Like many of you, TigerBlog loves the NFL.
There's nothing quite like NFL football in the American sports culture. It's so much a part of the society that the Super Bowl is by far the most-watched television show each year, and something like 14 of the 15 highest-rated TV shows of all time are Super Bowls.
The NFL is so popular that the lockout was settled before any games were missed. It had to be, because the public never would have stood for missing out on even one week of NFL games.
TigerBlog couldn't help but think about how much he enjoys watching the games, how many a weekend in his life has been shaped by the result of a game involving the Giants, how great each of the team's four Super Bowl championships - including two the last four years - have been.
And yet suddenly it's not what is was, not after the Saints and their bounty issues and all of the troubles regarding concussions and now, tragically, the apparent suicide of Junior Seau.
TigerBlog was shocked when he saw that Seau, one of the great linebackers of all time, had apparently killed himself.
And then even more so when he read that he was the eighth member of the 1994 San Diego Chargers, who played in the Super Bowl, who has already died.
At some point the NFL is going to have to realize that it has a major, major, major problem on its hands, one that threatens the very existence of its sport, and take real steps, possibly even ones that reduce profits.
The league cannot survive if its players' long-term health - and really, Seau was 43, so we're not talking real long-term - is compromised.
TigerBlog always hears that the owners are concerned that reducing the violence would make the game less appealing.
After he heard about Seau, TB trying to figure out what it is about the NFL that attracts him in ways that Major League Baseball or the NBA or the NHL do not. Or college football or basketball.
It's not the violence.
It's more because every game is so big because there are only 16 of them or because they only play once a week. Maybe it's the fact that it plays so well on television. Maybe it's the fact that it's a blend of mega-stars within a total team sport.
It's not the violence. It's not the helmet-to-helmet shots or the massive hits on receivers who come across the middle.
In fact, TB hates that aspect of the game, especially for the impact it has on high school and even youth players who see their idols on TV and try to emulate them.
Sean Morey has started working at Princeton as a general administrator. Morey is a veteran of the National Football League, a Super Bowl winner with the Pittsburgh Steeler, a runner-up with the Arizona Cardinals and a Pro Bowl special teams performer.
He is also active with the players' union, especially in the area of concussions and long-term health issues.
Morey put his body on the line many a Sunday, and TB gets the sense from talking to him that he'd do it all over again in a heartbeat.
At some point, players reach the end of the line in their careers - their athletic mortality. For Morey, it was into his 30s.
For almost all athletes, it's at the end of high school. For the luckier (and bigger and faster and better), it's at the end of college.
The athletic year at Princeton - and at every school - is winding down.
The 200 or so seniors will be going pro in something other than sports. And as such, they have to face the fact that their athletic careers - as structured athletes - is ending.
TB and Morey had a conversation about this yesterday. It's not something that people who work in athletics are always on board with, since there's always another group that's on its way in.
But it's not easy.
They have been defined by their athleticism since they were little kids, for the most part. And now they're at the end of that. At 22 or so.
For some, it's probably a relief, to walk away from the regimen of college athletics. For most, TB assumes, it leaves a big hole.
As Morey said, he spoke to one player who said something along the lines of "everyone's always told me I'm a good goalie. What am I now?"
Facing athletic mortality, as it has been called, is not easy.
It shouldn't be a matter of actually mortality though.
The NFL better get its head out of the sand.
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TB, in today's preview of this weekend's Ivy lacrosse tournament, you write that the last time Princeton scored more than 13 goals against Brown was 1996.
Princeton won the 2001 game by a score of 15-2. How do I remember this with such confidence?
I took my then-69-year-old mother to the game. Princeton was already way ahead when Damien Davis committed an unforced turnover in our defensive end which led to Brown's second goal. My mother had never seen a lacrosse game before and, on the drive home, I explained to her that a final margin of 13 goals was unusual for the sport.
I learned a lot about my mother, who was a national caliber hurdler in college, when she replied sternly -- almost angrily, "The score really should have been 15-1 because their last goal never should have happened."
I stared at my mother incredulously and for the first time ever realized how her athletic success five decades earlier had been driven by a crazy competitive streak. You never know what you'll learn at a Princeton athletic event.
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