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New York Times
24-04-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Steve McMichael, Hall of Fame Tackle for Champion Bears, Dies at 67
Steve McMichael, a Hall of Fame defensive tackle for the Chicago Bears with a theatrical personality and a ferocious intensity who helped anchor what might have been the most predatory defense in the history of the N.F.L. during the team's 1985 Super Bowl-winning season, died on Wednesday in Joliet, Ill. He was 67. The Bears confirmed his death, in hospice care. The team said he had struggled for years with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the degenerative disease of the nervous system more commonly known as A.L.S. or Lou Gehrig's disease. McMichael played 15 years in the N.F.L., 13 of them with Chicago and none more rapacious than the 1985 season. The Bears lost only once that season while rampaging through the league with the so-called 46 defense, orchestrated by the team's boisterous defensive coordinator, Buddy Ryan. Placing eight defensive players near the line of scrimmage, Chicago hounded, outmuscled and intimidated opponents. No victory was more thorough than the Bears' 44-0 dismantling of the Dallas Cowboys on their own field on Nov. 17, 1985. It was the worst defeat in the team's then-26-year history. That afternoon, McMichael collected one of the 92 ½ career sacks he accumulated with the Bears, placing him second in franchise history to his teammate Richard Dent. In the view of many, Dallas simply gave up. Tom Landry, Dallas's coach at the time, called the defeat 'an old-fashioned country licking.' 'I call it the piranha effect,' the Chicago defensive end Dan Hampton told reporters afterward. 'We start getting on somebody and we smell blood. We seem to go into a frenzy.' Chicago's only loss that season came against the Miami Dolphins. The Bears dominated the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX, 46-10, played on Jan. 26, 1986, in the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. Though somewhat small for a defensive lineman at 6 feet 2 inches and 270 pounds, McMichael possessed immense strength and slippery quickness. He starred on a defense that included three other future Hall of Famers: the defensive ends Hampton and Dent and the linebacker Mike Singletary. He played in 191 consecutive games for the Bears and 12 more in the playoffs, a franchise record. 'He was a defensive tackle taking on double teams and triple teams and leg whips and this and that,' Hampton told The Chicago Tribune for its obituary about McMichael. 'To then essentially defy the physical reality of it is mind-boggling.' McMichael reveled in an exaggerated, untamed persona. His nicknames included Ming the Merciless, after the tyrant in 'Flash Gordon,' and Mongo, after the dimwitted ruffian who punches out a horse in the Mel Brooks comedy 'Blazing Saddles.' In a 2019 speech recounted by The Associated Press in its obituary, McMichael joked that his brief and inconsequential stay with the Patriots, who had chosen him in the third round of the 1980 N.F.L. draft, ended after a season because he was considered 'the criminal element in the league.' But the Bears readily accepted him in 1981. McMichael described walking into the office of the Bears' founder, George Halas, and being told: 'I've heard what kind of dirty rat you are in practice. Don't change, Steve.' After a final N.F.L. season, with the Green Bay Packers in 1994, his blustery guise helped ease McMichael into five years as a professional wrestler, who used a pile-driver move on opponents as if they were footballs with the 'Mongo Spike.' McMichael was born on Oct. 17, 1957, in Houston. His parents divorced when he was a year old. His mother, an English teacher born Betty Ruth Smalley, later married E.V. McMichael, an oil company executive. Steve, who took his stepfather's last name as a toddler, declined to discuss his surname at birth. His mother died of breast cancer in 2018, and his stepfather died after being shot in 1976. In 1964, the family moved to tiny Freer, Texas, south of San Antonio. McMichael lettered in football, baseball, basketball, track, tennis and golf at Freer High School. He played football at the University of Texas, where he was an All-American in 1979. In 2010, he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. In the N.F.L., he was named All-Pro in 1985 and 1987. He is survived by his wife, Misty (Davenport) McMichael; a daughter, Macy McMichael; two sisters, Kathy and Sharon McMichael; and a brother, Robert. His first marriage, to Debra Marshall in 1998, ended in divorce. In 2020, McMichael began experiencing tingling in his arms. A year later, he was diagnosed with A.L.S. He kept his humor when he revealed his illness to The Chicago Tribune in April 2021, saying that it 'will sneak up on you like a cheap-shotting Green Bay Packer.' As the disease progressed, McMichael lost the ability to move and to speak. He was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Aug. 3, 2024, but he was too ill to attend the ceremony. The bust and gold jacket awarded to inductees were presented to him earlier that day at his bedside at his home in Homer Glen, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, where he was surrounded by former Bears teammates. 'It's a cruel irony that the Bears' Ironman succumbed to this dreaded disease,' George McCaskey, the Bears' chairman, said in a statement on Wednesday. 'Yet Steve showed us throughout his struggle that his real strength was internal, and he demonstrated on a daily basis his class, his dignity and his humanity.'
