Football Is Murder

There is simply no way to justify the "game" of football any longer - it is, quite literally, murder:

When the former Giants safety Tyler Sash was found dead at age 27 of an accidental overdose of pain medications at his Iowa home on Sept. 8, his grieving family remained consumed by a host of unanswered questions about the final, perplexing years of Sash’s life.

Cut by the Giants in 2013 after what was at least his fifth concussion, Sash had returned to Iowa and increasingly displayed surprising and irregular behavior, family members said this week. He was arrested in his hometown, Oskaloosa, for public intoxication after leading the police on a four-block chase with a motorized scooter, a pursuit that ended with Sash fleeing toward a wooded area.

Sash had bouts of confusion, memory loss and minor fits of temper. Although an Iowa sports celebrity, both as a Super Bowl-winning member of the Giants and a popular star athlete at the University of Iowa, Sash was unable to seek meaningful employment because he had difficulty focusing long enough to finish a job.

Barnetta Sash, Tyler’s mother, blamed much of her son’s changeable behavior, which she had not observed in the past, on the powerful prescription drugs he was taking for a football-related shoulder injury that needed surgery. Nonetheless, after his death she donated his brain to be tested for chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated trauma that has been found in dozens of former N.F.L. players.

Last week, representatives from Boston University and the Concussion Legacy Foundation notified the Sash family that C.T.E. had been diagnosed in Tyler’s brain and that the disease, which can be confirmed only posthumously, had advanced to a stage rarely seen in someone his age.

Dr. Ann McKee, chief of neuropathology at the V.A. Boston Healthcare System and a professor of neurology and pathology at the Boston University School of Medicine who conducted the examination, said Tuesday that the severity of the C.T.E. in Sash’s brain was about the same as the level found in the brain of the former N.F.L. star Junior Seau, who committed suicide in 2012 at age 43.

Doctors grade C.T.E. on a severity scale from 0 to 4; Sash was at Stage 2. McKee, comparing the results to other athletes who died at a similar age, said she had seen only one case, that of a 25-year-old former college player, with a similar amount of the disease.

The Sash family, who released the findings, said the outcome brought some clarity to the end of Tyler Sash’s life.

“My son knew something was wrong, but he couldn’t express it,” Barnetta Sash said Monday night. “He was such a good person, and it’s sad that he struggled so with this — not knowing where to go with it.”

She continued: “Now it makes sense. The part of the brain that controls impulses, decision-making and reasoning was damaged badly.”

And these concussions didn't just come in the NFL:

Sash came from a football family. His father, Michael, played in college and his brother, Josh, was a good enough high school player that he considered playing in college as well.

Josh Sash, eight years older than Tyler, said his brother sustained at least two concussions in high school, one documented concussion in college and two with the Giants, including one in the Giants’ playoff victory over the San Francisco 49ers that earned the team its berth in the Super Bowl after the 2011 season.

In the San Francisco game, Sash, who was 215 pounds, was blindsided by a brutal and borderline late hit on a punt return by a 281-pound defensive lineman.

“Those concussions are the ones we definitely know about,” Josh Sash said. “If you’ve played football, you know there are often other incidents.”

Indeed, the other, "lesser" incidents of trauma can be just as damaging as concussions:

Experts believe that less severe blows to the head — those not strong enough to cause a concussion — also significantly contribute to the damage that results in C.T.E. These lesser traumas are especially troubling, neurologists say, because they happen frequently in contact sports like football but go undiagnosed.

Like boxing, I don't think football should be banned.

But know that every time you watch an NFL football game, a good portion of the players on that field are going to end up with C.T.E or some other brain-related disease.

If you can still watch football knowing the damage that is being done, more power to you.

Same goes for the men willing to play it.

As for who gets to play the "game," I think there needs to be a conversation about it:

Josh Sash, who has two young sons, said it would be difficult for him to recommend that his children play football when they grow older. Barnetta Sash, who said she had always loved football, felt similarly.

“I want other parents to realize they need to have a conversation with their kids and not just think it’s a harmless game — because it’s not,” said Barnetta Sash, whose daughter, Megan, has three children.

I used to be a huge football fan, but as the evidence has become overwhelming in the last few years that playing football destroys men's brains, I can no longer do it.

How many NY Giants have we learned about in just the past few years who died of brain-related injuries?

There was Frank Gifford and Dave Jennings, now Tyler Sash.

You can bet there will be more.

Football is said to be the national pastime, kinda like the Roman Coliseum was the national pastime for the Roman Empire.

