Without Helmets or Shoulder Pads: The American Way of Death in Football Conditioning
Irvin Muchnick
Oct 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Barry Abrams
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6 hr 17 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
By now, football's concussion crisis is well known: every year brings headlines of our Hall of Fame heroes behaving erratically and dying young. But did you know that several kid players across the continent drop dead every year before a single ball is snapped-just from extreme conditioning drills directed by all-powerful coaches? Without Helmets or Shoulder Pads takes the conversation about football and public health to a new level with investigations of the sport's underreported worst tragedies and their cover-ups, at major universities, obscure junior colleges, and high schools. These add up to a kind of quiet pandemic-a socially induced one enabled by our thirst for spectacle and by a skewed vision of masculinity. Here are the shocking stories of young men who get struck down by exertional heatstroke and other causes sometimes not even acknowledged (such as the sickle cell trait syndrome that afflicts many African Americans). When the worst happens, the football world simply buries the evidence, pays off victims' families, and moves on. No matter how much we enjoy America's most popular sport at elite levels, this book makes the case that it belongs out of our public schools and off our public fields.
About the author
Irvin Muchnick "produces magnificent investigative journalism," wrote the late dean of sportswriters, Frank Deford. Muchnick's work has inspired congressional investigations of deaths in the pro wrestling industry and government investigations of sexual abuse by youth swimming coaches. He lives in Berkeley, California.
Barry Abrams has narrated and produced audiobooks for a variety of publishers. Since 2012, he has also hosted and produced ESPN's In the Gate podcast. Based in Danbury, Connecticut, Barry engineers and calls live webcasts of his son's ice hockey games.
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