The start of the college football season is a mere 3 days away and it’s time for me to make my picks for the upcoming season:

Championship

BCS Championship Game: Alabama v. Stanford

Top 15

1. Alabama: The Process overwhelms anything in its path.  This team is loaded.

2. Stanford: The Cardinal gets the nod at No. 2 due to a favorable schedule (Oregon and Notre Dame at home).

3. Ohio State: Braxton Miller and company run the table until they meet Michigan on the road and relish the opportunity to ruin a season.

4. Georgia: The Bulldogs have the unfortunate reality of having to face Alabama in the SEC title game, which has become the BCS play-in game.

5. Oregon: Stanford will have the Ducks’ number again but big O could run the table.

6. Clemson: If they run the table, they could meet Alabama.  When was the last time an ACC team did that?

                                       Notre Dame Stadium – South Bend, Indiana

7. Louisville: A very good team in a very bad conference.

8. South Carolina: Spurrier’s squad has top 5 talent but an SEC schedule with tough road games to deal with.

9. LSU: Ditto, South Carolina.

10. Florida: Ditto, South Carolina and LSU.  Plus, their offense still worries Gator fans.

11. Notre Dame: If Golson returned, ND might be heading to the title game again.  With Rees, a BCS game is still in sight given the tough Irish D.

12. Texas: Mack Brown has the Hook ’em Horns on the rise again and they could be a sleeper.

13. Michigan: The Wolverines could win the Big Ten, but tests against ND and at Penn State present stumbling blocks.

14. Oklahoma State: The Cowboys might be the Big 12’s finest in a down year.

15. Texas A & M: Too much noise surrounding Manziel will take a toll on this team’s title hopes, especially after the Tide roll into College Station.

Mr. Brown is a fine defensive coach as evidenced by his Cavalier teams and Spurs pedigree.  But he needs to find an assistant like Tex Winter–or someone with at least some common sense understanding of basketball offense–to be on his sideline during his next (inevitable given the coaching carousel) coaching gig in the league.  Anyone who has watched the league in the last 10 years realizes that installing the Princeton Offense with one of, if not the, greatest point guards of a generation (who thrives on creating, not managing), an all-time scorer who thrives in isolation settings, and two of the better pick-and-roll big men in the NBA is not a good idea, even in theory.

When I started writing this column (before shelving it for college football season and the eternal hope that Notre Dame would return to glory) mid-summer, it was titled: “The Budding Clippers-Thunder Rivalry.”  At that time, Dwight Howard was recovering from back surgery (and springtime public relations fiasco(s)) and Steve Nash was still in Pheonix.  The Thunder, reeling from a crushing fall from grace (after reverse sweeping the Spurs), yet hopeful for borderline guaranteed Western Conference championships for the next decade, had three members of the Olympic team on its roster.  And that Olympic team contained two members from the Clippers–Chris Paul and Blake Griffin.  The guys in purple and yellow had an aging roster, a coach that fans and some players doubted, and one of the top ten players of all time declaring that he only planned to play for two more years.

Oh, how things have changed.

Three months later and that title is obsolete.  The Lakers now possess one of the most formidable starting lineups (on paper) that ever existed in the NBA.  The thought of Steve Nash throwing the ball within ten feet of the rim, Superman catching it, Pau Gasol facilitating all day from the high post, and Kobe Bryant posting up on the elbow, only after Nash could not find an opening elsewhere while dribbling under the basket, should strike fear into the heart and mind of any non-Laker fan, not to mention any potential opponent.

And then last night happened.  James Harden, the super-sub who in some ways managed to splice up a Spurs team in Ginobiliesque ways (that only Manu seemed to be able to do to younger and more athletic opponents for the past decade), was traded to a hapless Rockets squad hoping that a firesale of talented wing assets and draft picks, plus Jeremy Lin, are the solutions to its problems.  While I have no doubt that James Harden will be regretting his decision to reject a decade of trips to the Western Conference finals (at least) for $5 million dollars, the trade’s effect on the NBA landscape for that very same decade cannot be underestimated.

The Thunder went from being the undeniable favorite to return to the Finals after the conclusion of this year’s Finals to a pretty good favorite even after the Lakers reloaded to a whoa you might lose to the rejuvenated Spurs or maturing Clippers in the second round.  How’s that for a transformation after one move?

Now, Sam Presti is a former Spur, and perhaps he has the same genius as Popovich and the rest of the Spurs’ front office.  Maybe this move makes the Thunder better in the long run by releasing a piece growing out of its place and too big to co-exist with two superstars that are significantly better than him (let’s not forget that Harden is equally, if not more so, at fault for causing the Thunder to do this).  After all, OKC still has Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.  But the big three that most championship teams ride to the Finals–and ultimately a championship–arguably no longer exists for the Thunder.  An already overly reliant on jump shots roster now looks eerily similar to those Celtics teams without Kevin Garnett and leaning on an overachieving bench.  Obviously Durant and Westbrook are better than an aging Ray Allen and Paul Pierce; but are Kevin Martin and the rest of the Thunder bench really going to handle Nash/Gasol, Kobe/Howard, Nash/Howard, Kobe/Gasol (or any other combination) when any two of the big four are resting for key stretches of the second and fourth quarters of must-win games on the road?

The reality is that this trade drastically alters to the NBA landscape for the upcoming season.  The West now looks like the Lakers’ to lose.  San Antonio, if it repeats its dream run of last year, probably can handle the Thunder in 7 games.  And the Clippers’ starting five presents more problems to OKC than last year.  And even if OKC manages to return to the Finals, can anyone realistically say with confidence that it is in a better position to challenge the Heat?  As for James Harden, was that $5 million (which will surely buy him a nice place to watch the first, second, third rounds, and the Finals), worth it?

