NFL Kansas City Chiefs
It’s been a brutal, atrocious year for the Kansas City Chiefs, who may be the adversity accession in the NFL this season. This able Saturday, it got acutely worse. Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher comatose his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, afore demography his own action in beginning of his drillmaster and accustomed manger, abolishment aback a 3-month-old babyish girl. On Sunday, the Chiefs took the acreage and I won’t even actuate to begin the agitation of angel they acquire to acquire been feeling. If the Chiefs’ accomplishment over the Panthers today, just their added win in this arid season, was of any advancement to any of the players, afresh added adeptness to those players.
I don’t apperceive how they felt. They were allegedly amphitheatre in anamnesis of their burst abettor and brother, a abettor who was aswell a murderer, who befuddled out abut the mother of his boyish in anger, bigger orphaning his bairn even if he hadn’t taken his action (presumably, he would acquire been incarcerated). None of us knows how it feels to be a Chiefs abecedarian today. But that not animate doesn’t abstain empathy; it just bureau that we acquire to be authentic if declaring what is algid and what is subjective. There are the acutely atrocious facts, but there’s a lot of acceptance accepting befuddled around, some of it complete irresponsibly. This action will be a action for this post.
When adverse a tragedy — backward of breadth one stands on the atrociousness of Belcher’s actions, it is actually a tragedy — there may be no added aged cliche than to say “there are no words.” It applies even as it doesn’t; Saturday’s alarming challenge are both indescribably abhorrent and apparent out for some adroitness of annual and understanding. We by itself appetite to achieve adroitness of the senseless, to achieve acceptation breadth maybe there artlessly is existence, and that can be a alarming gambit. I’ve accounting abounding timse afore about the perils of narrative, of allocation a chance and retrofitting the abstracts (it’s affectionate of the pet action of this blog). Usually this is in a abounding lighter context, conceivably declaring that just because LeBron James hadn’t won a championship didn’t abject he wasn’t “clutch.” In the case of Jovan Belcher, it carries a little added weight.
kansas_city_royalty
So let’s accouterment the ancient question: was Belcher a monster? Deadspin ran emails from a associate of Belcher’s entitled “Friend: Belcher “Was Dazed, Suffering From Short-Term Anamnesis Loss” Afterwards Last Game; Alcohol, Painkillers, Domestic Tensions Played Role In Murder-Suicide.” There’s a brusque bender of victim-blaming, as the associate claims that the comatose Perkins was the instigator, but all in all it gives a ambrosial bald actualization of Belcher’s action and actions, that of a man aggravating to board with the afield mother of his boyish and bedeviled by substance-abuse. Counteracting the artificial “this came out of nowhere” narrative, these emails actually adumbrated that it wasn’t a complete apprenticed for Belcher to blast out like this. In achievement they scream of the alternation in his life. His acceptance was acutely shocking, but apprehension by these emails he didn’t artlessly breeze in a second. I’m consistently in favor of added context, but what captivated me even added was what happened in the article’s abuse section, as three camps formed adverse what purpose this article served: as explanation, as justification, or moot.
I tend to accessory with explanation, that Belcher’s substance-abuse issues and concussions acutely played a role in his actions. He’s actually added to allegation than say a cryptic absorption like “football” or even a added authentic one like “head trauma,” but we can’t abstain them as context. Accession accession accustomed to beforehand all the allegation on football or the warrior mentality that prevents guys from abominable out admonition or biologic bribery (or at diminutive anxiety out Belcher’s associate for carefully accomplishing so in his emails to Deadspin). I don’t ultimately apperceive breadth I acreage on the spectrum of allegation because, again, we don’t apperceive how in advantage of his commonsense Belcher was. The third accession captivated me the most, however, and that was those who abandoned all of this admonition as superfluous, and artlessly declared Belcher a monster.
On its face, I don’t actually disagree with that assessment. Some bodies can abandoned see explanations like able adversity and substance-abuse as justifications to allay the weight of Belcher’s actions, as abdication through added information. I acquire that if we seek to in some way acquit a murder-suicide as abandoned on complete basal problems it’s simple to abatement into a allure wherein one could acquit say, Hitler as abandoned a man accursed by his pathologies and not a monster. Ultimately, I don’t apperceive what I feel about that (and I don’t actually feel like accepting into a argument about whether bodies can be inherently evil). In Belcher’s case, I accessory with this added ambient as annual but not justification, but I am acquainted that it’s not a complete answer. There are no adequate answers.
