Yeah, I know! The Super Bowl is 4+ hours of commercials, with brief interruptions for violence!

[radicalliberal]

20. I apologize to you for unintentionally causing a misunderstanding.

When I said "your threads," I was addressing all of the members who had responded to your OP. I was referring to all of the threads dealing with the issue of bullying by "jocks." There have been a number of these threads, all of whose OPs were written by members other than yourself. I also had in mind the number of posts submitted in threads whose themes were not limited exclusively to the subject of school athletes. I wasn't saying you had written the OPs of any of these other threads. In fact, as you've said, this is the first time I've seen you post about this issue.

I'm very sympathetic to victims of bullying. What attracted me to DU in the first place were all the anti-bullying threads. Even though I'm in my early sixties, I didn't start posting in online forums until three years ago. I was fascinated to see that those who were or had been bullied in school now had a forum in which to sound off. When I was a kid, no one cared about bullied kids, except maybe their parents. Some bullied kids haven't even gotten any support at home. As far as I know, no one spoke up for bullied kids when I was young.

My only purpose here in this thread was to try to facilitate some understanding between football fans and those guys who hate football because of negative experiences of the sort you experienced. I was sincere when I said both groups are negatively stereotyped. Even though I'm a guy, I've never been a sports fan myself. * gasp * I don't even know how the game of football is played. But I do know a few guys who played football in high school who are nice guys, just as I know of a few who were complete jerks. A former NFL player named Joe Ehrmann is now a minister and a volunteer high-school football coach. He's also a public speaker. He has publicly repudiated machismo and has repeatedly spoken out against bullying. He recently wrote a book about his style of coaching and his coaching philosophy entitled InSideOut Coaching, which I think you would appreciate.

I should have made it clear that by my use of the word "your," I meant all of the members of DU. I was speaking as an outsider. Again, I apologize to you. I wasn't taking sides against you (or anyone else who's willing to be reasonable, for that matter). I apologize for causing you any pain. I feel bad about this.