Here to have a civilized debate.

[Fat Man]

My name is racial.

all names are racial in a way, if u take the time to think about it. in fact, u r the racist one, believing that your name somehow deserves respect whereas no others do.

If all names are racial than tell me, what is the racial origin of SPORTS ROCK???

I wasn't aware that Morons is a race.

I can tell by your spelling that your English has a Moronic dialect.

[Ray]

ha ha ha ha --a moronic dialect. I was hearing something that was not quite right but I couldn't quite place it. I think you nailed it.

[Fat Man]

Oh by the way, I need to mention . . . . .

The reason why I'm unable to have a civilized debate with jocks, is because the part of my brain, which would enable me to have a civilized debate with jocks, has been very badly damaged from all the beatings I had received from jocks when I was a kid going to school.

[Earl]

I probably will make some people mad, but I must make the following observation. When all this nonsense was going on, I posted at Andy's website twice. No, I did not talk about any sports scandals; but I did say that as a moderator of our forum I was not a sports fan and that I didn't even know how the game was played. I could have been ridiculed for saying this. As it turned out, the "Harold" who e-mailed the first hateful letter in the "Letters 2009" column happened to be one of their forum members; but even he did not post an insult. Since I deplored the way Andy was treated in our forum, I received compliments. I never thought I'd be personally complimented at a football website. The point is this: I was treated better in their website's forum than Andy was in our own.

[Skul]

Since I deplored the way Andy was treated in our forum, I received compliments. I never thought I'd be personally complimented at a football website. The point is this: I was treated better in their website's forum than Andy was in our own.

A pretty sad state of affairs, isn't it?

[Earl]

Thanks, Skul. Thanks for the moral support. I expected a negative reaction from one or more of the other members. Iâ??ve actually gotten to know some of the members personally by e-mail and PM and now consider them to be friends of mine. I even call several of them long-distance regularly. Iâ??m quite sympathetic to people who donâ??t like sports; and Iâ??m especially sympathetic to nonathletic guys who were/are forced to take sports-centered P.E. classes that do nothing to promote physical fitness for them, but actually discourage them from being physically active. But Iâ??m still not prejudiced against football players and athletes in certain other sports. Quite understandably, I was when I was a teenager; but I overcame that prejudice when I viewed them as individuals, not as members of a group.

The problem of having an â??us versus themâ? attitude is that it keeps those who have this mentality from having allies and even friends on the other side. If most black Americans living under Jim Crow had had this attitude towards whites and had viewed just about all of them as being bad, there never would have been a civil rights movement; and the United States would still have Jim Crow today. Polite24, SportsGuy92, Tony, and Andy are all opposed to bullying and do not believe that sports should be forced upon nonathletic boys. Their stance is a far cry from the attitudes of guys like Samdaman. The fact that they are actually on our side with regard to the issue of mandatory sports-centered P.E. seems to have been overlooked. There is no reason why any guy like Andy should ever become ashamed of simply having participated in a sport. Excelling in a sport requires dedication, just as other human endeavors do.

[Earl]

Sergey, who is one of our forum members, once referred to me as "the man in the middle." He's quite observant. There are times when I feel quite divided. I almost feel like I have mood swings. Yes, I did not like the way Andy was treated, because negative stereotyping is often used to unjustly penalize individuals. All of us have a personal responsibility to treat others as individuals. In other words, to treat others as we would have them treat us. To give someone a negative reception simply because he happens to belong to a certain group is akin to racism. But then I'm reminded of the continuing reality that certain sports are misused to bash nonathletic guys, especially teenagers and even very young boys, for no good reason at all. The old sports-centered P.E. (as opposed to genuine physical fitness classes), which still exists in way too many school districts today, is the same dreary daily hell for nonathletic boys that it's always been. And what is the rationale for this? Does this promote physical fitness? Give me a break! By the time I was a teenager, high-school football players seemed to epitomize the worst aspects of
high-school social life -- exclusivity instead of inclusiveness, superficiality instead of depth of character, conformity instead of individuality, condescension instead of appreciation, arrogance instead of humility, divisiveness instead of community, contempt instead of friendliness, bullying instead of tolerance. I have struggled with this prejudice for years. I realize that some individual high-school players have not gone along with this rotten mentality, but I still can't believe that many of them are as decent as Andy. The old "nonathletes are not real men" mindset is still with us, along with the blame-the-victim ideology that condones and defends bullying. I fear that Coach Joe Ehrmann's model of the high-school football player as a decent kid who doesn't go around rubbing some other kid's nose in the proverbial dirt simply for not being a "jock" still has yet to become widespread. In fact, I see little evidence that Coach Ehrmann's attitudes are all that common among high-school football coaches, the majority of whom do not seem to be morally opposed to any of their players bullying physically weaker students at their schools (certainly not to the point of actually dispensing any meaningful discipline to the players). Instead, these coaches either are indifferent or actually condone the bullying. After all, they view nonathletes as being inferior and not deserving of any respect as individuals. So, in the meantime, I defend individuals like Andy and say that people ought to be judged as individuals; but I still see the pervasiveness of a particular sports culture that seeks to denigrate and mistreat nonathletic boys. Can anyone deny it? I get mad at the way Andy and others are stereotyped. But then something will remind me of another sad reality, such as a book I just bought addressed to parents dealing with the problems that their teenage sons face at school (such as bullying); and I get sickened by all the bullying that is done in the name of sports. I feel like I'm a steel ball in one of those old-fashioned pinball machines ricochetting between two pins.

