The coach took one look at me, too skinny, and moved on to the next kid

[KurtNYC]

He idled up next to his drafting table. Asked in a friendly voice how much he weighed and whether he was playing football this year. His eyes and body language showed the signs of a man on the prowl. He told the kid next to me how much he would like him to be one of his guys. He would teach him all the moves he needed to pin his opponent to the floor. Then the coach moved on to his next target.

You see, my high school drafting teacher was also the wrestling coach.

2 classes later, my math teacher told us we would not be learning anything to prepare us for college, graduation, the SAT or life in the business world that day. Why? Because we were going to spend the next 50 minutes watching film of our high school football team's last game. My would-be math teacher was the high school's football coach.

OJ Simpson cuts the head off his ex-wife and a waiter. Michael Vick tortures and kills dozens of dogs while cities divert tax money to buy new stadiums where seats go for $100 a game and million dollar sky boxes are put on the books of major corporations.

I am having trouble seeing the upside of institutional sports programs right now.

[NYC_SKP]

1. K/R

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. ...

:hug:

[alittlelark]

3. I posted similar sentiments here 7 or so years ago

I got smacked up one side and down the other!

[coalition_unwilling]

15. I merely pointed out the huge disparity between what a newly-minted

assistant professor of physics (with Ph.D.) earns at the U. of Kansas and what the head football coach earns and, from the squeals of outrage, you would have thought I was Osama bin Laden's blood brother.

See, we have to pay our head football coaches more than $1,000,000/year b/c they bring in a lot of money to the University. Meanwhile, assistant profs of Physics at $60,000/year? Who cares?

[XemaSab]

19. The two people making more than a million in public education in California

are the Cal coach and the UCLA coach.

There is something very wrong with that.

[OhioChick]

20. Damn straight there's something wrong with that n/t

[SomethingFishy]

17. Yeah, god forbid you dislike sports...

You become some kind of freakin outcast. I never understood it. Sports. They were fun when I was a kid but fuck, grown men wearing costumes and chucking a ball around a field and making millions?

Someone tried to explain earlier how it's all about the human body and it's limits and watching someone take their body to the max or some shit like that. But what it's really about is money. I stopped watching the Olympics when they started letting in professional athletes.

[Journeyman]

4. John Wooden . . .

it's all in whom we emulate and the priorities and values we are urged to aspire towards. . .

[stevedeshazer]

14. John Wooden is the past.

He was the greatest coach ever.

Today, the problems are legion.

[Journeyman]

16. Ethics, focus, and morality are passé? . . .

Who then do you emulate, what values do you urge society to aspire towards? . . .

[stevedeshazer]

31. John Wooden embodied these traits.

You're arguing with the wrong guy.

[in_cog_ni_to]

5. Seriously! My son's high school is overcrowded and has been for the last 8 years and

instead of building more classrooms with several million dollars, what did they do? BUILT A NEW FOOTBALL STADIUM AND ADDED NEW TURF!!!!@#$%^&*()(*&^%$#

The school is so overcrowded the students have to share lockers 2-3 kids per locker. Yet, football reigns supreme and is more important than more classrooms and lockers. It's just insane. I am so glad we're finished with this school district. He's off to college.

[MrsBrady]

6. The kids can't read and don't know history...but by God there's a

multi-million dollar sports complex for football.

[hughee99]

8. And surely if the sports complex wasn't there, the kids would

all just become smarter.

[hughee99]

7. Can I borrow your very broad brush?

I'd like to paint my house in one pass.

[spanone]

9. wasn't o.j. acquitted

[KurtNYC]

23. Exactly! Acquitted by fans even though he did this...

(warning graphic crime scene pic at link):


Then he lost in civil court but without prison he was free to do this (12 felonies):
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/world/americas/04iht-simpson.1.16687098.html

I have played organized sports and enjoyed it. Found value in it but being great in any sport should not be a license to decapitate women and dogs, or to rape 10-year-old children and have it covered up for years. Those who embrace these criminals or those who act to enable and hide the criminals' behavior do sports and society a disservice.

[redqueen]

10. K&R

IMO sports should be separate from school. Teach PE, teach the rules of games if you like, but PE should be about health, not competition and idiocy... and it certainly shouldn't take any time or funding away from education.

And before anyone says 'but sports raises money!' just fund the damn schools and stop depending on sports to do it.

[usrname]

34. Completely agree

Physical Education should be just that: educating students on how to be physically fit. That includes studies in nutrition, ways to exercise to improve body tone and strength and speed and power without injuries. The training should be almost sports agnostic. (Obviously, training with swimming would be somewhat biased towards water sports.)

Then, there would be education on various types of sports, maybe a section or two on game-theoretic analysis of competition and winning, although that is moving away from physical education and towards mathematics (nothing wrong with hybridizing the subjects, of course).

Basically, PE should be about learning how to be a fitter person. Parents don't know what is good or bad for developing kids' bodies. The teachers should have the latest information and application of that information.

If the fit kids want to play a sport, do that after school, like how some kids learn piano after school, or chess or other after school activities. These activities may be held at the school, for convenience, but should be operated by private businesses that ostensibly should be charging for that service.

(Then, watch how a money hungry sport like football disappear into the ether.)

[Lint Head]

11. All the billions spent for college sports could be better spent.

Not to eliminate college or H.S. sports. It just that it's all about money and not about making people who are athletically inclined better people are more healthy. It's about winning and competition for profit. Everybody should be healthy but we are not all born healthy. Everybody needs a chance to improve but not at the expense of bodies for profit. College athletes are given scholarships based on physical ability while people who could improve their brains cannot afford a college education. The system is screwed up.