A British fellow once said, “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don’t like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that.” He was, of course, referring to what Americans call soccer. The same, however, can be said of football in the United States—and by football I mean the head-smashing kind that presently holds 21 of the top 46 spots on the list of most–watched programs in television history.

More and more, we are being asked to confront the question of whether or not football is something that our society should continue to sanction. Only recently has the National Football League, an economic juggernaut in its own right, begun to acknowledge the dangers of repeated blows to the head that its players regularly receive despite DECADES of anecdotal evidence which pointed to the adverse effects of head-to-head contact. For instance, one recent article on Grantland.com discussed the economic impact the Green Bay Packers and Lambeau Field have on the city of Green Bay:

A 2009 study of the economic impact of the Packers’ stadium estimated “$282 million in output, 2,560 jobs and $124.3 million in earnings, and $15.2 million in tax revenues.” That’s small potatoes for the national economy as a whole, but for a small and somewhat remote city of 104,000, it is a big deal indeed.

The effect is even more pronounced, the piece points out, in places like Norman, Oklahoma or other college towns where football is the major driver of economic activity for five or six weekends a year: merchandise, concessions, restaurants, parking, bookstores, lodging, etc. The NFL alone makes a little more than $3 billion per year on its TV contracts with ESPN, NBC, CBS, and FOX until 2013. In 2014, the number jumps to nearly $5 billion per year from deals that go through 2021.

We are talking about a major economic hub. We are also talking a sport that has weaved its way into the culture of the United States and has become a major part of the sport–entertainment structure that has spawned things like ESPN, extreme sports, and ridiculously priced Super Bowl advertisements. Some would argue that football has supplanted baseball as the national pastime (I can’t abide this because of my love of baseball but I do see how one could successfully make the argument even if I don’t quite want to acknowledge it).

I suppose the pressing question is this: at what expense has this come? More and more, there is evidence suggesting that football players do themselves a great deal of damage by participating in the sport. More and more, we are seeing former football players diagnosed with things like chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). One article from ESPN.com discusses the post-mortem diagnosis of CTE in certain retired NFL players:

Other former NFL players diagnosed with CTE are former Pittsburgh Steelers Mike Webster, Terry Long and Justin Strzelczyk, along with Waters and John Grimsley. Long also committed suicide, while Strzelczyk led police on a 40-mile high-speed chase on the New York State Thruway before dying in a head-on collision.

Other players have experienced severe dementia at young ages, chronic depression, and, in the case of former Philadelphia Eagles safety Andre Waters, “brain tissue [resembling] that of an 85-year-old man and shar[ing] characteristics of early-stage Alzheimer’s.”

Up until recently, the diagnosis of CTE had been restricted to retired players. In 2010, doctors examined the brain of Chris Henry, an active player who died in a bizarre domestic incident after falling out of the back of a truck driven by his girlfriend. I’ll let the article from the New York Times speak for itself:

The 22nd professional football player to be given a diagnosis of C.T.E., Henry is the first to have died with the disease while active after 2007, when prior C.T.E. findings prompted the N.F.L. to begin strengthening rules regarding concussion management. The fact that he developed the condition by his mid-20s — the youngest previous C.T.E. case was the lineman Justin Strzelczyk, 36, who had been retired from the Pittsburgh Steelers for five years before his death in 2004 — raises questions of how many current N.F.L. players might have the condition without knowing it.

“As we got the results, my emotion was sad — it’s so profound,” said Bailes, the chairman of the department of neurosurgery at West Virginia and a former team physician for the Steelers. “I was surprised in a way because of his age and because he was not known as a concussion sufferer or a big hitter. Is there some lower threshold when you become at risk for this disease? I’m struggling to see if something can come out positive out of this.”

The kicker here is that Chris Henry was a receiver, not a lineman who regularly engages in head-to-head hitting with other players or a defensive back who flies down the field to take down a ball carrier or even a special teams player whose sole job on the field is to crush, at full speed, the player to whom he is assigned on the opposing team. He was a receiver. Catch. Run. Or get hit. Sure, there are times when a receiver gets taken down in a particularly vicious way, but much less frequently than the other positions I’ve mentioned.

The single most concerning fact about all of this is that new studies are showing that even sub-concussive contact can lead to brain injury and the development of CTE. Everywhere in football there is sub-concussive contact.

All of the recent findings lead to a fundamental question: what is our society saying about itself by sanctioning something like football? Not just as a sport, but also as an economy. Malcolm Gladwell, interviewed recently on Slate.com, argues that professional football players assume some of the risk simply because they’re paid to play. If they have a problem with the risk, they can opt out.

Gladwell’s concern is with college and youth football:

Gladwell: The factor that I think will be decisive is the head-injury issue. Colleges are going to get sued, and they will have to decide whether they can afford their legal exposure. That said, the issue ought to be how big-time college sports subverts the academic mission of university education.

…

Slate: How would you define the culture of college football? Does this culture add to or detract from the sport’s dangers?

Gladwell: College football has become indistinguishable from professional football—which is the problem. The only justification for college sports is that they are structured in a way that enhances the social and academic experience of getting an education. A sports program using semiprofessional athletes, and running on a budget of $50-plus million a year does not fit that description.

…

Slate: Say banning college football isn’t an option. What reforms would you propose to the system?

Gladwell: If you want college athletes to assume an as yet unknown risk of permanent physical and neurological damage, you should pay them. Properly. It’s a bit much both to maim AND exploit college football players.