In defense of High School football and jocks and nerds!

[Logical]

Why so many posts about how people hate football. And how people hated the football players in High School. And how people hate Jocks. I don't get it.

I went to HS in the late 70s. I was a nerd and a computer geek even back then. It was punch cards initially but still computers.

I played football all my life as a kid growing up. I LOVED football. I loved playing it, I loved watching it, I love all there was about it.

My BEST memories of High School are playing on the football team. It was great to be part of the team. To celebrate wins and to regret losses. It was fun to work hard and push yourself to do better. And build up bonds with your teammates.

Some of the guys on the team were idiots. Some were great kids. Since high school, I know one of the guys on our team is in prison and one of them owns 7 hospitals. All this proves is that the make up of the football team was like the rest of society. A mix of good and bad.

But my memories are wonderful and I cherish those years playing. At our last class reunion we sat around and talked about our "Glory Days" and we had fun doing it.

In high school there were jocks who were assholes, cheerleaders who were stuck up witches and chess club members who thought they were better than any of us. But there were also members of all the groups who were the nicest people you could ever meet. And still are.

So I am not ashamed to admit I loved playing High School Football. I hope all kids find a niche in High School and enjoy it.

[DrDan]

1. have to agree - it is one thing to sit behind a keyboard and be strong in anonymity - and

another to put it on the line in front of hundreds, if not thousands of fans with that big number on your back leaving no doubt as to who you are.

Same for the debaters, the cross-country runners, the chess players. These activites all serve a purpose.

[Logical]

3. So true. I am proud of any HS performer, athlete, writer, etc who takes a chance!!

[Bluenorthwest]

2. In my High School the 'niche' was called education.

We had no football team at all. We had other priorities.

[Logical]

4. And, I can find many successful athletes who did both. Your point is???

[Bluenorthwest]

6. Not really a point, just an observation...

Your entire HS experience seems to have revolved around a dynamic that did not exist in my own. Cliques and 'niches' were not the way at my school. That culture is a created culture, and some schools create another one. The paradigm you were raised in 'nerds and jocks' was created for you to live in, it is not the natural state of things it is a choice. The question becomes is that the right choice? Does 'nerds and jocks' and the status implied in that really prepare young people for the real world? Is it the best preparation? What is taught within the athletics that does help a young person move forward in life? Will they be asked to catch a long pass at a job interview? No. Perhaps it is the 'team work' and the sense of honor in sports? If that is the case, then events such as those in the current news do call that presumption to light, you know? If it is about honor or loyalty, then clearly some sports programs fail deeply in teaching that.
In a school, any activity needs to teach useful skills. If team sports teach 'protect powerful people at the cost of weaker people' they are not teaching anything, and thus have no place in education.
I think the main problem in sports culture is that it is seen as beyond reproach or examination, any flaws, even such flaws as Penn State displayed, are not to be brought to light, out of service to a paradigm that many of us do not see as worth protecting to that extreme.

[Fumesucker]

5. Yes, you loved it..

Not everyone did, particularly those who are built more like a jockey than a linebacker.

Why is that so hard for some people to understand?

[MadHound]

8. So being built like a jockey prevented you from joining in any extracurricular activities?

The OP is more about kids finding a niche, be it football, debate, or something else. You didn't find one? Perhaps that says more about you than about high school.

And just because you couldn't, or wouldn't play football doesn't mean you have to hate it. Why not just accept it and move on?

[Fumesucker]

10. But the discussion you were basing your OP on was about football..

I don't hate the game, I really dislike the cult like attitude that often surrounds the players, coaches and so forth.

I did a lot of extracurricular activities but they weren't at school, I was scuba diving, astronomy club, I could ride a century easily.

Even at sixtysomething I can outride my HS football playing, iron pumping grandnephew on a bicycle, mostly because he's clueless about how to pace himself and properly utilize the gears.

[MadHound]

13. Actually, if you reread the OP, and this thread, it is more about finding a niche in high school,

And questioning why people damn those who find their niche in football.

And frankly, every sport, every competition has its cult like attitude and following. The only difference between one activity, say biking, and football is degree of magnitude. More people follow football than biking, thus the cult is larger in magnitude.

