Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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FAN FORUM GOING TOPLESS In Andrew Owens' "Brainstorm- ing" piece in the August 2014 edition, I was glad to see that Notre Dame is taking a leading role in the study of concussions. On that note, let me ask what may be a simplistic question: Why don't helmet manufacturers put some padding on the OUTSIDE of the football helmets? The inside has been the subject of a lot of research and improvement, but padding on the outside would greatly reduce the adverse effects of head-to-head contact, inadvertent or intentional. The high-tech padding could be rather thin, since it would be doubled when hitting another helmet also so padded. I attended the 2012 Navy game in Dublin and recall an Irish rugby player that was asked about concus- sions. He said (somewhat sensibly, I think): "Take the helmets off and the lads would use their heads for think- ing, not as a weapon. We don't have all these concussions in rugby, which is a pretty rough sport, too, ya know." Peter M. Callahan Irvine, Calif. FROM THE WEBSITE Many reactions on both sides of the investigated academic fraud were taken, from "everyone is doing it" to "young people make mistakes" to "he who is without sin cast the first stone." Here was another perspective: Risksorter: Kids today have been morally compromised from day one. Sex starts too early, drugs are freely available and — for me, most telling of all — electronics companies have figured out how to market their addictive consumer products to very young kids. There is no narcotic like a digital anything. Electronics are the most addictive things there are, circum- venting the metabolism and going straight to the brain. Marshall McLuhan told us this in the 1960s — that we would not only consume the network, but, in the end, the network would consume us at the cost of our individuality, privacy and autonomy. No, I'm not a Luddite, and a lot of this can be managed to an extent and, yes, digital progress is a good thing and a potentially better thing if we can harness it. But it can also be a trap that kids easily fall into. College, then — the actual "learning" part — becomes just another dull chore to be endured on the road to digital dreams of digital money. These kids have forgotten that what matters is the process, and "since everyone else is doing it" have had no compunction about debasing themselves. And, of course, the partying never stops. That all said, I hope none of this hurts us on the field. Thank God for the fact that the kids must still work hard at least out there, and thank God for muscle memory and the great athletes they are, and the sacrifices they make. A workout buddy of mine — a guy who volunteered to fight in the Serbo-Croatian wars of the '90s — rightfully says that the U.S. has become a soft nation. Football players are not soft. I just wish the entire collegiate culture had not deteriorated to the extent it has. What we're looking at, now, is fourth century Rome, whereas we grew up in second century Rome.