New York Times
22-04-2025
- Health
- New York Times
The Ice Bucket Challenge Worked. Why Not Try It Again?
Is it déjà vu or have we seen this trend before? It's not just you. The Ice Bucket Challenge, which took over social media a decade ago, has found new life thanks to a group of college students who copied the concept, in its entirety, to spread mental health awareness. Here's what you need to know. What is the Ice Bucket Challenge? The original Ice Bucket Challenge, which grew out of other online fads but was popularized as an A.L.S. fund-raiser by the activists Pat Quinn and Pete Frates, was a campaign that began in 2014 to raise awareness and help find a cure for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The challenge was simple: film yourself dumping a bucket of ice-filled water over your head. Post it and challenge friends to either donate $100 to A.L.S. research within 24 hours or film their own watery video. (Many people opted for both.) Did it work? In a shockingly big way. The videos took off online, inspiring people around the world to drench themselves in freezing water for the cause and to urge friends to do the same. Celebrities from Taylor Swift to LeBron James to Bill Gates participated. The campaign raised hundreds of millions of dollars and drew worldwide attention to the disease. It was a rare moment of true, organic virality on a global scale. A 2024 report by the group RTI, which was commissioned by the A.L.S. Association, said there was 'clear evidence' that the Ice Bucket Challenge had substantially accelerated A.L.S. research. Now it's back? It's back. Wade Jefferson, a 21-year-old student at the University of South Carolina, said he was inspired by the success of the original Ice Bucket Challenge while trying to come up with an event for a mental health awareness club he founded on campus called MIND. (The name is an acronym Mental Illness Needs Discussion, which referenced a similarly-named club at his high school. He was motivated to start the club after losing two friends to suicide, he said.) This time, the challenge, using the hashtag #SpeakYourMIND, is intended to spread awareness about mental health. Participants are encouraged to make donations to Active Minds, a nonprofit that focuses on mental health and young people. When Shane Beamer, the head football coach at the University of South Carolina, posted a video participating, Mr. Jefferson said he knew the challenge was gaining traction. And people outside the school are actually doing it? Yes. It's quite popular on Instagram stories, where people post videos encouraging their friends to participate. Julie Picado, 23, said her teenage sister, Sharon Frias, woke her up to ask her to dump ice water on the 15-year-old's head. The sisters, who live in Saddlebrook, N.J., filmed the video with Ms. Picado leaning out her bedroom window with a kitchen pot to soak her sister sitting below. (Ms. Picado said she remembered participating in the A.L.S. challenge as a preteen a decade ago.) 'I was waiting to be nominated because I saw friend after friend doing it,' Ms. Frias said. 'It seemed like a fun way to spread mental awareness. It's a good message.' What about celebrities? The former N.F.L. players Peyton Manning and Emmanuel Sanders have both participated this time around. (Mr. Manning also did the challenge in 2014.) Carson Daly, a host of 'Today,' dumped a bowl of ice water on Jenna Bush Hager in a segment earlier this week. More celebrities will surely join in on the action. Why are some people criticizing it? Some people online have pointed out the irony of a challenge spreading mental health awareness that is built upon having a friend to nominate you. It can feel a little like a popularity contest, some said. 'I didn't know if I should do it or not,' said Sasha Steinke, a 16-year-old who lives in Nashville. 'I was thinking of all the people that don't get nominated. It could feel like they're sort of left out and that, like, defeats the purpose of including people,' Still, she decided to participate, explaining she had experienced mental health struggles and was excited to see conversations about those all-too-common issues being normalized. Are people donating this time? They are, though not quite like last time. The challenge had raised nearly $250,000 as of publication.
