Antonio Brown's mysterious foot injury was caused by cryotherapy frostbite
Welcome to the Wednesday edition of The Cooler, where it couldn't possibly be anything but 2019 in sports. Let's get to it:
*Athletes. They're just like us. They put on their pants one leg at a time. They engage on social media. They like to enjoy vacations. They sometimes get extreme frostbite on their feet because of a cryotherapy session gone bad.
Just like the rest of us.
OK, maybe not like the rest of us. Maybe that's just Antonio Brown.
See, athletes have been singing the praises of cryotherapy for a while now. The process — which exposes athletes to extreme cold for a short amount of time in an effort to facilitate faster circulatory response and therefore faster recovery from inflammation and other aches and pains — has plenty of fans among Vikings players, who use the state-of-the-art facility in Eagan that cools down to minus-190 degrees.
But Brown? He, um, apparently forgot the part about covering his extremities. Or at least didn't do a good enough job with it. Because reportedly the foot problem that has been plaguing him and has led to awful looking blistering skin that he posted recently on social media, is because of a cryotherapy session that led to frostbite.
The incident reportedly happened last month in France. Brown hasn't practiced in more than a week with his new team, the Raiders.
And I defy you to find a more sign-of-the-times sports injury than this one.
*On the positive side of Bay Area NFL injury news, former Vikings running back Jerick McKinnon returned to 49ers camp and was activated off the physically unable to perform list. McKinnon tore his ACL last year in camp with San Francisco after having a huge year for the Vikings in 2017.
*The NCAA has new rules for agents representing basketball players considering entering the NBA draft, and they … um … seem like the sorts of rules that the NCAA would make. Let's just put it that way. Dan Wetzel has a very good take on it here.
*How rare was that clunker from Jose Berrios on Tuesday? He hadn't allowed more than three earned runs in any game since May 18 at Seattle.