And that changes as the popularity of the activity changes. Thirty years ago, most folks hadn't heard of the Tour de France. Now millions still wear cheap rubber Live Strong bracelets, not just in support of fighting cancer, by also as homage to their hero Lance Armstrong. Same applies to soccer. When I was playing soccer in high school, it was a club sport, not varsity. Now every other kid in this country plays soccer at some point growing up, and high school and college soccer is growing by leaps and bounds.

So what makes football so different, except for the degree of magnitude?

As far as outriding your grandnephew, I imagine it's not just because of how he ride, but the differences in muscle development. I rode a lot of races back in the day, and still ride for fun. Going from running based sports to biking I know I had to develop a whole different set of muscles in my thighs and calves. Look at your own calf, see that big knot right at the top? That's from biking. Your grandnephew probably has a more developed calf muscle over all, as opposed to thick at the top and thin at the bottom. So while you can outride him, he can probably outjump you.

[Fumesucker]

18. I fucking hated school, it was sheer damn misery..

The last thing I wanted to do was spend more time in the place I was teased, bullied and humiliated nearly every day, mostly by football players.

Of course my grandnephew can outrun and outjump me, I'm an old man more than three times his age, what a ridiculous "point" to make.

But I can also outswim him underwater, I can make three laps of the pool without surfacing and he can do just over two, I know how to swim efficiently and he doesn't.

It's nice that you went to a school that didn't have a toxic football jock culture, I'm glad for you, you should realize that not everyone is as fortunate as yourself.

[Bluenorthwest]

14. So you claim that debate teams are equally praised and funded

as the football teams are? It is absurd to pretend that football is just another 'niche' on campus while music and other art programs are being shut down to preserve costly stadiums and equipment for a game they dig.
I'd also note that you got all personal and pushy with the other poster, rather than speaking of the issues, which is very much an aspect of 'jock culture'.
Football fans are just like fans of other things, like soap operas or pop stars, they deserve no more nor no less respect than given the the Beiber fan or Twilight ardent. The difference is that a fan of a singer knows they are not the singer, the fan of the athlete thinks being a fan makes them 'a jock' and part of 'jock culture' when they are really just part of a fandom, like Trekkers or those who dress up as Navi to go to Comicon.

[MadHound]

19. A lot of broadbrush generalizations and poor interpretations in that post

I'm not claiming that debate teams are equally praised or funded as football teams are. If you would care to read my reply to Fumesucker, you will notice I state that every activity has a cult like following, it is just the degree of magnitude that is the difference. Football has a bigger following, right now, than debate overall, so the degree of magnitude is larger(and to compare funding issues between the two is ridiculous, since debate doesn't require much in the way of special equipment).

This degree of magnitude is different between schools. I've known debate mad schools that give the same sort of devotion to their debate team as an Texas football school.

I've never said that football fans deserve any more respect than other fans. As far as the difference between athletic fans and other fans, you obviously have delved too terribly deeply into serious, obsessive fandom. I've yet to see a football fan do anything more radical in the way of body mods than tattoo themselves as an expression of their fandom. However a lot of dedicated Spock fans have had their ears clipped in homage to their TV show hero:shrug:

[JVS]

39. "built more like a jockey" Hmmm, HS horse-racing. That sounds like a potentially lucrative extra..

curricular. Imagine all the gambling income the school could get.

[Iggo]

7. Since you weren't the target of bullying jocks, I'm not surprised you don't get it.

Try a little empathy. Get outside of yourself for a couple of minutes and put yourself in their shoes. Imagine what it's like to be bullied, not by some social outcast, but by a protected class of favored sons. Imagine what it feels like when a few "idiots" in team jerseys are kicking the crap out of you while the rest of those "great kids" in team jerseys stand by and do nothing. Imagine what it's like to go to the authorities, and they end up protecting the bullies instead of the bullied. Then imagine how someone can hate jocks. It's really not that far of a stretch.

