Lining Up the Next Week at Concussion Inc.

Some miscellaneous notes as our crack staff scrambles to stay on top of the stories we break, the stories others break, and the nervous breakdown of late-empire American culture:

– Congratulations to Sara Ganim of the Harrisburg Patriot-News for her Pulitzer Prize for being there, with boots on the ground, to uncover the Joe Paterno-Penn State saga – early, often, and well. Let’s hope her honor, like Woodward and Bernstein’s a generation earlier, will provide a draft for overdue investigations of other out-of-control aspects of our out-of-control sports industries.

– I was so sad to read of the sudden passing of Randy Starkman of the Toronto Star. Randy and I were not close friends, but we followed each other on Twitter and corresponded, and he was sharp as could be on concussions, performance-enhancing drugs, and abusive coaches – all while maintaining his gentlemanly wits and his passion for the games he covered.

– I’m way behind in uploading the fine three-minute piece last Thursday by Vern Glenn of San Francisco’s KRON4 news on George Visger, author of our ebook OUT OF MY HEAD: My Life In and Out of Football. Go to http://muchnick.net/visgeronkron.mp4. George is about to head to Las Vegas for the annual convention of Dave Pear’s Independent Football Veterans support and advocacy group. Check out the details of that event at http://davepear.com.

– Watch here later this week for an important guest column on the lessons of the recent seven-figure settlement of the lawsuit of the family of permanently maimed high school football player Scott Eveland against a Southern California public school district.

– A New York Off-Broadway company, the Ensemble Studio Theatre, is opening a play next week around the theme of concussions, and I’ll be participating in a “talk back” after the final preview performance next Monday. Details shortly.

– We have given Amazon a new file for the ebook PENN STATE IN THE POOL: The Cover-Up of the USA Swimming Youth Coach Sex Abuse Scandal. That should solve the image issues with the inserted facsimiles of court documents, but it might take 24 to 48 hours for the new file to overwrite the old one. Again, those of you who already purchased the Amazon version should contact me at [email protected] for cleaner PDF files of the relevant pages. Also, remember that a PDF version of the whole ebook can be ordered directly by sending $1.49 via PayPal to [email protected].

– These are busy editorial days, as well, in the wake of the publication of the swimming ebook: an update on the blog today, a Beyond Chron column with explosive new information tomorrow – plus much more down the road as I continue to implore my fellow parents and citizens to do something about the stomach-turning phenomenon of coaches who rape young athletes.

Irv Muchnick