GaryPinC

Thanks for all these fantastic write-ups you do. Just wanted to mention as a former kicker that your kicking leg "snap" and maximum acceleration at contact are the largest factors. Momentum of approach will certainly add a little force and distance, but because you have to plant and swing, too quick an approach will compromise your ability to fully accelerate your kicking foot at ball contact. It's a tricky balance and took me a while to figure out. If you watch most NFL kickers closely their kickoff approach run is not fast nor do they accelerate their approach pace much as they get closer. The coverage does though!

How pointless is this thread? You're comparing a buzzard with an eagle, wtf? Various Ivanka vs Tiffany to choose a winner would actually be a competition.

Yea, factcheck had an article about his speech the next day and they never evaluated his Hillary statements. Shocking, just shocking for such an "impartial" fact checker!

Honestly it's been a big nothing in Cleveland here so far. It'll be the out of towners that start anything. Even the most liberal Clevelanders don't want another black eye for their city above all else. Any activists hoping for local support to stir up trouble were sadly mistaken.

Here's the original article which goes into Kiko's story for those interested to actually hear it. Must not like English or talking to U.S. reporters! http://espn.go.com/blog/onenacion/post/_/id/4607/kiko-alonso-prepares-for-a-new-beginning-with-the-dolphins Interesting that he just wants to be the middle linebacker. Should be interesting to see if he can take on those NFL O-linemen.

I'm not surprised by the decision. It's really shocking how thin their rationales are that they expect to get away with. From the inspector general's report http://bigstory.ap.org/article/e9cf125b8af1417a8cdd0b3526a1ce9e/apnewsbreak-state-dept-audit-faults-clinton-emails : Hillary Clinton and her team ignored clear guidance from the State Department that her email setup broke federal standards and could leave sensitive material vulnerable to hackers, a department audit has found. Her aides twice brushed aside concerns, in one case telling technical staff "the matter was not to be discussed further." And Comey's statements: https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-director-james-b.-comey-on-the-investigation-of-secretary-hillary-clintons-use-of-a-personal-e-mail-system There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation. In addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was properly classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed on e-mail (that is, excluding the later “up-classified” e-mails). ....While not the focus of our investigation, we also developed evidence that the security culture of the State Department in general, and with respect to use of unclassified e-mail systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government. Yup, no intent there Comey? Depends on how you define intent I suppose..... Obama was right in a way, this is the most transparent form of government corruption I've ever seen.

I've lived in Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and now Cleveland for over 15 years. People are pretty much the same in all 3 towns, so you've got your jerks well distributed and you run into them everywhere including here. Not worth arguing with a made up mind. Great thing the championship, congrats to you! After game 4 Cavs found what no Bills/Sabres team had: mental strength. Doing the little things is what carried them, plus LeBron was way more mature than Curry and the rest. So I felt good about the Cavs chances game 7 and was not disappointed. Not so sure C-town is going to expect victory if the Indians face adversity in the world series this year though. Old habits die hard! ;-) But wouldn't a 2016 series title be otherworldly?

Living here in Cleveland, this is a fantastic moment. I am not a huge fan of basketball, but I am a Cavs fan as there's no Buffalo team to root for. It'll be interesting to see what all the pessimists with their "Cleveland sports is cursed" pacifiers do. Do they throw them out or simply rub the CLE off and stamp a Browns helmet on and keep chewing away! Enjoy the journey. That's what Buffalo's 4 super bowls taught me and it'll make that superbowl victory all the more sweet. So many Cleveland folks are in shock today and don't know quite how to react. Buffalo can do better than that!

Coach Morris Buttermaker, Bad News Bears.

+1 Great perspective. For me, most of the people here can't see the forest through the trees. Accuracy issues aside, EJ cannot handle the mental aspects and quick decision making necessary to be an NFL quarterback. He's not the first, he won't be the last. He's had long enough and enough game time to show improvement. He hasn't. He has no feel for the game because of it. Let him go somewhere else to try and prove otherwise.

No they would most likely not, chicken little. They really don't know, and is the prevalence of CTE in ex-college football players the same as the NFL? No chicken little, they do not seem to agree on this at this time, most researchers would probably tell you they don't know for sure what causes it, current thinking and standard of care leans toward "repetitive injury superimposed on unresolved injury" ie, not allowing an injured brain to fully recover. Most experts would probably agree that enough significant hits to the head in a short time would cause some mild form of post-concussion syndrome even if classic concussion behavioral/cognitive effects were not observed That's debatable. There are protocols based on sound science, questionnaires and tasks that expose cognitive deficits post-injury and measurable time limits when those deficits have returned back to normal. Keep in mind a couple distinctions that you do not seem to be recognizing: CTE: Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain found in athletes, military veterans, and others with a history of repetitive brain trauma. Brain trauma can cause a build-up of an abnormal type of a protein called tau, which slowly kills brain cells. Once started, these changes in the brain appear to continue to progress even after exposure to brain trauma has ended. Post-concussion syndrome, also known as postconcussive syndrome or PCS, is a set of symptoms that may continue for weeks, months, or a year or more after a concussion – a minor form of traumatic brain injury (TBI). There is a big difference between CTE and Post-concussion syndrome that you do not appear to be appreciating. There is no diagnostic for CTE so most of the studies are using accelerometers to study PCS. Keep in mind a couple things: enough subconcussive hits do affect the brain and some areas of cognition. What that means wrt to CTE is unknown. Check out this website and 5:13 slide in the video of Dr. Alice McKee from BU. http://concussionfoundation.org/learning-center/what-is-cte Also interesting is that 250 brains have been donated for study by NFL and military personnel, 150 have tested positive for CTE. This is a highly biased sampling of brains, I actually would have expected the number of positives to be higher. Research is currently mostly studying post-concussion syndrome and repetitive (subconcussive) brain trauma. There is still a huge leap to be made to CTE. Considering CTE's lack of symptomatic prevalence in the athlete's population as a whole (ie high school and college ex-atheletes), there is a ton of work left to be done.

