The reason I don't like football is because I went to a football mad high school..

[Fumesucker]

Small town in the deep South in the mid-sixties, the football team was practically the only reason for the school, academics were distinctly secondary to the football program and everyone knew it.

Football players could and did get away with nearly anything up to and including impregnating cheerleaders, the pregnant women were kicked out of school but not the football players who impregnated them, they were still right out there on the field playing.

If you didn't show sufficient enthusiasm for the football cult your life was made miserable in many small and sometimes large ways, you were basically a pariah.

Intellectually I know that not all football players are no-necked, testosterone pumped cretins in too tight, codpiece equipped pants but it takes me real effort not to feel that way.

http://www.timgreenbooks.com/

I have a good idea what things are like at Penn State re worship of the football team because I came of age in just that atmosphere..

Oh, and yes before someone uses it as an insult I was indeed the last one chosen for any sports team in PE, perhaps it had to do with the fact I was two grades ahead of my age cohort, that makes a huge difference in physical ability at young adolescence.

After HS I went on to road race motorcycles for a while so it's not that I lack courage or quick reflexes, It's more that was just about half the size of most of the football players around me in HS.

[Dawson Leery]

1. Where I was raised, the rules were bent often for the football team.

Such conflicts as having coaches double as teachers led to many things slip by that you and I would not get away with. I dispose that God Damn game!

This was in Connecticut. Wherever sports is given priority, this is what happens.

[apocalypsehow]

2. And I'll bet you had to walk ten miles to school in ten foot snowdrifts too, huh?

[Fumesucker]

3. I love you too...

:hi:

[apocalypsehow]

4. Ah, I'll have to Rec your OP for that. Why do you have to go and be so nice?

:hi:

[Fumesucker]

5. "It's nice to be nice to the nice." -Major Frank Burns n/t

[lbrtbell]

6. Football isn't to blame

The educational system is. Football sells tickets and brings in money. Smart kids don't.

I love football, but the sport isn't what causes the problems. As always, it's all about the money.

[Fumesucker]

7. Tell it to the kid having his head shoved in a toilet by a football player. n/t

[jberryhill]

25. +1

[Dawson Leery]

33. It doesn't take much to throw a ball around.

[sylveste]

39. we should

get a team together, play a little ball.

[coalition_unwilling]

8. +1,000,000,000 x 1,000,000,000. One of my close friends died

during high-school football practice. Town barely skipped a beat, IIRC, and continued its season as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. What's the death of one 15 year old when the entire town revolves around football?

[Fumesucker]

12. It isn't anything out of the ordinary..

Priorities, man, priorities.

:eyes:

[coalition_unwilling]

13. OT somewhat, but one of the highly encouraging things about

Occupy Los Angeles is that, in 4 successive weekend visits, I have never once seen or heard a single reference to organized sports of any kind. Ahh, blessed relief!

[Fumesucker]

17. OWS just doesn't know what's really important in life..

:evilgrin:

Seriously though, that's a good point.

[NOMOREDRUGWAR]

9. Interesting for you to mention Tim Green

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2011/11/tim_green_update.html

[Fumesucker]

10. OK, all football players are no-necked, testosterone pumped cretins..

:evilgrin:

[NOMOREDRUGWAR]

18. Ryan Fitzpatrick, Bills quarterback scored a 1580 on his SAT(back when it was out of 1600)

Pretty sure that makes him smarter than 99.9% of the non-football players, wouldn't you say? There are some smart guys in football. Obviously the majority of them are slightly above average to way below average intelligence, but yeah.

[Fumesucker]

19. Eh, you tried to make me look foolish because I don't follow football..

When I was at least trying to be evenhanded and fair.

Or that's the way it looked to me. :hi:

I used to listen to Tim Green's commentary on NPR and he always struck me as intelligent, that's really the only way I knew of him.

Oh and SAT scores don't correlate all that well to intelligence, it's really more of a cultural thing, I did pretty good on the SAT myself and I only took it once as a junior and SAT prep courses were unknown when I took it.

[NOMOREDRUGWAR]

21. Wasn't trying to embarrass you dude...

I follow football but I also wasn't big enough at 5'10" 160 to play it either. I settled for varsity soccer, which at my school, was actually far more successful than the football team. :) You know as well as I do that the average soccer player is light years beyond the average football player in intelligence. I just wanted the generalizations to stop.

Tim Green is very intelligent.

SAT scores do correlate very strongly with intelligence. Many lower and middle-class Asians do quite well on it despite not being born in this country and having English as a second language. It's one of the only standardized metrics we have, but I don't want to throw the whole thread off-topic.

Basically, I agree with you that a lot of players are neanderthals.

[Romulox]

11. I was a geeky, sickly kid. One thing I've learned as I get older, there are many kinds of I.Q.

("intelligence" is what I wanted in my subject, but was cut off.)

In my day, I've met brilliant poets who couldn't change the oil in their own car if their lives depended on it. I've met engineers who had no idea how to speak to their fellow human beings. I've met attorneys who've argued before the SCOTUS, but couldn't manage their own day-to-day affairs.