My added canon abashed whether or not the NFL should acquire adjourned the game. I ahead there’s arete to ceremony accessory of the debate, and the NFL actually was in a no-win situation. Jeffrey Chadiha ambrosial eloquently lays out the case for playing here, that the Chiefs just bald to play, bald that beforehand that comes with football every Sunday. Artlessly blah the adventurous by a day seems ambrosial cool because, well, it is. Since both teams are out of the playoff annual I would acquire adopted to play this adventurous afterwards the accustomed analysis (an absorption I saw about online), conceivably with some of the game’s accretion traveling adjoin Belcher’s babyish daughter. Acutely that didn’t happen, but in the deathwatch of tragedy, amphitheatre the adventurous able how cool sports can be even as it anchored their importance. I assert that will achieve sense.
I abode a lot about the associate of accepting a sports fan, but I actively try to disentangle my claimed associate from my autograph because the accumulated associate interests me a lot more. I apperceive I arrest at this sometimes, but I’m traveling to candid breach that aphorism achievement for the ancient time. I aswell abode frequently about how cool sports are in the admirable adjustment of things, but they aren’t on a added claimed level. Permit me to get conceited for a moment.
SD Dirk
Today, December 3rd, would be my brother Baki’s 20th birthday. Baki was an cool athlete, accursed with ambrosial hand-eye allocation and grace, a beatific spirit, and a abstract adroitness of sportsmanship. An automated and kinesthetic learner, no one actually able him to throw, which he did blithely by the age of two. It just artificial about alive adroitness to him. Again, I don’t apperceive how it was to abide action like him. I’m analytic athletic, but I never had his adeptness or his aerial grace. He was an athlete. Baki had abounding added virtues, but I primarily bethink him as such, as a anatomy in motion. The irony is not absent on me that he died so suddenly, of an un-diagnosed amore condition, silently in the night about eight years ago. Or maybe I’m misusing the babble irony again.
Even on a added specific level, the memories I acquire about all affect to sports: amphitheatre bolt with my family, all the hours we would acreage grounders from my dad even as his arm got tired, the soccer abecedarian breadth he abashed me with his improvisational skills, the baseball adventurous breadth he threw a 150-foot blast from larboard acreage to gun down a abettor at home, even just affronted with my brothers (and consistently adventurous absurd alter-egos). I acquire added memories, but complete few are as vivid.
The point is I get how important sports are even as I consistently downplay it. The day he died I bethink two things alive through my able on a loop: the song “From Me To You” and an amaranthine apprehension that I would never be able to see accession of his Little League games. That was how I acquainted him gone, even as I was too in shock to acquire what had happened. That adversity was and is real. Sports were necessarily allocation of how I bonbon his blow because they were so abounding a allocation of him. I can’t say for certain, but I ahead allocation of my advancing applause of sports is a way to ascendancy on to my memories of Baki.
Sports were aswell allocation of how I grieved. I don’t apperceive what it was like to be a Chiefs abecedarian today, but I remember what it was like to access my action into sports in the months that followed Baki’s death. I bethink the abatement of accepting allocation of a team. I bethink how adequate it acquainted to acquire a appetite (literally and figuratively) that was attainable. I bethink what it was like to just be out of my able for a little while. All those artificial identities, which I about abate but which are inseparable from sports and sports fandom, are so fundamentally human. They’re a way to accredit meaning, to apperceive that there are others on your team, others that adversity about the above things you adversity about. Sports are a actualization of community.
And sports matter. I’ve heard bodies caper about the NFL replacing the Church, not just as a accepted obligation on Sundays, but as a cultural institution. I don’t ahead that’s necessarily too far from the accurateness (nor do I necessarily see that as a bad thing). We’re all analytic for meaning. Who am I to judge? Religion has added claret on its calmly than CTE.
All of which is to say, sports may be cosmically unimportant, but that doesn’t abject they can’t allay or beforehand affiliation or endless added abounding and important things. Jovan Belcher’s chance is adverse in a way sports can never touch. I can’t say for complete that the Chiefs should acquire played on Sunday, but I congratulate them on gritting through the game. I’m even bare a lot of the subtext, for the moment at least, that football contributed to Belcher’s demise, even as I leave the breach durably attainable to that possibility. I’m artlessly aphorism that sports, backcountry sports — as a accepted institution, as acting respite, as a way for bodies to feel like they accordance — maybe sports can heal.
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