NFL Nuggets:

The big news today is about vaccines.

• Dan Snyder is going to buy out the minority owners of the Football Team.
  • It will likely cost upwards of $875 million.
  • He reportedly has to get a debt waiver from the league, since teams cannot be owned with debt on the purchase outstanding.
    • He will have until 2028 to clear the waiver.
      • No word on what might happen if he doesn’t.

• The NFL announced it will not require players to have had a vaccine before the season starts.
  • They will rely on “education” to guide players toward making the “proper” medical decision for themselves.
  • They are hoping to go down the path that the NBA has established.
    • Fully vaccinated NBA players no longer are required to quarantine following exposure to COVID-19; they can have friends, family, and others visit without testing or registration; and they can dine outdoors at restaurants.
    • For NBA teams that have 85 percent of players and 85 percent of staff fully vaccinated, masks no longer are required at the practice facility and teams are given more flexibility on road trips.
• It makes sense to “encourage”, given the predominance of Black players in the league & history of medical abuses towards Black people in US history.
  • Two examples:
    • the Tuskegee Syphilis Study
      • 400 sharecroppers were denied treatment for syphilis over 40 years.
        • In 1932, U.S. Public Health Service employees recruited hundreds of poor, uneducated African American men with syphilis and watched them die avoidable deaths over time, even after a cure was found.
        • The discovery of the experiment made front-page news in 1972. The study participants won a $10 million class-action settlement in 1975 and an apology from President Bill Clinton in 1997.
    • the Henrietta Lacks case
      • Doctors at Johns Hopkins had taken samples of her cancerous cells while diagnosing and her aggressive cervical cancer.
        • They gave some of that tissue to a researcher without Lacks’s knowledge or consent. In the laboratory, her cells turned out to have an extraordinary capacity to survive and reproduce; they were, in essence, immortal.
        • The researcher shared them widely with other scientists, and they became a workhorse of biological research.
      • Known as HeLa cells, they continue to be used in scientific research today.
        • And to think some Christians won’t get vaccinated today because of some stem cells harvested over 50 years ago, but have no problem with cancer treatments derived from research like this.

**sigh** Deshaun Watson:

• The count is now up to 16 lawsuits.
  • I believe we are well past the “It’s a McNair plot” stage and into the “serial predator” stage.
• It appears one of the accusers may have attempted to blackmail Watson into a financial settlement.
  • She asked for $30,000, through an intermediary.
  • His lawyer has an affidavit from his business manager attesting to the phone call & “blackmail, not extortion” attempt the caller made.

They seem to be running with the “it’s all a get-rich scheme” motive at this point. But with 16 women, and only one possible fraudster (at present), well – to steal an old Foxworthy bit, it’s like watching the wife pave the driveway but telling her you emptied the ashtray in the den.

Tonight’s sports:

• NHL:
  • NY Islanders vs Boston – 7:00pm | NHLN / Sportsnet
• NBA:
  • Portland vs Miami – 7:30pm | TNT / Sportsnet1
  • Philadelphia vs LA Lakers – 10:00pm | TNT / Sportsnet1

That’s it for me. Hippo’s got your NCAA weekend all lined up, so I’ll see you next week with news, notes, and Part 2 of the Pete Carroll lineman experience. Thanks for enjoying the first installment.