Former Longhorns, NFL RB Cedric Benson dies in motorcycle accident

AUSTIN, Texas — Former NFL running back Cedric Benson, one of the most prolific rushers in NCAA and University of Texas history, has died in a motorcycle accident in Texas. He was 36.

Benson’s attorney, Sam Bassett, said Austin law enforcement told him that Benson was killed in the wreck Saturday night. He had no details about the accident.


Benson was a key player in the Longhorns’ resurgence under coach Mack Brown, who said Sunday that Benson’s death has left him grief-stricken.

“He was as good as you’ll ever see as a football player and as tough as they come,” said Brown, who recently returned to coach North Carolina following a long run at Texas. “But what I’ll remember most is what a special, special person he was. We always enjoyed talking with him because he was such a bright and unique guy. There will never be another one like him, and he will be dearly missed by so many. It’s just heartbreaking, but we feel very fortunate to have had him in our lives.”

Benson was one of the top high school recruits out of the West Texas town of Midland. According to Texas Football magazine, he is eighth on the career rushing list for Texas high schools. He led Midland Lee to three straight state championships, the only three in school history, from 1998-2000.

Benson played at Texas from 2001-2004 and his 5,540 yards ranks second at the university and ninth in NCAA history. He scored 64 career touchdowns with the Longhorns and won the Doak Walker award, given to the nation’s top running back, in 2004.


He was the only player in school history to rush for at least 1,000 yards in four seasons and was inducted into the university’s Hall of Honor in 2014.


Benson was drafted No. 4 overall by the Bears in 2005 and helped Chicago reach the playoffs the following season. He had his finest years with Cincinnati from 2008-11, taking over as the featured back on a team that made the playoffs twice but lost in the first round each time.

“Cedric was a fine football player for us,” Bengals President Mike Brown said. “He played a principal role for several years here, including a couple of playoff runs. ”

Benson ran for a career-high 1,251 yards while leading a playoff push in 2009, the first of three straight 1,000-yard seasons. He also led the Bengals to the playoffs in 2011, when Andy Dalton and A.J. Green arrived as rookies.

“Once he bought into our system, he was like a flower. He just blossomed,” former Bengals running backs coach Jim Anderson said. “He gave us an element we didn’t have. We had complementary guys, but Cedric gave us a missing element. He was a good man. He was one of my guys and it hurts. Life is too short.”


Benson played one season with Green Bay, where he started the first five games in 2012 before suffering a season-ending Lisfranc fracture in Indianapolis on Oct. 17. He rushed for 248 yards and a touchdown on 71 carries, and caught 14 passes for 97 yards in five games with the Packers before the foot injury.

Benson finished his NFL career with 6,017 yards rushing and 33 total touchdowns.

“He was from Texas, and he showed his Texas toughness in leading us to a division championship in just his second season with us,” Bengals owner Mike Brown said. “His three consecutive 1,000-yard seasons displayed the talent he possessed. Our organization is deeply saddened by his sudden and tragic passing.”

Benson returned to Austin after his playing career and set up a foundation, NUFCED, to aid underprivileged children and families. Those efforts included helping repair damage at the home of the first victim killed in a series of bombings in Austin early 2018.

source: sports.inquirer.net

Spanking tied to later aggression among kids

NEW YORK - Think spanking will help teach an out of control child to stay in line? A new study suggests the opposite may be true.

Researchers found kids who were spanked as five-year-olds were slightly more likely to be aggressive and break rules later in elementary school.

Those results are in keeping with past research, said Elizabeth Gershoff. She studies parental discipline and its effects at the University of Texas at Austin.

"There's just no evidence that spanking is good for kids," she told Reuters Health.

"Spanking models aggression as a way of solving problems, that you can hit people and get what you want," Gershoff, who wasn't involved in the new study, said.

"When [children] want another kid's toy, the parents haven't taught them how to use their words or how to negotiate."

Despite mounting evidence on the harms tied to spanking, it is "still a very typical experience" for U.S. children, the study's lead author said.

"Most kids experience spanking at least some point in time," Michael MacKenzie, from Columbia University in New York, said. "So there's this disconnect."

His team used data from a long-term study of children born in one of 20 U.S. cities between 1998 and 2000. The new report includes about 1,900 kids.

Researchers surveyed parents when children were three and five years old about whether and how often they spanked their child.

Then they asked mothers about their kid's behavior problems and gave the children a vocabulary test at age nine.

A total of 57 percent of mothers and 40 percent of fathers said they spanked children when they were three years old. That fell slightly to 52 percent of mothers and 33 percent of fathers who spanked at age five.

Children acted out more and were more aggressive when they had been spanked by their mothers as five-year-olds, whether regularly or occasionally.

Spanking by mothers at least twice a week was tied to a two-point increase on a 70-point scale of problem behavior. That was after the researchers took into account children's behavior at younger ages and other family characteristics.

There was no link between spanking by parents at age three and children's later behavior, however.

Kids also tended to score lower on vocabulary tests when they had been regularly spanked by their fathers at age five, MacKenzie and his colleagues write in Pediatrics.

The average vocabulary score for all nine-year-olds in the study was 93, slightly below the test-wide standard score of 100. Frequent spanking by fathers was linked to a four-point lower score. But the researchers couldn't be sure that small difference wasn't due to chance.

Gershoff said the finding is a bit hard to interpret. "I don't think that spanking makes kids stupider," she said.

It's possible that parents who are spanking are not talking to their children as often, Gershoff said. Or kids who are spanked and act out could be more distracted in the classroom.

When it comes to disciplining children, she said there's more evidence on what doesn't work long-term than what does.

"We know that spanking doesn't work, we know that yelling doesn't work," Gershoff said. "Timeout is kind of a mixed bag. We know that reasoning does work."

MacKenzie said spanking continues to seem effective to parents in the short term, which makes it hard to change their minds about it.

"It's strongly associated with immediate compliance," he told Reuters Health. "Children will change their behavior in the moment."

Because family strain and spanking often go together, he said doctors should try to support stressed parents to encourage more positive forms of discipline.

"The techniques that are designed to promote positive behaviors … oftentimes take more effort and time to put into place," MacKenzie said. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com