Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

The Highest Paid People on the Pentagon’s Budget: 3 Football Coaches

June 18, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Army Football Media Day

According to Chicago Life magazine, yes, that is true. The three highest-paid employees on the Pentagon budget are the head football coaches at Air Force (Troy Calhoun), Navy (Ken Niumatalolo), and Army (Rich Ellerson), which is not totally shocking. Especially after Deadspin released that chart last month, listing the highest-paid public employees in every state, most of which were basketball or football coaches. Plus, a sizable portion of the Department of Defense's budget is spent on outside contractors, who, though they may be vulnerable to upcoming cuts, tend to make more than ... Read More

More like this: Politics
Tags: , , , , , ,

Multiple Brain Injuries and Concussions Linked to More Suicidal Thoughts

June 3, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
concussions-illo

People who have sustained multiple brain injuries throughout their life were more likely to report suicidal thoughts than people with one or no concussions, according to a new study of deployed U.S. military personnel. "Personnel who had sustained more than one concussion in their lives were significantly more likely to be suicidal in their past—as well as in the past year," said Craig Bryan, the study's lead author from the University of Utah National Center for Veterans' Studies in Salt Lake City. Suicide is currently the second leading cause of death among military members, and ... Read More

More like this: Health
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Super Bowl Illegal Drug Use Update

January 31, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK)

Super Bowl weekend is upon us, and you all know what that means: Time to set aside the crystal meth and break out the cocaine. At least, that’s what it meant to the greater Las Vegas area in 2010. An analysis of Southern Nevada wastewater found partiers were ingesting more than just chips and guacamole, and their choice of illegal stimulant differed significantly from a more sedate weekend. Writing in the journal Water Research, a team led by Daniel Gerrity describe a study comparing the levels of various drugs in samples collected from a municipal wastewater treatment plant. The ... Read More

More like this: The 101
Tags: ,

Super Bowl: Are American Sports Fans the Classy Ones?

January 30, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lPMMsTimTg This weekend's Super Bowl promises to offer excess, violence and, if history is a guide, not much of a game. But what it won't show is hundreds or thousands of fans screaming racial insults at the players. What is it that makes US sports events relatively (if by no means perfectly) classy, compared to much of the world's big-time sports? A vague glance at Europe, even recently, is pretty shocking. We've seen Formula 1 spectators in blackface. We've seen Olympic basketball players doing Mickey Rooney doing I.Y. Yunioshi. A favorite at soccer ... Read More

More like this: The 101, Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

The Public Relations of Brain Injury

December 14, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
peeweefootball

Each year about four million young athletes play football. It’s estimated that between 11 and 15 percent of those children get a concussion or mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). According to a 2011 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there has been a 60 percent increase in all youth athletes treated for TBI in the past decade. To combat growing unease among parents and observers, USA Football, the official football development partner of the NFL, created Heads Up Football, a program designed to help reduce head injuries in high-school football. The program has a nice ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
Tags: , , , , ,

Back to Brain Damage

December 5, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
javonbelcher

As we near the end of the NFL regular season, we’re right back where we started: traumatic brain injuries. In September, as we reported, the league donated $30 million to the National Institutes of Health to further research into “chronic traumatic encephalopathy,” a neurodegenerative disease common among professional footballers. CTE, according to Boston University’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, is marked by “irritability, impulsivity, aggression, depression, short-term memory loss and heightened suicidality,” and shows up in the decades after ... Read More

More like this: The 101
Tags: ,

Head Games: Brain Injuries Intercept Football

September 23, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
headinjuries

The 2012 football season got underway earlier this month—cue the nachos, Coors Light mini-kegs, and incessant Tim Tebow memes—and just hours before the first kickoff, the NFL made big news in the quietest way possible. In a press release posted to the Web, commissioner Roger Goodell announced a $30 million donation—the largest in league history—to a foundation supporting the National Institutes of Health, seed money for accelerated research into traumatic brain injuries and neurodegenerative diseases. “This research will extend beyond the NFL playing field and benefit athletes at all ... Read More

More like this: Findings, Health
Tags: , , ,

Better Super Bowl Makes for Better Ads

February 3, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

A curious thing sometimes happens when we watch a violent movie, or a thrilling TV show, or when we listen to, say, Al Green. Afterward, we take that aggression or excitement that we’ve just built up and apply it to whatever’s at hand. Academics have a name for this phenomenon: excitation transfer theory. You might want to remember this as you’re watching some entertainment ripe for serious suspense this Sunday — the Super Bowl. “As you’re watching a suspenseful game, there’s a certain level of arousal that develops,” said Colleen Bee, an assistant professor of marketing ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, The Idea Lobby
Tags: , , , ,

Brams: Kick Coin Flips Out of NFL Overtimes

December 27, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

As an example of the broad interests and proposed solutions of Steven J. Brams, a New York University professor of politics, in 2011, he offered an alternative way for the National Football League to determine which team gets the ball first when games go into overtime. In February, NYU announced that Brams and James Jorasch, founder of Science House, an organization that brings together science and business, adapted some ideas about fair division of goods to take the randomness out of NFL overtime periods. Most ties in the NFL are resolved with one team winning a coin flip and electing ... Read More

More like this: Culture
Tags: , , ,

College Football Wins Lower Guys’ GPA

December 21, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

As the college football season approaches its climax, a just-released set of statistics should give fans of Bowl-bound teams pause. According to three University of Oregon economists, when a university’s football team has a winning season, the grade point average of male students goes down. At least, that was the case at their own school over the course of nine recent seasons. Given that the University of Oregon is “largely representative of other four-year public institutions,” they have no reason to believe the equation won’t apply elsewhere. “Our estimates suggest male ... Read More

More like this: Education, Findings
Tags: , , , ,