And I've met (and been) "brilliant" kids who didn't understand the nexus between mind/body/soul.

At an older age, I've become much more fit and in tune with my own body. It's as I develop this highly challenging skill set, I respect athletes **much** more than I did at a younger age. If you've never really practiced at a sport, you may not understand the mental stamina and endurance required to develop the required skillsets, for example. Moreover, training to progress while avoiding injury is quite tricky--a far cry from the "I pick things up and put them down," joke! Certainly, it never occurred to me that the approach to athletic training could be intellectual demanding, but I'll be damned if it isn't.

So, for lack of a better phrase, "physical intelligence" does exist, and many learned people lack it.

I too felt the sting of ostracism due to my non-athleticism, and that was cruel. But, as I reflect, I realize part of it was me, and part of it was them. Either way, it's not football that makes teens insecure and cliquish! :shrug:

[Fumesucker]

14. Kneesliding is like ballet at 150 mph..

ETA: I rode my bicycle fifteen miles to Stone Mountain and then up and down the mountain and back home pretty regularly when I was in HS, two or three times every summer.

[Romulox]

15. Awesome!

Not trying to contradict your experience, Fume. Just sharing a different view. I've learned to like football over the years. There's some ballet in there, too. :toast:

[hedgehog]

16. I never had the patience to watch football, but my mother insisted the

game has changed over the years. In her last few years she wouldn't watch a game because she found the violence sickening.

[HughBeaumont]

46. Oh, look, a Browns QB getting sacked. There's a rarity.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[ProgressiveProfessor]

20. I was also an outlier in HS...though large enough to do so I refused to play football

I participated in other sports and ranked at the state level. I also was serious about my academics. One day one of the linemen decided I needed to change my disdainful attitude. He had to have knee surgery the next day.

Unbridled or idolized jocks are a form of power given to to those often too young to handle it any where near responsibly. It was one of the things that lead to Columbine. Had I not been able to take care of myself, not sure how I would have dealt with things.

[ScreamingMeemie]

22. I just need to correct something...The idea that Columbine was

the result of bullying was a media fueled lie. Eric Harris was extremely popular and well-liked. By most accounts, a charmer. Dylan Klebold also was not what one would call a social pariah. Eric Harris was a classic sociopath. I encourage you to read "Columbine" by David Cullen:

http://www.amazon.com/Columbine-Dave-Cullen/dp/0446546933


I was horrified how the media twisted this story. Before reading the book, I believed the same as you.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

26. There are other versions of the "story"

Columbine had a very strong jock culture...it was part of the problems there, which were not just Harris and Klebold.

[ScreamingMeemie]

27. At least read the book please... That wasn't part of it at all, in this

instance. It was about sociopathic behavior. End of story.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

29. I take a look at it but multiple other sources support that the jock culture

was an issue there.

[ScreamingMeemie]

30. Multiple media sources supported that theory. Look at the backgrounds

of the children who were wounded and killed. Eric Harris was a sociopath who hooked up with a manic and created a fantasy.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

32. Went to get the current URLs for "Tales from the Hellsmouth"

and the follow on(More Tales from the Hellsmouth"). They were on Slashdot. Have to find out what happened to them. They were a compilation of stories about the persecution the "different" kids went through before and after Columbine. Very brutal stuff and it went on nationwide.

Per my current students, it still goes on in HS. Fortunately we have no serious athletics where I teach, so that kind of crap on a collegiate level is non-existent

[apocalypsehow]

43. "Per my current students" - Comedy gold.

"Fortunately we have no serious athletics where I teach, so that kind of crap on a collegiate level is non-existent"

Uh-huh. Entertain us some more, "professor": just out of idle curiosity, what was the title of your dissertation or thesis (either/or)?


(Wait for it...wait for it...

1. "They called it something else where I went to school."

2. "They don't call them/it that anymore, but the very fact you're asking tells me 'personal attack; attempt to change the subject; irrelevant anecdote; closing personal attack'."

3. "It was soooooo specialized/sub-topic specific/peer reviewed particular/otherwise incredibly esoteric (pick one) that not only is it uniquely & solely preserved in paper copy format on file in the locked safe of the Chancellor's personal office, even that copy was composed in invisible ink," aka "you won't be able to Google it."

4. "Which one?" (almost always followed by some variant of 1, 2, or 3).

5. Denying the antecedent, or some other convoluted, tedious distortion/form of Modus Ponens.

6. "I could answer, but I won't. I - (insert here standard excuse for not answering the straightforward question from "I don't have tenure yet" to "I'm a secret agent").

7. Wear, wear, wear out that 'Alert' button!!!

8. Some other as-yet un-encountered deflection/dodge/premise shifting/personal attack/mixture of same.

BANK IT. ....)

