Phillips, 40, found dead in his prison cell, suicide likely cause.
He was a cautionary tale right to the end.
He was a cautionary tale right to the end.
Lawrence Phillips Dead
- Thread starter MiracleOfO2704
- Start date
Did Lawrence Phillips make Steve Young get old and retire?
I understand your point, but...Steve Young was not going to play much longer anyway.
I understand your point, but...Steve Young was not going to play much longer anyway.
The 49ers ended up being terrible in 1999, especially on defense, but they had gone 13-3 and 12-4 the previous two years (the first two Mariucci seasons). Young had had one of his best seasons in 1998, setting career highs in passing yards and TDs.
But they hadn't won a title or even a Conference championship since 1994. The dynasty was over by 1999.
They were definitely at the end of their dynasty, but adding to this, they were ranked as the 8th best team in the league prior to the 1999 by ESPN. Purely hindsight to say they weren't "remotely a dynasty". Not really out of bounds to say that a missed block by Phillips really sped up the demise.
If their dynasty was over by 1998, then the Patriots' died around 2013.
If you want to argue the semantics of "dynasty" and how recent a title has to be or whatever, you can do that. But I think most 49ers fans consider 1998 the last year of the of 80s/90s dynasty -- it felt like part of that era. The 1998 team was the team that finally beat Green Bay in the playoffs (in the Catch II game) and they still had Young, Rice, Bryant Young, Chris Doleman, Tim McDonald, Merton Hanks, Ken Norton ... all had been stars for most of the decade. I think they would not have been very good in 1999 anyway because the team got old and it was the defense that really collapsed, but who knows how that season would have turned out if Young hadn't been knocked out.
My point was that Young wasn't 27 or 30, and he niners won 4 games. For his injury to be the reason the dynasty ended is a stretch unless you think he was a 6+ win player and would have continued to be for the next three years plus.
Was Lawrence Phillips ever renowned for his blocking?? Blame Carmen Policy and the 49ers' FO for signing Phillips long after it was clear he'd never be the sort of feature back he had shown flashes of becoming during his college days.
I'm more sympathetic than most to college coaches who try to rehabilitate guys from disadvantaged backgrounds who have made bad decisions at a young age, but it's a black mark on Tom Osborne's legacy that he didn't see Phillips for who he was.
I'm more sympathetic than most to college coaches who try to rehabilitate guys from disadvantaged backgrounds who have made bad decisions at a young age, but it's a black mark on Tom Osborne's legacy that he didn't see Phillips for who he was.
So this will be interesting....CTE exam post autopsy. Family donating brain.
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/14579822/lawrence-phillips-family-donate-brain-cte-research-attorney-says
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/14579822/lawrence-phillips-family-donate-brain-cte-research-attorney-says
Anyone blaming Osbourne or any high profile college coach for the actions of these guys off the field don't understand the culture of collegiate athletics. This dates back to John Wooden and likely prior. If you want your job and want to win you sell your soul to the devil.....it's a part of the sacrifice.
Absolutely! Covering up an attempted murder, intimidating rape victims, goes with the territory.
Pretty much. She was dropped from the team but remained on non-athletic scholarship, apparently.
Via The New York Times, April 1996: Husker Rebuff for Phillip's Assault Victim
Snark or not it's true. You go all-in when you accept this position....it's what you sign up for if you want to keep your job. Of course Pitino didn't know anything about what his Asst Coach was doing......nobody asked the question why McGee was let go after years of being loyal to Pitino. All you have to do is read between the lines.
So a collegiate coach must act the way Osbourne did in order to have a successful, winning, job keeping program?
You're right, it's not nearly as valuable as all the Seinfeld quotes you grace every thread with. Keep up the thread policing though, it's quite noble.
Not necessarily however when faced with the choice of losing his job or attempting to cover up an illegal act the coach who wants to keep his job is going to attempt cover up at all costs over losing his job. It happens all the time not only the ones that come public.
Awwwww come on man be nice. I don't complain about all your Jonathan Papelbon references.
I don't think this is true, but if you believe it is and you remain a fan of college sports then you are beyond morally bankrupt.
I understand the family's desire to find some explanation for Phillips's wasted life, but I'm not sure what a post-mortem examination will tell us, unless scientists can somehow prove that his brain was damaged in high school. With all his off-field troubles, he didn't play all that much high-level football (just 424 carries in 4 NFL seasons, and just over 500 more at Nebraska, plus a smattering of action in the CFL and NFL Europe). Most of that action occurred after he'd proved to everyone besides Tom Osborne that he was a sociopath, so it's not like it brain damage would explain his bad behavior, even if they find damage and we stipulate that it's football-related. (And I'm not sure id stipulate that; heaven knows how many times this guy got hit in the head off the field.)
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None of my concussions came from football. They can still study the effects of CTE even if they're not demonstrating a link to football and concussions. The source doesn't matter, right?
It's always good for science to have more data points, and I don't want to diminish the generosity of the family's gesture; it isn't an easy decision to make.
That said, I don't think scientists are as likely to learn as much from Lawrence Phillips's brain as they did from, say, Junior Seau's -- because if he is brain-damaged, it won't be clear to what extent the damage was football-related or to what extent it contributed to his violent behavior. (Whereas with Seau, it's fairly clear that the damage was football-related and likely contributed to his behavioral problems late in life.)
True, to an extent, but again does it matter what caused the damage? Also, Id assume his family would know if he got concussions at 9 on Pop Warner or street fights and how and when, if at all, any head trauma changed his behavior.
I'm more cynical than you. To be clear, I don't think anyone besides Phillips is to blame for his behavior -- which cut short his own life and at least two others, and hurt a lot of other people besides. I suspect, however, that his family feels a lot of guilt, and would therefore welcome the opportunity to seize on something to blame for how he turned out. If he has CTE, they can blame football and assuage their guilt. (Which I suppose is fine. And because not a lot of people are eager to donate their loved ones' brains, they are doing a legitimate service to science. I just don't think the findings will be "interesting" in the way mauidano thinks they will be.)
Oh yeah, I totally agree with you on that. I was commenting on the narrow issue of the value of his brain to science.
Yes, it absolutely does because science. Eric Fezcko can walk you through the method to that stuff, and why sorting data by cause is kinda important.
The best outcome for those of who do care about the science here is for Phillip's brain to show no evidence of CTE and for Phillips's litany of awfulness to not muddy the waters.