SPRING LAKE— A concept first scribbled on a napkinhas been applied to waste management pump stationsin three coastal, flood-prone towns in southern Mon-mouth County.

The New Jersey Environmental InfrastructureTrust, an independent state agency that provides fi-nancing for water infrastructure projects, has enoughfaith in the concept to bank roll the next two stations ata cost of $4 million.

“When we lend money like this, we absolutely do itwith the resiliency perspective in mind. We don’t wantto put millions of dollars of investment into somethingto have it washed out in another storm,” said DavidZimmer, executive director of NJEIT.

Officials call it a “mobile enclosure” pumping sta-tion. The enclosure, such as a trailer, houses the pump

DAN RADEL @DANIELRADELAPP

See PUMP, Page A6

Is the future of waste pump stations here?

PHOTO COURTESY OF NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT

OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION

Sea Girt’s “mobile enclosure” waste pump station on Sea GirtAvenue. The station was installed in 2010.

HAPPY (HALLOWEEN)

HOUR

YOU’RE

IN FOR

A TREAT

AT THE

SHORE.

@PLAY,

C1

Last week, after speakingabout faith and salvationduring a rally at Rumson-Fair Haven RegionalHigh School, Keith Elias,

a former New York Giant andstar running back at Lacey HighSchool and Princeton Universitywho’s now involved in Christianministry, was asked a questionthat would have sounded absurdonly a few months ago.

Can football be saved?It’s not such a silly question

now. Not after the Ray Rice andAdrian Peterson scandals, the ar-rest Friday night of seven Sayre-ville high school football playerson charges of hazing and sexual-ly assaulting new teammates, therecent arrests of four LakewoodHigh School football players onarmed robbery charges, and lastweekend’s alleged assault of a

Last week, after speakingabout faith and salvationduring a rally at Rumson-Fair Haven RegionalHigh School, Keith Elias,

a former New York Giant andstar running back at Lacey HighSchool and Princeton Universitywho’s now involved in Christianministry, was asked a questionthat would have sounded absurdonly a few months ago.

Can football be saved?It’s not such a silly question

now. Not after the Ray Rice andAdrian Peterson scandals, the ar-rest Friday night of seven Sayre-ville high school football playerson charges of hazing and sexual-ly assaulting new teammates, therecent arrests of four LakewoodHigh School football players onarmed robbery charges, and lastweekend’s alleged assault of a

FOOTBALLUNDER FIRESayreville scandal. Lakewood player arrests. More on-fielddeaths. Is ‘America’s Game’ coming apart at the seams?

SHANNON MULLEN @MULLENAPPSHANNON MULLEN @MULLENAPP

See GAME, Page A4See GAME, Page A4

Asbury Park Press APP.COM $1.00

MONDAY 10.13.14

VOLUME 135

NUMBER 245

SINCE 1879

ADVICE C4CLASSIFIED C6COMICS C5LOCAL A3LOTTERIES A2

OBITUARIES A9OPINION A11SPORTS D1WEATHER D12YOUR MONEY A8

FBI PROBING OCEAN CO. CONTRACTS?STORY, A3

HONORING COLUMBUS IN SEASIDESTORY AND PHOTOS, A3

TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie’s designs on theWhite House have triggered jockeying for positionamong potential successors three years before Chris-tie’s term ends.

The prospect that the Republican governor willleave office early to pursue a presidential campaignhas changed the traditional timeline for New Jersey gu-bernatorial candidates. There’s early groundwork ac-tivity already taking place from both entrenched poli-ticians as well as outsiders such as Middletown resi-dent Phillip Murphy, who was the U.S. ambassador toGermany for four years.

Murphy, a Democrat, has not yet committed to acampaign, but he has hired consultants on New Jerseypolitics.

Christie doesn’t have to resign office to run for presi-dent, but if he does, he’ll be succeeded by Lt. Gov. KimGuadagno until a special election on his unexpired termis held in November 2015.

“This all sort of reminds me of the 2012 presidentialelection, when CNN the day after President Obama wonre-election did a story on the 2016 presidential

Would-be successors to Christiealready are jockeying for position

BOB JORDAN @BOBJORDANAPP

Who’ll beour nextgovernor?

See CHRISTIE, Page A4

USA TODAY EBOLA PROTOCOL BREACH: WHAT WENT WRONG IN TEXAS? PAGE 1B

COMFORT LEVEL RISINGFOR GIANTS SPORTS, D1

Page A4 Monday, October 13, 2014 Asbury Park Press APP.COM

obituariescover story

Toms River youth coachby the father of a player,after the coach beratedthe team’s poor perfor-mance.

Football — America’smost popular and profit-able sport, by a wide mar-gin — is sufferingthrough an epic losingstreak of negative public-ity.

The National FootballLeague has grabbed mostof the recent headlines.Since January 2000, therehave been at least 732 ar-rests and criminal casesof active NFL players, ac-cording to a databasekept by USA TodaySports. But even as thesecriminal cases multiply,grave questions are beingraised about the safety ofthe game, even at theyoungest, least violentlevels of the sport.