[Fumesucker]

11. +1

[Logical]

24. I was bullied in grade school, a lot. But it had nothing to do with sports. And....

Like I sad, there are idiots everywhere.

[Iggo]

25. But do you get it now?

[Logical]

28. No, I do not. I do get that people are not logical to realize that football does not cause...

bullying. The bully's would be bully's if they were not playing football.

[Iggo]

29. You really don't get how people who were bullied by jocks end up hating jocks.

Okay, then.

[Fumesucker]

33. In a lot of places the bullies wouldn't have the level of protection they do without athletics..

Or rather the mania for athletics that holds athletes on a pedestal and never holds them accountable for bad behavior.

This doesn't happen everywhere but it's common enough to turn a lot of people off from football and football players.

Read the thread, there's a lot of accounts right here.

It's amazing how you blame people who are victims of abuse for not liking the system that made their abuse worse by protecting the abusers.

Look at Penn State, that's what's triggered this conversation at this time, a member of the team got covered up for behavior which disgusts normal human beings.

[seabeyond]

9. it is all good. depends on parenting. environment. what is taught and allowed. not sport, or no

sport.

there are things in sports that will stay for a lifetime to allow a better person. or, someone can adopt the ugly of sport.

ours to choose.

[shraby]

12. The beef I have with high school "jocks" is that in many

cases, the "jock" is let off the hook on chores and responsibilities around his home because of constant practice time and time for games while the other siblings have to pick up the slack. It's not fair to either side of the equation. He's adulated far beyond what is healthy.

[Fumesucker]

15. Good point, I hadn't thought of that aspect.. n/t

[shraby]

17. I've seen it happen too many times...one child, maybe 2

in a family getting attention all out of proportion to the others. Not only high school, but those children who are given "Olympic training" at the expense of the rest of the family. It just plain stinks.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

21. i was an athlete and a pretty damned good one

played Div I ball after high school and was at least considered for play after that...if i had been more dedicated to it i might have gone all the way. but i was taught that all that work might not be enough to get me to the big time so i worked hard on other stuff too. i was taught that there was more to life than throwing a ball better than anyone else...by a father who DID go all the way and then served the sport he loved by coaching after his career was over. i was taught that team and the people on that team, good, bad and mediocre were more important that winning every game at any cost. i was taught that all people have worth...whether or not they could throw said ball and it has fashioned MY life much differently than the jocks you mention.

the beef you have with jocks is NOT with jocks...it is with those who are adoring him and giving him the pass. you treat someone like a god and they begin to think they are one and can shit on people and things that are deemed unimportant. it is not the jocks' fault...it can be squarely placed on their coaches who must WIN and their parents who value something so fleeting above that which is permanent and actually echos throughout our lives.

sP

[October]

32. +1 This is the truth.

Bullies come in all shapes and sizes.

Even as an adult I was bullied in an office environment. Odd, but true. Unexpected, too.

And it happened to be on an Ivy League campus. No sports involved.

[Gemini Cat]

16. If I could recommend this post 1000 times, I would.

I don't understand the hatred for sports. I can understand that some people may not like my sport of choice, but hating all sports and or condemning those of us who have either played or even like sports... I just don't get it.

[saras]

20. High School Football = High School Brain Damage - there's no way around it

It was apparent back in the seventies, that kids injured in football often NEVER recovered completely, or they got worse later. It wasn't talked about, let alone associated with football, but the statistics are there, and they haven't gotten better in the following decades.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/204099.php

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101007171417.htm

http://neurosciencenews.com/neuroscience-brain-damage-head-injury-football-players.htm

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC155424/

http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/football-braininjury-data-may-show-evidence-of-sports-longterm-risks-07192011.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/19/eveningnews/main6882893.shtml

I could do this all day - just google "football brain damage" and do your own research.


In comparison, it makes waterboarding look like harmless kid's play.

[coalition_unwilling]

22. All the football players at my high school (except for Leon, who

died during football practice when he and I were sophomores) were total fucking assholes who acted as if their shit didn't stink. The town and school supported their holier-than-thou swagger.

Are all football players fucking assholes? No, Leon was not. But football killed Leon.

Can you maybe understand why I have no love for the game?

