Pre-Super Bowl: Ravens Coach Brian Billick (2010)

Redskins owner George Preston Marshall was quite happy running the last segregated team. ‘He loved being a holdout because he loved the attention.’

— A ‘Showdown’ That Changed Football’s Racial History : NPR (via tballardbrown)

Brain Injuries Haunt Football Players Years Later

Chris Nowinski has made a crusade of fighting head injuries in football. The Harvard-educated former pro wrestler had to leave the ring after suffering multiple concussions. He now educates others — including the NFL — on what head injuries can do to players’ brains years later.

You start on your own five-yard line, and drive all the way down the field—fifteen, eighteen plays in a row sometimes. Every play: collision, collision, collision. By the time you get to the other end of the field, you’re seeing spots. You feel like you are going to black out. Literally, these white explosions—boom, boom, boom—lights getting dimmer and brighter, dimmer and brighter.

— Former NFL lineman Kyle Turley, explaining what it felt like on the field after a tough hit, in Malcolm Gladwell’s 2009 New Yorker piece, “Offensive Play.” On today’s Fresh Air, we’re going to be talking about brain injuries, concussions and contact sports.

Suicide Reveals Signs of a Disease Seen in N.F.L.

“A brain autopsy of a University of Pennsylvania football player who killed himself in April has revealed the same trauma-induced disease found in more than 20 deceased National Football League players, raising questions of how young football players may be at risk for the disease.” — Alan Schwartz, The New York Times. More from The Daily Pennsylvanian.

A new poster, with tougher language about the effects of brain injuries, is now displayed in all N.F.L. locker rooms. (Picture via New York Times.) More from reporter Alan Schwartz, who’s been doggedly covering the link between concussions, football players and traumatic brain injuries for The Times. (Even more from The Atlantic, Newsweek, NPR, Slate)