A Sept. 18 cover storyin Time magazine aboutthe recent death of a16-year-old player in Missou-ri named Chad Stover fol-lowing an in-game colli-sion, posed a provocativequestion, “Is FootballWorth It?” Not long afterthe story appeared, threemore high school playersdied in the span of a singleweek, including a 16-year-old boy on Long Islandwho collapsed on the fieldafter a jarring hit.

During the 10 years be-tween 2004 and 2013,there were a total of 123fatalities in the U.S. di-rectly or indirectly asso-ciated with high-schoolfootball, according to areport by the NationalCenter for CatastrophicInjury Research.

Even President Ba-rack Obama has weighedin on the safety issue.

“I’m a big football fan,but I have to tell you, if Ihad a son, I’d have to thinklong and hard before I let

him play football,” hesaid.

Is this a case of pilingon, unfairly slamming asport for isolated in-stances of bad behaviorand tragic on-field acci-dents?

Or has football ap-proaching some kind oftipping point, where par-ents, former players, andeven some of its most ar-dent fans are beginning toecho the Chad Stover’slast words before he lostconsciousness:

“Something’s wrong.”

A future?

Elias, now 42, belongsto a generation that stillremembers when Ameri-ca was enthralled withboxing, when fighterslike Muhammad Ali, Sug-ar Ray Leonard and MikeTyson were the biggestcelebrities in sports.

Fast forward a coupleof decades and raise yourhand if you name the cur-rent reigning heavy-weight championship ofthe world, without Goo-gling it?

As much as it painshim to see the sport heloves under such criticalscrutiny, Elias can’t imag-ine football suffering asimilar slide into irrele-vancy.

“Anything can hap-pen,” he said, “but I don’tthink that it will happen.”

After all, the NFL’s TVratings are up this year,despite the uproar overthe Ray Rice and AdrianPeterson cases. Rice wascut from the BaltimoreRavens after videoshowed him knocking hisgirlfriend, now wife, un-conscious in an AtlanticCity hotel elevator. Peter-son, of the Minnesota Vik-

ings, is facing a felonychild abuse charge relat-ed to his 4-year-old son.

The league generatessome $10 billion in annualrevenue, far more thanany other professionalsport, and it expects thatnumber to reach $25 bil-lion a year by 2027, Timereported.

And even with greaterpublic awareness aboutthe risk of concussions,Elias sees no slackeningin interest in playing foot-ball at the grassroots lev-el.

That’s not to say thesport doesn’t have prob-lems, he said. But at leaston the professional level,he said, those issues arebeing addressed, throughtougher policies regard-ing the off-the-field be-havior by players, for ex-ample, and rule changesand equipment advancesaimed at making thegame safer.

“Each and every one ofthese problems is beingdealt with,” Elias said.“People are looking atreal solutions to thesethings.”

Other former playersexpress similar confi-dence in the future of thegame.

“I think the publicwants football too much.

It’s a great game and it’sgetting greater and great-er every year,” said PhilVillapiano, of Rumson,who had a long career as alinebacker with the NFL’sOakland Raiders.

“The public wants it,the public is going to haveit, and these players (whoare getting into trouble)are not going to ruin it,”he said.

Another former NFLplayer, Harry Flaherty, ofOceanport, agrees.

Flaherty’s family is abit like the Kennedys offootball in the Shore area.Flaherty himself was anall-state player at RedBank Catholic and wenton to become an All-America linebacker atHoly Cross. After gradua-tion, he had brief stintswith the Philadelphia Ea-gles and Dallas Cowboysin the NFL, along with theTampa Bay Bandits in theshort-lived United StatesFootball League.

His wife, Janine, hasthree brothers who havecoached in the NFL, in-cluding Jason Garrett,the current head coach ofthe Cowboys.

In addition, all four oftheir sons have playedfootball at the college lev-el, and two have gone onto coach in college. Thecouple’s youngest son,Jesse, is now a freshmanrunning back at WagnerUniversity.

A former coach atRBC, Flaherty, 52, worksclosely with Elias as headof the New Jersey chap-ter of the Fellowship ofChristian Athletes.

Like Elias and Villapia-no, Flaherty is troubledby the raft of recent foot-ball-related scandals. Buthe maintains these casesare the exception, not therule.

“It’s disappointing, be-cause I know there’s a lotof guys who are trying todo the right things,” hesaid.

“We have these kidswho are up against it,” headded, referring to theprevalence of fatherlesschildren today, “becauseof the society we live in.”

On the safety issue,Flaherty believes therisks are being over-blown.

In all the years heplayed, he said, he neverhad a serious injury. Thekey, he tells parents, is tomake sure their child’scoach is teaching thegame correctly.

“If you teach the gameright and you're not put-ting your head down oncontact, than it's not goingto be a problem,” Flaher-ty said.

At the same time, theunavoidable, nerve-wracking potential for in-

jury on every play is be-ginning to wear on hiswife Jeanine, Flahertyadmitted. Their son Jes-se, who is still playing,needed back surgeryearly in his high schoolcareer at RBC.

