Michael OBrien September 23, 2013 Kevin Cook is the award-winning author of Kitty Genovese, Titanic Thompson and

Tommys Honor. He writes for Sports Illustrated and Mens Health, and other magazines and has appeared on ESPN, Fox TV and CNN, which shows he is qualified to speak on the subject (ethos). In this article Cook wrote on concussion prevention in football and clearly states that NFL is not doing all it can to prevent injuries to the head and after reading his article I am beginning to feel the same. Throughout the article Cook does a nice job of giving many different examples of why kids should not play. He does things like draw back on personal experience of other players, leading statistics on brain damage, and legal issues of former players who now have trouble because of concussions when they played, which is a good way of using logos". Also Cook uses a lot emphasis on each issue to stir your emotions toward how dangerous football can be (pathos). Cook brings up many issues with former players sewing the NFL because the NFL never informed them of the dangers they faced when playing. Also just recently the NFL came up with a thirty million dollar donation toward the study of concussions. Although that seems like a lot of money, Cook says thirty million represents four and a half minutes of commercial time during the Super Bowl, which just goes to show how Cook thinks that the NFL could be doing much more to help the cause. I think in certain parts of the article, Cook is targeting parents. He brings up former player Phil Villapiano, one of the hardest hitters in N.F.L. history Cook says. Phil watched his son get

his head smashed by another player. Risking the chance of his son getting hurt even more, they brought his son back in the game and played him. Im not about to second-guess the Villapianos, whose fortitude I admire. But no family should face such a choice. He also brought up how we know more about concussions today, but we do not know how to prevent them. What do parents think when reading article like this? It is almost as if he sending them a message, your sons should not be playing this game unless the NFL can make the game safe. Another point Cook brings up is the experience of former players after they have retired. He uses hall of famer John Mackey, Dave Duerson, and Junior Seau as an example. John Mackey is now in a wheel chair and was diagnosed with frontal temporal dementia in his early 60s, Dave Duerson and Junior Seau both committed suicide at ages 50 and 43. Other than using former players as an example, Cook uses the statistics from journal Neurology, that reported 3,439 retired players of N.F.L. combat are more likely than the rest of us to die from brain diseases including Alzheimers, Parkinsons and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as Lou Gehrigs disease. These men are three to four times more likely as non-football players. Using these men as examples shows the impact that head injuries can cause later in life, which is a good way to show the reader that this could happen to anyone if the game does not become safer. My next point is the way Cook uses his words to describe how he feels about each situation. Throughout the article Cook tends to agree with peoples personal experiences, but then uses a lot of emphasis to side with concussion prevention. For example going back to Phil Villapianos story about him and his son, he tells Phils story and then mentions he admires Phils fortitude, but no family should face such a choice. Right away Cook slides in how he does not agree with his
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decision, and another thing he does is mention an extra word like such to put more emphasis on the situation. Why not say no family should have to face that decision. My second example of this is in the third to last paragraph. Cook mentions the dangers of pressuring a player back into the game after they have shown signs of having a concussion. He says schools and the NFL should continue to test kids on the sidelines but to not let them into the game until they are clear of mind and body. What does he mean by clear of mind and body; why not just say until the athlete is clear of concussion like symptoms. Cook does this kind of wording over and over to stress how dangerous it is but at the same time he is distracting the reader, but Cook may be doing just what he wanted by distracting the reader and making them think about how dangerous football is. One thing Cook does not do in his article is let us hear the opinions of other people with experience in the concussion field, what do they think about the issue? Is it different then Cooks, and if it is what is so different? Throughout the whole article the reader only hears from Cook. Cook does not bring up anyone who thinks different about the subject, which is different from most articles I am used to reading. I think bringing different opinions into the article would have helped the reader better understand how harmful concussions are, rather than just getting many different examples of people who struggle later in life because of them. Cooks article was very interesting and informative, and really gave me an eye opening experience as a former player myself. I also have had concussions in the past and did not take getting my bell rung serious until later in high school when things began to change. From my personal experiences and other readers experience with the game I bet that they were really affected by what Cook wrote. Cooks examples of statistics, concussions causing diseases, and

emphasis on how much we need to prevent concussions really drew me in as a reader, and I thought he did it pretty well. Hi Michael, I think that you are off to a good start here. You seem to have a good handle on rhetorical appeals; you identify them correctly, and I think you have good interpretations of why the author makes some of the choices that he does. Your next step in revision is to develop an argument for this paper. Right now, you have a lot of summary of the article but not much analysis of what the author is doing, and what the overall outcome is. In other words, you are telling me what the author does, but you arent giving me a so what? to come away from your paper with. One potential argument that seemed to emerge from your paper was that Cook uses a lot of evidence to make his readers feel badly about how head injuries affect football players, but that his own lack of argument about whether people should even play in the first place is a little confusing. I think that this could be a good direction to go in your revisions, and it might be a good issue to think about as you develop a central focus for your paper. Once you have developed that focus (your argument), all of the evidence (supporting paragraphs) should directly prove your initial argument. I think that this might be a good paper to work on in a one-on-one session, so if you have time this coming week I would suggest making an appointment with me or coming to office hours. As I said, you are off to a good start here! Please let me know if you have any questions