Sports tied to some bad behaviors

[rotten]

Mrs. Rotten saw this article on the MSNBC website, and thought it might be of interest to us.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33797185/ns ... parenting/

Sports linked to some bad behaviors in teens
Athletics wonâ??t necessarily keep students away from drugs, alcohol

NEW YORK - Think that getting high school students involved in team sports will help keep them away from drugs, alcohol and other unhealthy behaviors?

It's not entirely true, according to research presented today at the American Public Health Association's annual meeting in Philadelphia, Pa.

Team sports participation appears to have both "protective and risk-enhancing" associations for high school students, said Dr. Susan M. Connor of the Injury Prevention Center, Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital in Cleveland.

"There is a lot of rhetoric that promotes sports team participation as a complete positive â?? something that has no negative effects," she said. "Sports participation is kind of almost rhetorically positioned as a panacea for social ills; it will stop crime and alcohol and drug use. But all the bits and pieces of evidence suggest that's not really true."

Connor and her colleagues analyzed survey responses from a representative group of more than 13,000 U.S. high school students who participated in the 2007 Youth Risk Behavioral Survey.

"Our hypothesis was that sports team participation would not be overwhelmingly positive but it would have positive and negative effects, which is just what we found," Connor said.

Roughly 60 percent of the boys surveyed participated in team sports in the past year. For these young men, sports team participation was associated with decreased levels of depression and smoking, but it was also associated with an increased likelihood of fighting, drinking and binge drinking.

Of the high school girls surveyed, 48 percent reported being on one or more sports team in the past year. For girls, the findings differed somewhat by race. For white young women, sports team participation was associated with decreased levels of fighting, depression, cigarette smoking, marijuana use, and unhealthy weight loss practices, Connor and colleagues found.

There was no association between sports team participation and drinking for white female students. However, for black high school girls, sports team participation was associated with increased levels of binge drinking.

"This was unexpected and something that needs follow up," Connor said. "You'd think that sports participation would have no effect or a protective effect on drinking in black female athletes the same as it did for white athletes. I would imagine that it has more to do with socioeconomics than with race," she added.

Another big unknown, Connor added, is which particular sports may have protective or risk-enhancing effects on teen athletes. "I would imagine that the type of sport, the level of competitiveness, the social environment of a community all plays a role," Connor said. "I think when we break it down by sport we will find some explanations for the observations we found."

The Youth Risk Behavioral Survey, Connor noted, "gives us huge numbers and access to a lot of kids in a lot of different places. It's a wealth of information on the one hand, but on the other hand it does not go into a lot of detail so the study almost raised more questions than it answered."

Ouch, Just what we had been saying here. Sports helps kids stay in school !

[Earl]

Yeah, I'm familiar with the binge drinking. Once roomed with a college football player decades ago who was a nice, wholesome, quiet kid from a small town in West Texas. He'd come back to our dorm room late Saturday nights totally plastered. I think he got corrupted by those troublemakers. If I remember correctly, he once told me that he saw the captain of his football team bite the head off of a live squirrel; or perhaps I read about it in a magazine somewhere. The rigors of manhood are demanding.

[Ray]

Exactly! It's common sense. Sports is just an activity, neither good or bad --and not a gift from the gods that teaches teamwork, social skills, manliness, and guarantees good behavior!

[Earl]

Well put, Ray. I guess since he had no use for competitive team sports in his own life, Raoul Wallenberg lost out.

[Ray]

He bit the HEAD off a SQUIRRL??????

HOLY COW!!!

I missed that rite of passage --thank God!

[Earl]

Just recently at another website I read a post that had been written by a man who had played football in high school. So no one will think that he had a "sour grapes" attitude, he was objecting to football players being negatively stereotyped, as if high-school and college football players were a downtrodden group rejected by most of society (which, of course, they are not). (Get out the world's smallest violin, Fat Man.) Of course, he had absolutely nothing to say about the negative stereotyping of nonathletic boys that goes on every day. After all, who cares about that? Anyway, when he started playing football in high school, he underwent a sort of initiation that consisted of his sticking his face up an older player's rear end. And I mean that he had to stick his nose into the guy's crack! Another initiation rite at his high school consisted of older players urinating on younger players in the showers. Yet boys who have no interest in sports are gay?