“Listen, she’s a mom.We pray for our kids,”Flaherty said. “She's kindof tired of the wholething, but my son Jesse'sdream is to play football.

“How do you take akid's dream away?”

Game’s other side

Dr. Alan Cabasso’s en-joyment of watching foot-ball is tempered by hisconcern for the players’safety.

“It’s a great game,”said Cabasso, a pediatri-cian and clinical directorof the concussion pro-gram at the K. HovnanianChildren’s Hospital, Nep-tune.

“(But) it’s a riskygame, a violent game. Youcan’t sugarcoat it,” headded. “Football is agame where you’re sup-posed to hit the otherguy.”

While much of the fo-cus today is on concus-sions, less severe, “sub-concussive” blows to thehead are starting to getmore attention.

For example, re-searchers at VirginiaTech University whotracked 19 boys ages 7and 8 during their 2011and 2012 youth footballseasons found that, as agroup, they sustainedmore than 3,000 blows tothe head, the majority ofwhich occurred in prac-tice. While none of theboys suffered a concus-sion, but some of the hitsthey took registered G-forces on par with thosegenerated in a car crash.

Increasingly, con-cerned parents are ask-ing him if he thinks it’ssafe for their children toplay football.

Scientifically, Cabassosays, there’s not enoughdata to answer conclu-sively. His three most re-cent concussion patients,he noted, were all soccerplayers.

While more studiesneed to be done, Cabas-so’s own view is that full-contact football ought tobe limited until playersreach high school. Cana-da, he notes, has taken asimilar, proactive ap-proach to youth hockey.

Villipiano, 65, says he’snow part of a long-termstudy himself that’s mon-itoring the brain health offormer players.

And what if Cabasso’sown grandson had hisheart set on playing foot-ball?

“Knowing what I donow, I would do every-thing possible to discour-age them,” he said.

Shannon Mullen:732-643-4278;smullen@app.com

GameContinued from Page A1

From left, Dr. Alan Cabasso, pediatricianand clinical director of the concussionprogram at the K. Hovnanian Children’sHospital, Neptune, and former NFL playersHarry Flaherty and Keith Elias.

“You can’t

sugarcoat it.

Football is a game

where you’re

supposed to hit

the other guy.”

DR. ALAN CABASSOPEDIATRICIAN, CONCUSSION EXPERT

prospects,’’ said CarlGolden, political analystwith the Hughes Centerfor Public Policy atStockton College. “

Murphy is a Demo-crat. Others include Sen-ate President StephenSweeney, Jersey CityMayor Steven Fulop,and Assemblyman JohnWisniewski.

On the Republicanside, there’s Guadagno,state Sen. Tom Kean andAssemblymen JonBramnick and Jay Web-ber.

Plus, there could bewildcard entrants.

For instance, U.S.Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., is seeking a six-year term in Washingtonin next month’s election.Bramnick said hewouldn’t be surprised tosee Booker returning toNew Jersey as a guber-natorial candidate.

Bramnick said Swee-ney and Fulop are thefrontrunners for theDemocrats’ nomination,but Booker is a possibil-ity, he said, “if every-thing else starts to meltdown.’’

Booker spokeswom-an Silvia Alvarez saidthat scenario is unlikely.

“He expects to servea six-year term,’’ Alva-rez said.

Bramnick said he’s atleast a year away frommaking his own decisionon trying to captureDrumthwacket, the gov-ernor’s mansion. That’sbecause the entire As-sembly will be in a criti-cal top-of-the-ballotelection in 2015 with noother statewide races.

“I’m putting all of myenergy into that in 2014,getting my memberselected and addingmembers, and then I’llmake decisions aboutmy future after that,’’Bramnick said.

Sweeney has regular-ly strayed from hishome district inGloucester County in re-cent months. He alsomade a spring visit to Is-rael with other lawmak-ers.

Sweeney spokesmanRich McGrath saidSweeney’s schedule hasnothing to do with his po-litical future.

Sweeney has heldtown hall meetings, andhe appeared on radioand TV last month urg-ing for state review ofthe Ray Rice assaultcase.

Sweeney “has state-wide responsibilitiesthat take him to differ-ent parts of the state on awide variety of issues,’’McGrath said. “Othersmay speculate about hisfuture, but he’s focusedon doing his job as Sen-ate president."

Nearly three-quar-ters of the Republicansand more than half theDemocrats surveyed ina recent Fairleigh Dick-inson PublicMind pollweren’t sure who they’dlike as nominees in thenext gubernatorial elec-tion. The top vote-getteramong the Democratswas Sen. Richard Codey,who became governorafter Jim McGreeveyresigned.

Codey briefly consid-ered running againstChristie in the 2013 elec-tion but ultimately en-dorsed Barbara Buono,who became the partynominee and lost toChristie in a race thatwasn’t close.

Bob Jordan: 609-984-4343;bjordan@app.com

ChristieContinued from Page A1

Gov. Chris

Christie said he’ll

make a decision

about a

presidential

campaign early

next year.