: an annual event for college football players entering the NFL draft to undergo physical and mental tests and meet with representatives from NFL teams.

O: offense; the offensive line; the offensive players.

O-Line: the offensive line.

OLB: outside linebacker.

OTAs: organized team activities (often mandatory) for players on NFL teams.

Pro Day: an exhibition of athletic skills held on a college campus to showcase its football players entering the NFL draft. Representatives from NFL teams and members of the media attend to evaluate the draft prospects.

PWAC: Pacific West Athletic Conference (a fictional conference).

College sports are divided into conferences. In football, the teams that win their conferences usually go on to play against other conference-winning teams in postseason bowl games. Although all teams want to win all their games, a win against a conference opponent has more weight than a win against a non-conference opponent, unless the non-conference opponent is a dominant or powerhouse team.

QB: quarterback.

QB1: first quarterback on the depth chart; the starting quarterback.

RB: running back.

redshirt: a player on the college team's roster who is not a starter and does not play in any games.

A redshirt freshman is a player who spent his academic freshman year on the sidelines. This extends his eligibility to play at the college level for five years (4 years eligibility+1 redshirt year). A player who is academically a senior (in his 4th year at college) who redshirted for a year is called a redshirt junior because he's eligible for another year athletically. Redshirt seniors or fifth-year seniors are players who redshirted for a year and are playing in their final year of eligibility.

safety net: a receiver the quarterback can throw to when his other receivers aren't open; a quarterback's preferred receiver.

SC: University of Southern California, known for its historically strong football program. Also known for periodically violating NCAA regulations to build up its athletics (particularly football) programs. A.k.a. USC.

State: statewide high school football championship games.

TA: teaching assistant.

TD: touchdown.

TE: tight end.

WR: wide receiver.