TSN Canada

Terry Ott: Personal Observations in the Wake of Suit

Dustin Fink1 Comment

Terry Ott files a follow-up regarding the law suit in Canada and Arland Bruce.  This is his commentary on the coverage of the issue; all information, illustrations, pictures and links are his.

==========

DOES CANADA’S TSN, THE HOST CFL BROADCASTER, APPEAR TO BE “CIRCLING THE WAGONS” OVER ARLAND BRUCE III CONCUSSION LAWSUIT AND SUBSEQUENT NATIONAL HOOPLA AND HOOTIN’ AND HOLLERING, OR IS IT JUST A CASE OF, AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING (REALLY) COMPLETELY DIFFERENT?

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it.” — Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle

The irony of the American-based Concussion Blog breaking one of the biggest stories about the Canadian Football League in recent memory when it exclusively revealed the first concussion lawsuit in CFL history, is certainly very rich.

Prior to D-Day, July 16, 2014, much of the Canadian sports media didn’t know too much about concussions, and, well, seemingly, they didn’t wanna know too much. Or, as they also mused in the movie Casino, “ah,why take a chance?”

And of course there is that lovely old Buddhist proverb of “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” Maybe that’s what most of the big time scribblers and jolly jock-sniffers were up to up here prior to the Bruce legal revelation but since most would not even talk to me, how would I really know?

However, after Andrew Bucholtz of the Yahoo! Canada 55 Yard Line CFL Blog gave the story of the Bruce lawsuit nation-wide coverage mere hours after it first appeared here, the story became a talking point throughout Canada for days as well as shaking the previously comfortably cocooned CFL , who may have been alerted to the Concussion Blog post by a trusty and observant friendly just shortly after it went live from Chicago at 12:32 EDT, on July 16.  Continue reading →

NHL’er Recovers and Talks About it

Dustin FinkLeave a comment

John-Michael Liles of the Toronto Maple Leafs has had to endure the recovery from concussion in the midst of a playoff push by the team.  Having a concussion is nothing new to Liles – last year he sustained on for the Avalanche – but recovering mid-season is a whole new experience.  A process that is littered with many pitfalls; the greatest of which is pushing too hard and delaying the already arduous return to play.

Liles spoke to Jonas Siegel of TSN Canada about the problems;

For a series of seemingly endless mornings after the concussion, Liles would awake and obsessively check for symptoms, hoping they would finally disappear and he could begin the recovery process.  “Maybe you wake up and you feel good and then 20 minutes later you’re like ‘Man, I don’t feel good’,” he recalled. “It’s little things that can trigger it … You walk up a set of stairs sometimes and you’re like ‘Ah man, that was dumb’. It’s not like something where you do it and all of a sudden you’re like laying on the ground, but it’s something that you notice  where on a normal day it would be something that you wouldn’t even think twice about.”

Liles points out something that needs to be clearly understood, Continue reading →