Salon.com > jovan belcher

Football’s death spiral

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 12:00:00 +0000

If baseball is, or at least used to be, a languidly paced sport played on an asymmetrical greensward that recalls America’s agrarian past, football is an industrial product of the modern age. Confined to a precisely measured rectangle that mimics the electronic screen, football plays out in staccato bursts of violence, interrupted by commentary and meta-commentary, near-pornographic slow-motion replays and scantily clad young women selling you stuff. Though I’m not sure that the commercials during the Super Bowl, or any lesser football game, really have much to do with consumer products as such. Instead, they’re selling an idea, the idea of the sort of person you must be if you’re watching the game: Funny, alert, sexually alive, a bit self-mocking, surrounded by friends and endlessly loyal to football, to America and to television.

The year of the suicide

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:30:00 +0000

Let’s call 2012 the year of the suicide: On Friday, the Department of the Army released a report revealing that suicides continue to outnumber combat-related deaths among American soldiers —an average of one suicide a day— a number that’s increasing despite the fact that the armed forces have installed new training and awareness programs over the past few years. Stateside, suicide has become the leading cause of death by injury, and is the 10th leading cause of death overall. According to a CDC report released over the summer, suicide attempts by high-school students has risen to from 6.3 percent in 2009 to 7.8 percent in 2011, and accounts for 13 percent of all deaths among people between the ages of 10 and 24 — the third leading cause of death in that age group.

Are fans responsible for Jovan Belcher?

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 16:12:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I wrote about how football wasn’t good for me and I was trying to quit. Since my rant I’ve managed to avoid a lot of football; I’ve missed my favorite player, Lesean McCoy, getting severely concussed in garbage time of a meaningless game, I have no idea how Peyton Manning is doing in Denver, and I only have a vague understanding of what’s happening under center in San Francisco. Last week I backslid a bit when I watched three quarters of the Eagles’ Monday night game against the Carolina Panthers; I justified this lapse by telling myself that it was OK because at this point Eagles’ games bear almost no resemblance to actual professional football.

Sadly, this weekend there was a terrible and all too serious reminder of why I’m cutting football out of my life for the time being.

I’m not going to focus on what happened in Kansas City beyond saying that if you cannot see this weekend’s awful events fitting into a larger pattern of football-associated tragedies (Chris Henry and Junior Seau came to mind very quickly) then you are being willfully blind.

Bob Costas slams gun culture

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 04:05:00 +0000

Following Saturday's murder/suicide by Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher, Bob Costas delivered an anti-gun monologue during Sunday Night Football halftime. In it he quoted this column by sportswriter Jason Whitlock:

The speech provoked an instant outcry on Twitter:

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Murder-suicide involving Chiefs’ player stuns team

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 14:40:00 +0000

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — It began like any other Saturday for the Kansas City Chiefs during the NFL season, their general manager and coach at work early to put final touches on this weekend's gameplan. Then they got a call to hurry to the parking lot.

The two men rushed through the glass doors of Chiefs headquarters and came face-to-face with linebacker Jovan Belcher, holding a handgun to his head.

Belcher had already killed his girlfriend and sped the short distance to Arrowhead Stadium, right past a security checkpoint guarding the entrance. Upon finding his bosses, Belcher thanked general manager Scott Pioli and head coach Romeo Crennel for giving him a chance in the NFL. Then he turned away and pulled the trigger.

The murder-suicide shocked a franchise that has been dealing with controversies now made trivial by comparison: eight consecutive losses, injuries too numerous to count, discontent among fans and the prospect that Pioli and Crennel could be fired at season's end.

Authorities did not release a possible motive while piecing together the case, other than to note that Belcher and his girlfriend, 22-year-old Kasandra M. Perkins, had been arguing frequently.