[Lewis]

How can anyone be that violent to an animal...what a horrible person. As for that sports initiation, how on earth can anyone do that!? There are some screwed up people in the world.

[Earl]

I couldn't be paid to stick my nose into some guy's buttocks, and I would react rather violently if someone tried to do that to me. And urinating on another human being sounds equally perverse. But boys who show no interest in sports should be suspected of having homosexual tendencies.

[Earl]

Ah, yes. There's something else I need to say. Before someone accuses me of negatively stereotyping all high-school football players, what I mean is that individuals who either participate in or approve of such initiation rites aren't exactly in a good position to go around falsely accusing others of being gay simply because they don't like sports.

[SportsGuy92]

But boys who show no interest in sports should be suspected of having homosexual tendencies.

Isn't this the opposite of what you think?

[Earl]

I was being sarcastic. Hey, when I was a high-school student back in ancient times (during the 1960s), as a nonathletic guy who was not strong physically (but not effeminate), I thought all male homosexuals were physically weak and effeminate. I actually felt ashamed of myself because on the virility scale I seemed to be closer to homosexuals than my athletic peers. Over the years I've been able to learn that I was wrong.

The truth of the matter is that there is a range of physical ruggedness to slight effeminancy in both the heterosexual male population and the homosexual male population. There are homosexual men who have perfectly developed physiques and are not effeminate at all. Homosexual men have participated in sports ever since they were invented, as they have participated in every other sphere of human activity. Not long before he died earlier this year, a close friend of mine who graduated from high school the same year I did (in 1969) once told me that the biggest, strongest guy in his senior class was undeniably gay. He never played football because his homosexuality was known to others. There are also heterosexual males who do not appear to be very virile and may even speak with a slight feminine twang in their voices, but they still get married and have children. These observations would be denied by certain critics of this website whose names I won't bother to mention.

Thanks for not getting mad at me. I'm not anyone's enemy here. I'm willing to have a civil dialogue with anyone.

[Sergey]

He bit off a squirrel head? They deserve the massacring of Ghazkhull, because he'd tear them up even if it was 100 to 1 each time, what am I saying... he'd massacre 1,000 with no effort.

[Ray]

Just recently at another website I read a post that had been written by a man who had played football in high school. So no one will think that he had a "sour grapes" attitude, he was objecting to football players being negatively stereotyped, as if high-school and college football players were a downtrodden group rejected by most of society (which, of course, they are not). (Get out the world's smallest violin, Fat Man.) Of course, he had absolutely nothing to say about the negative stereotyping of nonathletic boys that goes on every day. After all, who cares about that? Anyway, when he started playing football in high school, he underwent a sort of initiation that consisted of his sticking his face up an older player's rear end. And I mean that he had to stick his nose into the guy's crack! Another initiation rite at his high school consisted of older players urinating on younger players in the showers. Yet boys who have no interest in sports are gay?

What was the website? I'd like to tell that guy what an idiot he is.

Although I'm not defending peeing on each other or jocks, sometimes this kind of behavior is instigated by one person and everyone else just goes along with it like a bunch of dummies. I once was stationed with a group of guys who, during drunken parties, took to hazing because one sadistic person encouraged it and wouldn't let it drop. One required rite of passage was having your underwear violently ripped off. Weird, eh? I think I escaped that particular one. I can't remember.

As with football showers, I think this kind of behavior is a product of repressed, frustrated homosexual tendencies.

[Earl]

Regarding my comments about high-school football initiations, I was not implying that these sorts of activities are universal. I have no way of knowing how prevalent they are, because this just isn't something you're likely to read about in the sports section of the local daily. I was simply saying that these initiation activities are degrading and perverse. I'm sure they're strictly prohibited at SportsGuy92's parochial school.

[Earl]

What was the website? I'd like to tell that guy what an idiot he is.

Sorry, Ray; but, unfortunately, even though a Google search still yields the website, the column at the Portland Mercury is no longer available, as far as I know. At least I didn't succeed in accessing it. When I discovered it earlier this year, it was already more than four years old; and before I left my intemperate response, no other viewers had responded to the column.