It is time to reflect and update what has happened in the lives of the many sports personalities I have reported on in the past year. Let’s call it The Other Serpico’s Sports Update. I guess you have realized there was a part of me that always wished that I could be Clark Kent, the newspaper reporter. I know I can be Superman. He is no problem. But that writer with the glasses is the big hero to me and I am happy that I have had 70,000 of you reading my almost daily rants on any subject you can think of.

Let’s talk about the stories of the people and places we spoke about earlier this past year. Where are they now and how important is their story anymore? Do we still care to know? Has anything changed since then? We can start with the sexy story of the world class hurdler Lolo Jones that I wrote about on July 21, 2012. What made her interesting is that she spoke so openly about her sex life. That she is a virgin waiting for marriage although she had many endorsement deals without ever winning Olympic medals. Since then she still isn’t married so we can assume she is still a virgin. Also, she only came in 4^th at the London Olympics, so no medals. Now, she hopes to get a medal with the United States Bobsled Team.

I also wrote about how there are Olympic medal winners who are very professional athletes being employed by the Cirque Du Soleil shows. Return to my blog post from December 29, 2012. Since then the Cirque empire of performers have become a very much talked about career after winning all the Olympic medals you want. It is finally an honor to join the Circus and be a performer now.

Another story was about Steve Gleason who was a hard hitting football player from the New Orleans Saints that put a face on the problem in Football of head trauma. In my blog post from October 25, 2012. I also spoke of the illegal practice of what was called Bounty gate. It was a revelation that some Saints coaches and players put up money to injure opposing players. Yes, you will get money if you give that guy a concussion and have him removed from the game. Since then, Gleason’s condition has gotten worse and he is rapidly failing. He is dying from a fatal disease of which there is no known cure.

I looked at the problem of fan violence in my blog post from December 22, 2012. The battle going on in the field is nothing compared to the violence that you are able to record on your cell phone in the seating areas of the arena. At football games and hockey games , basketball games even tennis, fan on fan violence can be seen everywhere. Brian Stowe’s crime was wearing a San Francisco Giants jersey to a Dodgers game in Los Angeles. The beating he got from the opposing team’s fans put him in a wheelchair now for the rest of his life. It is now more than a year later and he is still suffering from massive brain damage. The fact now is that violence is associated with sports in the seating areas.

Let’s follow up on the post from January 28,2012 where we looked at the practice in the NFL of giving to any player the powerful numbing drug of Toradol before a game. This drug is an anti-inflammatory that can act as a pain killer and literally has a numbing effect from head to toe so the guys on the football field don’t even feel the hard hits they are getting. In the medical field it is given for post-surgical pain. Somehow it is still legal for a coach to administer this drug in the NFL. A former offensive lineman Jeremy Newberry has kidney failure from the use of this drug. At 35 years old a big tough guy like him should not have serious internal injuries like stage 3 kidney failure. There are at least 10 other players who have suffered from these types of pain killers.

The update on this is that the NFL simply covered their ass by now having their players who take the drug sign a consent form absolving the league from any future medical claims. The NFL Player’s Association is fighting back and managed to get the Toradol out of the locker rooms like the Giants and the Jaguars but it is still being given orally to other teams. The NFL was only concerned about the perception of players getting shot up before a game is changed.

So, sorry folks, the only good update with sports was about the athletes who train for their sport since childhood could maybe get a good job after the trophies and medals by joining the circus. Jeesh!