Sporting Madness

The Mike Leach saga took a bizarre twist this morning when Texas Tech fired him [ Tommy Craggs , Deadspin ] just before [ Matt Hinton , Dr. Saturday ] he received a court order [ Pete Thamel , Twitter] allowing him to coach in their bowl game. This comes after [ AP ] their suspension of him a few days earlier in response to allegations [Craggs] of mistreatment by Tech wide receiver Adam James , the son of ESPN analyst Craig James . The whole thing stinks to high heaven. Seth C of Double-T Nation , the SBN blog for Texas Tech, has an excellent post here detailing the lack of communication between the university and Leach, the financial implications at stake and the power play between Leach and athletic director Gerald Myers . Spencer Hall goes through more of the details and discusses the power struggle between the two sides over at SB Nation, Chris Brown has an interesting analysis of how this might eventually shake out and Matt Hayes of The Sporting News has a great ...

[ This is the second part of a three-part series on concussions. See Part I here . The final installment will run later this week. ] One of the absolutely essential areas to consider when assessing and treating athletic concussions is the independence of doctors and medical personnel. Generally, injuries are assessed by team medical staff, which is problematic. As in any industry, there are certainly good and bad team doctors out there, but the unique position of a team physician means any less-than-honest ones can cause a lot of harm. These doctors and trainers are paid by the teams, not by their patients, and teams' interests don't always coincide with their players' best interests. Sometimes, it's in the team's favour for a player to return more quickly than he probably should. The classic example of this is James Woods ' brilliant portrayal of Dr. Harvey Mandrake in Any Given Sunday , still one of the best sports movies of all time in my opinion. Here...

(This is the first part of a three-part, three-day series on concussions. See a list of links to some of my previous writing on concussions here .) Concussions have been getting a lot of attention in the media lately, which is great to see. For far too long, they've been the dirty little secret of sports. As fans, we love to sit in arenas or stadiums and watch violent hits, but we don't often like to think about the consequences of such entertainment. There's a good reason Toronto neurosurgeon Dr. Charles Tator called out Don Cherry last week; Cherry's certainly not the only one to blame, but he has promoted hard-hitting hockey and fights for years, has consistently taken stands against any kind of headshot ban, and makes plenty of money from his "Rock Em, Sock Em" video line, featuring the most violent hockey moments and plenty of head shots. Of course, Cherry completely missed the point in his Coach's Corner , saying he had nothing to say to Tator a...

One problem with the holiday season is it leads to a lack of blogging time, especially when busy writing for other publications. I did manage to get some thoughts on the Roy Halladay trade and what it means for the Blue Jays up over at The Rookies However, I've finally cleared some of the backlog of work, so I should be able to get a few things up here pretty soon. One of the things I've been working on is a three-part series on concussions, which I'm planning to run today, tomorrow and Thursday. The first installment will go up shortly. Until then, here are some of the other pieces I've previously written on the subject: - " The heads up on head injuries " ( Queen's Journal , Sept. 28, 2007) - " NHL's stance on concussions is troubling " ( Queen's Journal , Dec. 28, 2007) - " The school of hard knocks " ( Queen's Journal , Jan. 29, 2009) - " Take concussions seriously " ( The Phoenix Pub , Aug. 11, ...

Update: Yeah, they're pretty much dead . "That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die." - H.P. Lovecraft , The Call of Cthulhu There are lots of similarities between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cthulhu, of course. One is steeped in ancient history and tradition, has strange rituals associated with its supporters and can inspire terror, revulsion and insanity in those who look upon it. The other, of course, is Cthulhu. Seriously, though, the Steelers' play these past few weeks has been pretty horrific. They suffered bad losses against the Bengals and Chiefs, then showed some promise against the Ravens with backup quarterback Dennis Dixon , but still lost in overtime. It looked like they might have turned a corner. However, they followed that with perhaps their worst loss of the season last week, where they allowed the not-so-fearsome Oakland Raiders and quarterback Bruce Gradkowski to beat them at home on a last-minut...

My apologies for my lack of posts here recently. The downside of spending a week in Calgary covering the Grey Cup was it meant I had a lot of regular work to deal with upon my return (making the above song appropriate), which hasn't given me a lot of time for blogging recently. I do have a lot of things I'm working on, though, so hopefully I'll be able to get a few of them up in the coming days. Until then, you can check out some of the Canucks' posts I've managed to get up over at Canuck Puck . Hope to have more for you here soon!