Thanks for the perspective Augie. Sounds like your boys were pretty passionate about their sports, so congrats on that. I definitely don't take it too seriously but I do emphasize the importance of team commitment and trying to develop their passion in at least one sport. It's great practice for adult life. I coach soccer so I got that one covered! Only bad thing about soccer is when I switched to football in high school (TE/DE), I'd do squats with the linemen and bench press with the receivers! I'm with ya, just have to fight that urge to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Current concussion research has at least helped my parenting decisions, and I think it'll ultimately make football a safer sport.

Hey thanks for the excellent reframing of the discussion! Nice! Thanks for sharing that, I will definitely enjoy my time! My original point was to boyst for wanting to dismiss what research had been done. Being in science, I understand and at times agree with his perspective but I feel there's enough solid evidence in this instance to warrant caution. Just don't get me started on global warming! My son is 10 and just loves football. I signed him up for tackle football at age 7 cause he wouldn't have been happy otherwise, the kid's a bruiser. All his coaches put him on the offensive and defensive lines because of it. Thing is, he's got hands, a good arm and the moves to make people miss. Never had a concussion, but this fall he's playing touch football. He wants to handle/make plays with the ball and isn't that fond of the punishment his body takes, so let him have a couple years to develop his ball skills, minimize concussion risk, and he can get back to it in middle school.

I don't argue with that and in fact agree, but the issue is if the players are receiving appropriate medical treatment for their injury? In the past they largely have not. On a personal note, expanded knowledge about the long term issues with concussions have absolutely changed my approach with my kids and sports. And I already knew sports were inherently dangerous!

The issue at the crux of this is not that sports are dangerous and involve risk. The crux is that repeated brain injuries may be far more damaging than suspected in the past and what do we do about it? If you suffer a broken bone, torn muscle, sprained ankle there are protocols of treatment. In the past almost nothing was done for brain injuries and now our scope of knowledge is changing rapidly. Probably only in the last 10 years or so do players now begin to realize they may become mentally dysfunctional after they leave the sport to the point of suicide.

No. Scientific evidence has been building for years across multiple sports that sustained concussions with subsequent repeated blows to the head may result in long term damage including CTE. Despite WEO's chicken little scenarios, evidence and current standard of care is that the brain is vulnerable to long term damage if subsequent blows to the head occur before the brain has had a chance to recover from the initial concussive injury. Do we yet know susceptability, damage thresholds, etc? No but that will take 10 to 20 years of study. I agree that incomplete science can be problematic but you don't just ignore it, especially when enough solid evidence has been compiled to indicate a real problem. Concussion protocols include carefully crafted questions to assess different cognitive processes looking for deficits. The science on that is pretty solid. My 12 year old daughter had a mild concussion last year falling on the concrete in the cul-de-sac but it took her 2 1/2 months to fully recover back to normal. One of my biggest issues as a coach is parents who want to ignore concussions because that's how it was done when they were kids. Why is it such a sin when research is incomplete to take a pro-active cautious approach?

When you're not running a good ball movement offense that's what happens!

That's how they look so far in this series but that's not how they got to the finals. Coach Lue has decided to attack the basket every time down the floor with Lebron or Kyrie. There's no off the ball movement and no emphasis put on the 3 pointer. Cavs have the long distance sharpshooters but the supporting cast is not stepping up and maybe not being asked to step up? Very infuriating but their style on offense has changed back to dysfunctional with this series. No flow or teamwork. They need to get that fixed for Wednesday and without Kevin Love to help.

+1 I would have put the SB loss #1 and I do think it affected the players psyche in the next 3 but you make a really great point about the music city game. Losing the 4 super bowls (and not just XXV) was the largest blow to the image of the franchise but that music city game was much more devastating to the franchise itself.

Perhaps mom feels terrible for the death of the gorilla and holds herself accountable for losing track of her son just long enough to climb in. Too bad few on here can applaud the fact that people are trying to be accountable for their mistakes in the situation. We'll see what happens...

I can't say for sure whether it was horrible parenting or not, based on one simple fact. I am a parent myself. My son was about 18 months and we introduced him to his first pool. Had him in there, played nice, set him on the deck with my ex while I then played with my daughter in the water. The little bugger silently stood there, took a few slow steps then started shriek laughing and sprinting to the far end of the pool and just leaped straight in to the 5 foot depth. My ex was in hot pursuit but a second or so behind once the realization and shock wore off. He was under 2-3 seconds but came up smiling and obviously held his breath. Oy. I suppose if he would have needed medical care there would be people thinking of us as horrible parents. Kids can change a situation dramatically within seconds for any parent. Some kids do, some kids don't. I had one of each. At least I knew which to target. :-)

There's a difference between horrible parenting and distracted parenting accident which can happen when you're responsible for more than one supercharged kid heading in different directions. Normally not as dire a situation, and I don't know the story here but I can easily argue that it might not be horrible parents or parenting.

I expect Clinton's campaign to go after the fact that Colon Powell set up his own laptop with a private line in his office. The big difference in reality is that he informed the proper people exactly what he was doing, the government's server was only good for internal communications at the time and the report acknowledges the security system was a mess and still being developed during his tenure. Despite the government's incompetence, it's obvious in the report Hillary was hiding her emails. Got my popcorn ready!

Hmmm. I hate to say it, but it seems like we could fix a lot of our problems if we arranged an "accident" for Bill Belichek before he became DC of the Giants.

Fantastic. When in a significant way? Cleveland Browns fans are curious too.