New York Times
16-04-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Space Travel and Tuberculosis Research Are Hit by Trump's Harvard Cuts
Dr. Sarah Fortune, an immunologist who spends a lot of time in her laboratory at Harvard, never expected to be caught in a battle with the White House. But early Tuesday morning, she received an official notice to 'stop work' on her lab's federally funded research on tuberculosis, an infectious disease that kills more than a million people a year worldwide. Just hours earlier, the Trump administration had vowed to freeze $2.2 billion in research funding at Harvard. If fully executed, it will be the deepest cut yet in a White House campaign against elite universities that began shortly after President Trump took office in January. Other universities, including Princeton, Cornell and Columbia, have also seen deep cuts to research funding. Dr. Fortune's contract, a $60 million National Institutes of Health agreement involving Harvard and other universities across the country, appeared to be one of the first projects affected. Stop-work notices also began arriving this week at an obscure Harvard office called 'sponsored programs' that coordinates federal research funding. One Harvard professor, David R. Walt, received a notice that his research toward a diagnostic tool for Lou Gehrig's disease, or A.L.S., must stop immediately. Two other orders will affect research on space travel and radiation sickness, just weeks after the scientist, Dr. Donald E. Ingber, who engineers fake organs that are useful in studies of human illnesses, was approached by the government to expand his work. The Trump administration, which warned that another $7 billion may be at stake at Harvard, has framed its campaign to cut research dollars as an effort to combat antisemitism. Harvard had appeared to be seeking ways to work with the White House, until a letter to the school on Friday expanded the administration's demands, with new requirements that had nothing to do with antisemitism. On Monday, Harvard's president, Alan M. Garber, put his foot down, saying that Mr. Trump's administration had gone too far. He has been applauded for resisting, but his school, along with the nation's other elite research universities, is extremely dependent on federal research funds. In a news briefing Tuesday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said that Harvard had not taken the president's demands seriously, resulting in the funding cuts. Noting Harvard's large endowment, which is about $53 billion, she added, 'Why are the American taxpayers subsidizing a university that has billions of dollars in the bank already?' Harvard is still processing the incoming notices and has not yet disclosed the exact amount that has been cut. Even short-term reductions could be devastating to work that has helped the United States stay competitive and even helped keep people alive, college leaders and researchers said. Dr. Walt, the A.L.S. researcher, who received a presidential medal last year for his work, said the order put in jeopardy 'a transformative diagnostic test that may never see the light of day.' He added, 'If this project is terminated, which is the likely outcome, and then other projects are terminated as well, people are going to die.' Even before the explicit attack on Harvard, the Trump administration had been cutting research expenses on campuses across the country, part of a broad effort to reduce federal government spending and end projects that contradict its policy aims, including work that touches on gender and race. Harvard had already lost millions. An analysis last week by The Harvard Crimson found $110 million in cuts, many of them in projects that involved sexuality or gender. Cancellations have been executed so quickly and with so little warning since Mr. Trump took office that academics have had difficulty tallying them. University leaders have been scrambling to assemble in-house lists of stop-work orders that were sent to individual researchers. Complicating matters, the White House has sometimes announced cuts far larger than what the schools receive from the federal government in any given year. The Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities said on Wednesday that it had been unable to tally the fallout on its members, noting that the figure was 'constantly changing.' Some administrators have wondered whether the government is inflating its estimates, speculating that it is including previously spent money in its totals. The White House has declined to comment on the concerns of campus