I'm torn because I played football throughout H.S. and it did help me physically but it was a challenging because the coaches were basically jerks that wanted to win more than mentor. I did learn how to handle overbearing jerks. I know that is not true everywhere.

[SoutherDem]

12. But what about the....

sorry, I got nothing!

I often wonder how football or any sport can be the most important thing at a school, especially when the building is falling apart, teachers are working part time jobs to make ends meet and students are failing.

[kenny blankenship]

13. You were going to say 'strong male role models' perhaps?

[SoutherDem]

39. No not really.

I can think of many role models who didn't come in the expense of the rest of the educational system.

[bluedigger]

18. Can we go after the mathematicians, too?

Kaczynski was one of them.

[Fumesucker]

21. Kaczynski had a massive cover up going by powerful people to keep him out of trouble?

Wow, I'm constantly amazed at the things I learn on DU..

[bluedigger]

22. So what else have you learned?

How to demonize a class of people based on the deviant behavior of some of the group?

[KurtNYC]

24. Raping children isn't just DEVIANT behavior; it is easily one of the worst crimes

and it would be bad enough if Sandusky did this alone and without the knowledge of others.

But this WAS a group; not just some: the janitors, Paterno, others at Penn and last night 2,000 students rioting (literally "a class of people").

[bluedigger]

26. So now you are angry at the whole campus?

I thought you were mad at institutionalized sports? The media and judiciary were complicit in the cover up as well.

Let's just agree to not tolerate pedophilia, and not assign guilt widely through general association.

[KurtNYC]

29. Not mad at either, just asking what the hell is wrong

as are many others. I think that is an appropriate question when children are raped for 15 years inside of an institution and when people riot in support of the rapist and his enablers.

Too late for "not tolerating" -- It happened. Forceable, coercive rapes against children too young and too small to defend themselves before, during or after the attacks. How about if we agree to look at the facts in a clear headed way. 10 year old children were brought into a college shower room and raped in full view and hearing of college employees and no one is in prison yet. Clearly we have a problem that extends beyond the actions of one or 2 football coaches.

[bluedigger]

37. We're all looking for answers, KurtNYC.

Something like this happens, and it makes everybody catch their breath and stop to think. How could it not?

I was just attempting to defend the institution of organized sports in our society, which is what I understood you to be attacking. I guess I did so poorly. I'm sorry it has been a detriment to you. For me it was a chance to experience a lot of great opportunities, and a positive thing. I don't think we'll be able to change each other's realities in that regard.

I see many factors at work here, from individual self-interest to institutional self-preservation, and the line between the two is pretty fuzzy. Basically, nobody put the victims' interests first, and that is pretty damning. We failed them.

[KurtNYC]

40. I was trying to describe some things I saw growing up

and as an adult. Power relationships and physicality. What I saw was creepy in the case of the wrestling coach and immature for the math teacher. Reading the Penn State stuff was disturbing and goes to a level far beyond anything I experienced, thank God. So kind of a head scratching rant.

I played a lot of organized sports from grade school through my 20s. I was pro athlete for a year after college. Have lived and worked with other pro athletes so I have seen some of the positive side of sports.

Maybe it is just that this PA thing went on for so long and involved so many people. It's scary to think no one saved these kids from becoming victim number 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. When I saw this chart from the Grand Jury it was "Holy crap":

http://ology.com/sports/scandal-happy-valley-guide-principal-figures-sandusky-case

[AtheistCrusader]

32. Perhaps you didn't understand the OP.

Why, oh why, should a math class suspend normal activities to watch a football game from the night before, as a recruiting tool, for the teacher who happens to be a coach as well?

I was able to skate a year of math in High School, because the teacher was a coach for the cross country team, and i was on the varsity team. In the long run, it hurt me a whole lot more than it helped.

[bluedigger]

38. You learned a valuable lesson.

Taking advantage of favoritism is easy. Success is hard.

[EFerrari]

35. Observing the obviously culpable behavior of many people

is not assigning guilt through association.

[madinmaryland]

25. Un-recced. This to me seems like a lot of different tangents to blast public schools and their

sports programs. Are you suggesting we get rid of sports all together????

[KurtNYC]

30. Both of those things happened at my high school

not suggesting they are as bad as what happened to children in Pennsyvannia. Only that I have my own insight into how this could have gone on for so long at Penn State. Is it too much to ask that school sports programs not infringe on the rights of children, including athletes, to get a useful education without being looked at as a piece of meat?

[AtheistCrusader]

33. How about resetting them to their proper level of importance?

Physical fitness. That's it.

[Scruffy1]

27. Professional sports is just a metaphor for capitalism.

Hurray for our team. Even though all the "team" members are being screwed by owners. The owners and coaches are made into demigods, no matter how evil and corrupt they actually are. A very few are well rewarded to keep the carrot dangling. The average college player goes on with his life and gets a job. Only .08 per cent of college football players
are selected by the NFL. Only 5.8% of high school senior football players play in college.
Coaches can be a strange lot. My high school football coach was a very good man and deeply cared about his students whether they were stars or not, but all too often they are just trying to live out their fantasies or just like to dominate and control others.
There is nothing wrong with playing games. It's just time to realize it's a game, not the life and death drama the the media makes it out to be.

[RainDog]

28. k&r

I have detested football culture since I stopped playing it as a kid. (I was told it was too bad I wasn't a boy b/c I would've been a great quarterback... that was a while ago.) It was fun to play, but the culture around it really repulses me, and always has. I cannot even explain what it is, exactly - other than to say the "good ole boy" vibe just made my skin crawl. that and the appeals to god to win a game. or giving god credit for winning a game. that whole idol-building bullshit.

[valerief]

36. Sports is the true religion of America. God for the 99% is honor. God for the 1% is MONEY. nt