[ProgressiveProfessor]

45. I actually forgot the word "here", thanks for pointing it out.

As in "is non-existent here". There is a fair amount of collegiate jock culture on some UC campuses and USC is rife with it. Our campus has some athletics, but nothing serious or at the national level

[Fumesucker]

24. Good point about the power being too much too young..

Frankly I'm not sure that the kind of adulation and the power that goes with it a lot of players get could be handled by many people of any age at all.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

23. I'm a Raiders fan, I love football, and I agree with your sentiments

I don't think football belongs in high school and I don't think high school should be an A-level minor league for the NFL.

I spent one year at a public high school in Europe. Typically, they had physical education classes to offer a minimum amount of healthy exercise but they had no organized sports. Kids who wanted to excel in a sport like rugby or soccer joined a local sports club that offered young kids intensive expert training and the chance to play on a team. One of the local clubs had groomed quite a few great soccer players. But the kids did this after school or on week-ends on their own time and totally without school sanction or involvement. At the high school I attended, there were no fight songs, no school colors, no national anthems played or pledges of allegiance, no cheerleaders, no lettermen, no homecoming dances or homecoming kings and queens, no jock or cheerleader cliques. There were long hours of academic classes and tons of homework. And this was a typical public school. Guys who wanted a professional career in soccer sometimes had to drop out and attend a trade school instead. There wasn't an anti-intellectual attitude towards good students and in fact no term for the American expression "nerd". From what I understand, the same philosophy (if you want to be an athlete, do it on your own time) held true at the public university as well.

[Gregorian]

28. To me, football is crude. I like refinement

Fuck it. I posted a long explanation. I can't take the response that I predict.

Give me the Tour de France. That's all.

[quinnox]

31. I was no jock, but played pickup games of football in the

neighborhood, and later even bet on the televised pro games. Now I see football is a waste of time and only for the young and dumb and those who don't know any better. I don't give a damn if others think I sound condescending either, its my opinion, deal with it.

[ScreamingMeemie]

41. Not worth it.

[Odin2005]

34. I grew up in the rural upper midwest and I think all rural areas are HS Football crazy.

:(

[Blue_In_AK]

35. I went to high school in Texas.

I know exactly what you're talking about.

[tnlefty]

36. Tell me about it, I grew up in a small North GA town...Ii've been in

TN for longer than my 20 years in GA, just over the border and..

I've had people say some rather awful things to me because my sons never wanted to play football.

At the age of three one was trying to figure out how step up/down transformers work. They were more interested in getting underneath cars at VERY young ages trying to figure out how a clutch works. They were more interested in building model volcanoes and actually getting them to erupt. Then they were more interested in model rockets, and learning to play instruments and were in band, one was in honors competitions playing the trombone in a high school marching band setting and in jazz band.

They learned to plant flowers and plants for food. One would love to attend the Art Institute to become a chef, but we can't afford the tuition - roughly $34K for the first year and roughly $26K for the next 2 years.

I and their Dad would pass football with them in the yard, we have a basketball goal that is used, but the only organized sports 2 were interested in is soccer, and one wrestled for brief couple of years.

I played more organized sports than their Dad did, so I'm probably still the tomboy of the family. :evilgrin: And did I ever get tired of that label. Their father was a journeyman lineman, until he had to go 'inside' as he knew his knees and shoulders wouldn't hold up anymore. Union family here...:woohoo:

[Fumesucker]

37. I was a lineman for a very brief stint..

Tough as hell job..

:hi:

[Arugula Latte]

38. I always resented it in high school when we were expected to fawn and faint over football players

They were always paraded out in front of us for assemblies and we were all expected to go apeshit. I really didn't care if our stupid high school team won or lost, and I never figured out why football was supposed to be such a big deal.

[yewberry]

40. Completely the oposite. I couldn't care less about football

and maybe it's because I went to 2 different high schools without football teams (in NH and NY). My first 3 years in high school were at a school whose founders had lost a son to a football injury, and we had no football team. Soccer and skiing were big, but nothing like you describe. Senior year was a small school with lacrosse and soccer, but no football.

I don't understand football and I'm not interested in doing so. I sure as heck don't understand this football worship.

[ScreamingMeemie]

42. I went to a high school that had a football team, and a debate team, basketball team

and math team. Lots of teams. And some of the guys got some of the girls pregnant...and kids across all of the groups got caught with weed, or cigarettes (actually those over 18 could smoke on the "patio"). Bad behavior, in high school, wasn't limited to the football team...it was limited to the hormones that raged within just about all of us.

[B Calm]

44. Hey wait a minute, I played HS football. .

[madmom]

47. We also live in a "football community". My daughter was not into sports at all. She

decided she wanted dance lessons (ballet, taps etc). Most of her female classmates were into volleyball or soccer, the boys football (of course) and baseball. They were not very kind to her during gym class when it proved to be just an extension of practice for the team. One day she had a volleyball spiked into her face on purpose by the "star" player who was in her gym class. The ending to the story was not shall we say pretty. They soon found out that the little dancer had some muscle behind her and dance was NOT a "girlie" past-time. This was well over 10 years ago and they are all friends now, but they showed a new respect after the one incident that proved to be the proverbial straw that broke the camels back.