Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

[radicalliberal]

107. Needless to say, so was I.

It's especially hard when the kid receives no meaningful support at home.

Nonathletic boys were forced to take mandatory P.E., which was exclusively centered around sports -- a class that benefited only the athletic kids. Exercise programs were not provided for the nonathletes, who really were the nonpersons in the world of school sports. Their physical fitness needs were considered to be unimportant.

My school district was an affluent one. In fact, it is in the Congressional district that decades ago was once represented by Bush The First; in other words, George Herbert Walker Bush, the wonderful guy who appointed that prince of a character Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, who is about to participate in the emasculation of the Voting Rights Act.

Anyway, back to the school district: Principals and coaches allowed individual football players to bully other students. Two friends of mine played football at one of the other schools in the district. One of them (who still is a big football fan to the point of being obnoxious about it) recently told me that most of his teammates looked down on all the nonathletic guys at their school as supposedly being inferior. The other one, who played on the same team, also recently told me that he never met a group of guys who were more insecure about their masculinity. He said that some of his teammates were constantly trying to "prove" their masculinity over and over again, usually at the expense of nonathletic guys who had no interest in the sport.

I recently learned about a particularly disturbing incident of bullying at one of the other high schools in the district from two other friends of mine. A former junior high classmate -- someone, incidentally, whom I had admired -- had made the football team at his high school and became arrogant. He ended up tormenting a mentally retarded classmate, which has got to be the most despicable kind of bullying I've ever heard of. He was merely suspended from school for a few days, which must have been like a vacation to him. This is what has really burned me: Despite his despicable misconduct, he still was as popular as ever! If he had been a nonathlete, he would have been subjected to scorn, and rightly so. But since he was a football player, the rules did not apply to him.

Long before I graduated from high school, I had already seen that if a nice kid made the football team, he was placed on a pedestal. If a conceited bully made the football team, he also was placed on a pedestal. Both guys were treated the same. That's sick!

I know there are decent guys in school sports, but they need to speak out against this stuff.