[JoeyT]

23. We had a football player push a kid half his size off the bleachers

while they were "horsing around". The kid was the favorite target of the football team, and only "horsed around" when he couldn't get away or one of the bigger students that didn't care about sports or grades weren't around to put a stop to it, which usually resulted in our suspension. No arrest, no investigation, not even a suspension resulted from a death. Boys will be boys and it's a terrible tragedy, but he should have known better than to mess around on the bleachers with someone twice his size. The witnesses to the event (I wasn't one) knew without being told exactly what would happen if they came forward. They'd have been the new target of absolutely everyone, including the local cops, prosecutor, and judge. Our players weren't prosecuted for rape, they probably weren't going to get nailed for torture or murder either.

The guy that pushed the kid absolutely doesn't remember it happening that way, and when reminded what really happened he insists that it can't be true. What he remembers when talking about it is that they were best buddies that were horsing around and it's just terrible how fleeting life is and can be taken from us in a moment and a bunch of other Hallmark bullshit. The official story, in other words. Instead the reality was he terrorized a kid on a daily basis and finally managed to kill him, but the kid's life was worth less than his athletic ability, so it didn't matter. Go Bulldogs!

We should ask him how much he enjoyed high school sports culture. Or the girls that were raped and never came forward because after a few did they quickly learned the cops/DA weren't going to do anything and the community would band together to make them as miserable as possible, to the point they couldn't shop because stores wouldn't sell them anything and they couldn't sleep because of rocks coming through their windows. Everyone knew about the rapes even when the girls didn't come forward because the players bragged about it. Those girls (Well, women now.) should probably get a say too. The kids they tormented on a daily basis and didn't manage to kill? They probably ought to get a vote on liking football culture as well. Perhaps they can all tell us about their glory days.

This was all in the mid-90s. That could be why your experience is different from the experiences of others. In your time the "Football above all, then baseball/basketball, then the rest of the school." mentality may not have taken hold yet. Or it might still not have taken hold at your school. Or you might not have seen it because it wasn't directed at you. You might just not be from the deep south, where only Jesus rivals football, and Jesus doesn't win trophies.

It usually doesn't go as far as a death, but some people hate jocks and their enablers for a good solid reason. If they'd terrorized me throughout high school while the authorities stood around and clucked their tongues I'd probably hate them too. (I wasn't terrorized, just perpetually suspended for fighting until I got old enough to quit.) There's a reason that almost every "bullied someone into suicide" story involves the football team. It isn't necessarily that football players are worse than anyone else, it's because they can get away with things no one should be allowed to get away with. That's the objection most people have toward sports culture. Those stories you hear about people being tormented mercilessly by the football team until they can't face going to school? You're hearing about their glory days.

[jimlup]

26. Well said

Like most other human endeavors it is a source of good and bad. It is just silly to insist that it is absolutely one or the other.

[fishwax]

27. There's nothing wrong with hating football. There's also nothing wrong with loving football.

Neither is a character flaw.

This subject comes up from time to time on DU. It's always accompanied by a great deal of silliness. It's ridiculous to suggest that liking football is inconsistent with being a liberal, progressive, etc. It's also ridiculous to suggest that everyone who hates sports and/or sports culture is simply hung up about being picked last in gym class.

Many schools had/have athletes who are involved in bullying of some kind. That's a common experience that people have, and perhaps some others who were not bullied or who were close to/inside the jock community at their school didn't see how prevalent it was. Not everyone who hates football hates it because the football players at their school were jerks, of course, but the story is certainly a common one, and for those who loved high school it's always worth remembering that their were plenty of other people who didn't share that experience.

Many schools had/have athletes who were involved in doing a lot of good things too. I was an athlete in high school (not on the football team), and I interceded in bullying when I saw it. I knew other athletes (some certainly more high profile than me in our school) who were friends with the people who would usually be bullied and who used their position as social leaders in positive ways. That, too, is a pretty common experience. Perhaps (and understandably) those who suffered at the hands of some of the less-enlightened "jocks" didn't see how prevalent it was.

