“THE CHANGING FACE OF AMERICA’S FAVORITE SPORT – How race, politics, culture and money are shaping which kids abandon tackle football — and which keep risking its toll.”

Free link: https://wapo.st/3GQhcmx

(You must at least scan this article, look at the charts, you must.)

Do you feel guilty when you watch football?

I certainly do, which is why I don’t watch anymore. At all. Except for the Super Bowl, a national holiday.

The CTE, i.e. brain injury, story has been gaining traction for decades now. And this fall the story has been about how you don’t have to play in the pros to be affected.

“They Started Playing Football as Young as 6 – They Died in Their Teens and Twenties With C.T.E.”

Free link: https://tinyurl.com/59v2wpmm

My goal is not to guilt you. My goal here is awareness.

Football has now been divided along political and racial lines. If you’re a conservative, you might ask what the hell I’m talking about. If you’re Black, you might say the economic opportunities are too attractive. If you’re liberal and white you might watch, but you don’t want your kids playing tackle football.

We believe things are forever. And then social mores change and they are not. Will people be watching tackle football on TV in 2100? Not unless it’s robots. But the question becomes when the NFL will falter and die before that, because the public just can’t stomach the injuries these men sustain while entertaining us.

Pretty ugly if you think about it. The ignorant and disadvantaged are putting their lives at risk, literally, so we can watch. At what point do viewers say NO MAS!

They keep on trying to make tackle football safer, but it hasn’t worked, not in any significant way. The NFL is pushing flag football, but I don’t see tens of thousands showing up to watch that.

The disconnect is becoming too great. It has become harder and harder to rationalize playing football, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes harder and harder to rationalize watching football.

Too many abhor the future, lobby against it. The story of the last month or so is the slowdown in the acquisition of electric cars. This is true. And if you don’t own a Tesla good luck charging on the road. Joanna Stern did an excellent story on this.

“How Bad Are Public EV Chargers? I Visited Over 120 to Find Out.  – Los Angeles County has more public electric-vehicle fast chargers than any other in the country. WSJ’s Joanna Stern hit up 30 charging locations in a Rivian R1T and ran into problems at 40% of them. Here’s what’s being done to fix the charging mess.”

https://tinyurl.com/smzn8cpk

Bottom line, drive a Tesla. (Then again do you want to support Elon Musk? There’s a good chance not.) Furthermore, every other manufacturer is behind Tesla when it comes to software, which is the essence of electric cars. The competitor might have a shiny exterior, but it’s MS-DOS in a Windows world. Saturday Dan Neil said the new Lotus is the first car he’s driven that’s on a par with Tesla when it comes to software.

And in truth seemingly every car manufacturer is switching to the Tesla charging system, which is plentiful and easy to use.

But the bottom line here is despite the bad news, electric cars are here to stay, they’re the future, they’re going to dominate, it’s just a matter of when.

And tackle football is time-stamped, it’s just a matter of when it dies.