But with our modern day gladiators, the football players, the deaths come off the field after their playing days are over. 

Guards Beat And Kill Prisoners In Andrew Cuomo's New York With Impunity

Michael Winerip and Michael Schwirtz have another piece in the NY Times detailing the systemic abuse of prisoners by guards that goes on in the New York State prison system under Governor Cuomo's leadership.

Last week they detailed prison abuse at Clinton Correction Facility after two prisoners escaped there in June - more than 60 prisoners have alleged being beaten, choked, threatened with waterboarding and other abuses at the hands of corrections officers at the prison.

This morning Winerip and Schwirtz detail the homicide of a prisoner at the hands of corrections officers known as the "Beat Up Squad" at Fishkill Correctional Facility:

On the evening of April 21 in Building 21 at the Fishkill Correctional Facility, Samuel Harrell, an inmate with a history of erratic behavior linked to bipolar disorder, packed his bags and announced he was going home, though he still had several years left to serve on his drug sentence.

Not long after, he got into a confrontation with corrections officers, was thrown to the floor and was handcuffed. As many as 20 officers — including members of a group known around the prison as the Beat Up Squad — repeatedly kicked and punched Mr. Harrell, who is black, with some of them shouting racial slurs, according to more than a dozen inmate witnesses. “Like he was a trampoline, they were jumping on him,” said Edwin Pearson, an inmate who watched from a nearby bathroom.

Mr. Harrell was then thrown or dragged down a staircase, according to the inmates’ accounts. One inmate reported seeing him lying on the landing, “bent in an impossible position.”

“His eyes were open,” the inmate wrote, “but they weren’t looking at anything.”

Corrections officers called for an ambulance, but according to medical records, the officers mentioned nothing about a physical encounter. Rather, the records showed, they told the ambulance crew that Mr. Harrell probably had an overdose of K2, a synthetic marijuana.

He was taken to St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital and at 10:19 p.m. was pronounced dead.

In the four months since, state corrections officials have provided only the barest details about what happened at Fishkill, a medium-security prison in Beacon, N.Y., about 60 miles north of New York City. Citing a continuing investigation by the State Police, officials for weeks had declined to comment on the inmates’ accounts of a beating.

An autopsy report by the Orange County medical examiner, obtained by The New York Times, concluded that Mr. Harrell, 30, had cuts and bruises to the head and extremities and had no illicit drugs in his system, only an antidepressant and tobacco. He died of cardiac arrhythmia, the autopsy report said, “following physical altercation with corrections officers.”

The manner of death: Homicide.

A week ago, Governor Cuomo received an award from the National Urban League for showing leadership in criminal justice reform.

Congressman Hakeem Jeffries handed that award over to Cuomo at a roundtable discussion on criminal justice reform.

Since that time, Winerip and Schwirtz have written two articles detailing what amounts to the systemic abuse and murder of prisoners in the New York State prison system and we have heard not a peep from any New York politician or criminal justice reform advocate on these allegations.

The National Urban League just gave Cuomo an award for being a leader in criminal justice reform - you'd think they might be upset that Cuomo's running a prison system with endemic prisoner abuse and murder in it.

But you'd be wrong about that - so far silence from them.

As for Congressman Jeffries, the guy who handed over the Urban League award to Cuomo, so far silence from him too on these allegations.

The same goes for the rest of the New York political establishment - crickets abound.

Last I saw, Russell Simmons and other celebrity criminal justice advocates who were hailing Cuomo a couple of months ago as a criminal justice reform warrior have been silent on the horrific allegations of abuse, torture and murder of prisoners by NY corrections officers.

It looks like these prisoners who are getting beaten, choked, threatened with waterboarding and murdered are out of luck because its happening under Governor Cuomo's leadership and the very same politicians and reformers who were happy to hammer Bill de Blasio over "Broken Windows" policing or Rikers Island prisoner abuse are loathe to say anything untoward about the abuse and murder that is taking place in the state prison system under Governor Cuomo's leadership.

In short, prisoners can be beaten, choked, abused, tortured and murdered in Governor Cuomo's New York by prisoner guards known as the "Beat Down Squad" and nothing - nothing - will happen to them.

Not unless these prisoners get a transfer to Rikers, where Russell Simmons or Hakeem Jeffries will be happy to stand up for them then, since they're fine taking a rhetorical bat to de Blasio any old time.

But so long as standing up for the prisoners getting beaten, choked and killed in the prison system means taking on Governor Cuomo, not so much.