Matt Chaney and Stefan Fatsis Add Value to the National Football Debate

Matt Chaney, the football-and-health polemicist who is very familiar to readers of this blog, and author of the fine book Spiral of Denial, is cited at length today in Stefan Fatsis’s contribution to the Slate-Deadspin NFL Roundtable. See “Why NFL Players Shouldn’t Trust The Test For HGH,” http://deadspin.com/5854014/why-nfl-players-shouldnt-trust-the-test-for-hgh.

Candidly – and Matt and I have discussed this at length – the HGH issue isn’t my cup of tea, in the sense that the problem of performance-enhancing drugs in sports is yesterday’s news, and systematic traumatic brain injury in football is today’s and tomorrow’s. But to say all this is not to miss the accuracy of everything Chaney points out on the topic: the spurious testing solutions and the hypocritical, unproductive game of PR chicken that pro football management is playing with pro football labor over it.

So congratulations, Chaney – you look mahvelous at Slate-Deadspin.

A hat tip, also, to Stefan Fatsis, for writing vividly and non-platitudinously here about the debate over the sustainability of football. (As readers know, Fatsis and I have clashed over my contention that he fell short in this area in the past.) I hope Fatsis goes on to chronicle further what he acknowledges as the “probably growing” point of view that “football is too far gone to reform.”

Irv Muchnick