And, of course, in my school (and I suspect most others) there were plenty of bullies who came from outside the athletic teams as well.

[apocalypsehow]

30. This is gonna get me a double-deluge of hatin' on, but I wrestled AND played football in HS.

Lettered in the latter, though I really enjoyed wrestling more as a sport. Perfect combo of individual effort and team camaraderie among the wrestlers. Actually, I should have lettered in wrestling, too, but that's a whole 'nuther story. This was the 70s, too, so we probably had a lot of mirror cultural experiences unique to American high school life during those wild times.

Like your experience, some of the guys on my teams were bullies. Not a lot, though. Most were just getting through high school and liked to get laid, and when we were in junior high couldn't help but notice those dudes with the cool jackets with the big letter on them seemed to do well in that department, at least by the looks of who they walked the halls hand-in-hand with. Same experience with my last class reunion a few years back: all the guys who'd mixed it up in sports gravitated to each other, swapped old tall tales, that sort of thing.

Now, here's the thing: back in 2010 I posted on DU in some reply somewhere basically this same thing, that I played linebacker in high school and enjoyed it, and I got this long rambling PM from a seriously pissed-off person who'd actually trolled the freakin' archives to find my reply. If it wasn't against the rules, I'd post the thing in its entirety here, just to let everyone get a flavor of the venom in it.

Seriously: in my high school the jocks were mostly the good guys. Yeah, there were a few asswipes, but that's life. Maybe my HS was different, but there just wasn't a lot of social conflict. Maybe that's because we all came from families pretty close in income, largely middle class, or maybe it was just the times. But I had a blast, and don't really remember a lot of ubiquitous bullying around by jocks or any other "clique" during those times.

I will say this: the stoners & Led Zep-heads were the most fun to be around, hands down. :smoke:

[Logical]

40. Thanks for the great post! n-t

[Manifestor_of_Light]

31. I hated P.E. I refused to catch a softball.

There were six foot tall girls who loved to hit me in the head with a basketball. That hurts. Or knock me down in volleyball, because they were playing with too many people, eight to a side. I could not hit a volleyball without bruising my hands. If I served a volleyball, my whole arm would turn red and throb and hurt.

I was in orchestra and played piano and violin. I argued with the gym teachers about it. I was thrown out of a softball game in 95 degree heat and high humidity, because I sat down in left field. They threw me out and I said, "GOOD!".

They didn't want me to run bases in softball because I was short and didn't run fast enough to suit them.

One girl told me in junior high that she was gonna watch me undress to see whether or not I wore a bra. Like it was any of her goddamn business. Oh and they called me queer about four hundred times a day for seven years, sixth grade through twelfth grade.


:wtf:

A lot of us hate and loathe sports. And it's not just boys either. As a female, I hated sports and felt humiliated all the time.

[roamer65]

34. The nice thing about my HS was if you played in the band...

you got to skip out of PE. I've heard that's changed due to the stupid over emphasis on sports.

What does playing dodge ball really accomplish? Nothing.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

35. Red Rover was an opportunity to kill me.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

36. I would have died from the heat if I'd been in marching band.

Wool uniforms in the Texas heat and humidity!!!

No way. My mom got me a doctor's excuse to get out of P.E. when I was a senior so I could take typing. The principal was shocked that somebody would take a useful course instead of P.E.

[cherokeeprogressive]

37. I just thought I'd stick my head in here and yell... DODGEBALL!

That wasn't my favorite game though. It was a game we played in elementary school called CROSSFIRE. We payed it on a basketball court using a volleyball with the half-court line being the line you couldn't cross.

The object was to throw the volleyball as hard as you could, and the other team would catch it. If you tried to catch the ball and dropped it, you sat until the game was over. The typical game lasted about five minutes or so. It was a blast.

No one who didn't want to play had to. In fact, there were days when I opted to stay indoors during P.E. and play chess. And I never, ever saw someone made fun of for playing badly, or not playing at all. Chess OR Crossfire.

In the sixth grade I was in Mrs. Goenne's class. We usually played Mr. Lopez's class. Great fun.

[nilram]

38. You lost me at High School.