administrators. In some cases, there were no official announcements that cuts were coming at all. The president of the University of Pennsylvania, J. Larry Jameson, has said that initial word of a $175 million reduction for the university came through media reports. Eventually, Dr. Jameson said, faculty members in seven of Penn's schools received stop-work orders that added up to about $175 million. The experience was much the same at Princeton, where researchers received notifications suspending dozens of grants without any formal word from Washington to the university about 'the full rationale,' said its president, Christopher L. Eisgruber. Mr. Eisgruber said last week he would not make any concessions to the White House. Princeton and Cornell are among about a dozen universities, along with major university associations, that have jointly sued the administration over cuts to research. With the deeper cuts now looming at Harvard, Dr. Garber, a physician, is keenly aware of the risks. In a statement this week explaining why Harvard was refusing to comply with the government's demands, he argued that federal research partnerships with universities are beneficial to both schools and society. 'For the government to retreat from these partnerships now risks not only the health and well-being of millions of individuals but also the economic security and vitality of our nation,' he said. Dr. Ingber said he found the government's decision to end $20 million in contracts for his work on space travel and radiation baffling. 'They're canceling these two programs at a time when the government is announcing that they're going to build nuclear reactors all across the country to provide energy,' Dr. Ingber said. 'And they're also wanting to go to Mars.' 'They know how to destroy,' he added. 'They don't know how to create.' Despite the consequences, the scientists whose projects were cut agreed that Harvard was doing the right thing. Dr. Walt said he would begin searching for alternate funding. 'I'm pleased that Harvard had the courage to do this,' he said, 'and am willing to accept it.'
New York Times
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Eric Dane, McSteamy of ‘Grey's Anatomy,' Says He Has A.L.S.
Eric Dane, the actor known as the handsome plastic surgeon nicknamed McSteamy in 'Grey's Anatomy,' told People magazine that he has been diagnosed with A.L.S. Mr. Dane told the magazine that he was grateful for his family's support and was excited to return soon to the set of 'Euphoria.' His representatives did not immediately respond to emails and phone calls seeking additional information. A.L.S., also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a neurological disorder that degrades a patient's ability to control muscles, speak and eventually breathe without assistance. While A.L.S. patients often die within five years of being diagnosed, clinical trials for potential therapies have generated hope about extending a patient's life by several months. Mr. Dane began acting in the early 1990s with small parts in television shows, first in 'Saved By the Bell' and later in 'Married With Children.' Over the years, his charm and boyish good looks earned him recurring roles on 'Gideon's Crossing,' where he played a doctor, and on 'Charmed.' Patrick Dempsey and Eric Dane played two handsome doctors in 'Grey's Anatomy,' one of the most popular television franchises of all time. Credit... Eric McCandless/Disney General Entertainment Content, via Getty Images His breakout moment came in 2006 in another medical role, this time as a leading man in 'Grey's Anatomy,' which was renewed for a 22nd season this year, making it one of the most successful televisions shows of all time. Donning a white lab coat and sporting a well-kept beared and perfectly messy hair, Mr. Dane portrayed Dr. Mark Sloan, the head of plastic surgery at the Seattle hospital where the show was based. The hospital was later renamed after his character, who died on the show. Mr. Dane's most prominent role recently has been on the television show 'Euphoria,' where he portrays the father of Nate Jacobs, played by Jacob Elordi. Although he usually plays a handsome supporting character, he has played a range of roles that deviated from that, including as a hired killer in the movie 'Bad Boys: Ride or Die.' 'Television is the land of pretty people,' Lynn Hirschberg wrote for The New York Times in 2009. The article went on to quote George Clooney, another handsome man, as he waxed poetic about Mr. Dane. 'He's good-looking, and he has a sense of humor. That's rare,' Mr. Clooney said.