[sparkle]

People in groups tend to be vicious. This is especially true when a number of a people in a group feel victimized. It isn't more justifiable to pick on someone or hurt someone because ur friends also don't like them or this person reminds u of someone u hate. In my opinion, the problem with sports is the violence and maschismo. When I see it outside of sports, it's still the same problem. I don't like it any way.

[Earl]

Hi, sparkle. I just want to be sure that I'm not misunderstood by anyone. I don't believe that there is anything inherently corruptive about participating in a rough contact sport. There are individual football players who have never bullied anyone, and the reason why is because they brought high moral standards with them to the sport. The problem is not inherent in these sports. The problem has to do with the culture that has been associated with the sports. Joe Ehrmann, who played professional football, and others are trying to change that culture. Some of the members of this board really are not anti-sports; we're simply opposed to certain cultural aspects that are associated with certain sports.

I think the main culprit behind all of this, historically speaking, has been mandatory traditional
sports-centered P.E. in the schools -- which, I'm convinced, has caused more bullying in schools than anything else. The purpose of these classes never was to promote physical fitness for boys who are not physically active. There never were any physical fitness programs for nonathletic boys. In fact, the way these classes have always been conducted, it almost seems like these classes were actually intended from the very beginning to punish nonathletic boys. You know, "Why, we ought to tear that uppity boy who makes straight A's but has no interest in sports down to size." Do you notice how pleasantly surprised i_like_1981 has been by the attitude of people at his local gym? Well, it's quite understandable why he's surprised. In the whole time that I was required to take P.E. in the 1960s, there never once was any mention of exercise programs. I never even heard of exercise programs until I was no longer required to take P.E. in school. (Thankfully, I was exempted in high school as a band student.) And, yes, there now is a movement to reform P.E. Some junior highs and high schools have humane programs that actually encourage nonathletic students to become physically active. Of course, the success of this movement is not necessarily guaranteed. I have no problem with traditional sports-centered P.E. being retained as an elective for athletes and other boys who want to participate in sports. Forcing nonathletic boys to participate in competitive team sports is onerous and encourages bullying. Forcing nonathletic boys to take traditional P.E. with "student athletes" is like transferring basic math students to a calculus class. It just does not make any sense. If traditional P.E. had never been mandatory for all students (in other words, if nonathletic students had not been required to take a class that not only was essentially useless to them, but also was a source of misery), this website never would have been created. Those who hate this website should have a vested interest in reforming P.E., but I think that a survey would show that most of them don't support any reform measures at all. So, all they'll do is succeed in bringing up another generation of "sports haters."

[sparkle]

I didn't mean necessarily that the act of the sport itself is corruptive. Culturally, I think our experiences are worlds apart here, but I think the root is the same.

[Earl]

I think you're right ...

Sometimes even athletes are victimized by machismo. As I've mentioned elsewhere in this website's forum, an older friend of mine who played football at a university in Buffalo from the fall of 1965 through the fall of 1968 recently told me about some trouble he had with a sadistic coach in high school. Since my friend had enough athletic ability to be a prospect for college recruitment, you would think that all the coaches would have been supportive of him. But there was one coach who insisted upon making my friend's life miserable. This coach harassed him for weeks until my friend finally reacted by punching the coach in the nose. The coach was obviously prepared for this reaction (and, apparently, had been trying to provoke it all along) because he immediately started beating my friend up without any hesitation. Fortunately, this incident did not keep my friend from getting a football scholarship to SUNY in Buffalo.


I just read about a horribly tragic example last night. The following quotations are excerpts from a paperback that I purchased last night entitled What Your Son Isn't Telling You: Unlocking the Secret World of Teen Boys by Michael Ross and Susie Shellenberger, both of whom have been associated with Focus on the Family. The first excerpt is on page 77 of this paperback:

Shane, age twenty, was a college football player with a promising future. Now he sits in a wheelchair. On a dare, Shane had tried to smash open a steel door -- helmet first. Smoking marijuana at the time didn't help.

"I can't quite figure out why I did it," he says. "I know doing drugs was a factor. But whenever I get with the guys, it's like something else takes over. I feel invincible. I feel charged. And if I don't step up and prove myself, I don't feel like much of a man."

The second excerpt is on page 78:

Shane was convinced that real men conquer the competition and prove themselves through brute strength. Being confined to a wheelchair is a devastating new reality. Today, he's rethinking everything he once believed about life, truth, and his own journey into manhood.

Words fail to adequately express how horrible this tragedy really is. This poor kid ruined his life simply because he believed in a lie. Coach Ehrmann would weep.

[sparkle]

Terrible! No one so young should go through that, your friend and the boy in the wheelchair.

[Lewis]

That poor person, what a horrible thing to happen. I hope he gets better.

[Earl]

I sure hope he gets well, too; but I expect his prognosis is not good, not for this type of injury. I hope he receives a lot of moral support from friends and loved ones. He'll certainly need it.

[i_like_1981]

It's a terrible shame when young people lose their mobility like this, particularly at the time when they need it the most. But rough contact sports do kind of take the concept of "masculine" a bit too far. It's also shocking what happened to your friend with the sadistic coach. I wouldn't have lasted 15 seconds in his PE class. It was before my time, but I hope nothing else like this goes on today. But it does, I'm pretty sure. Out there there will always be those PE teachers who believe the only way to instill a sporting mind is through brutality and fear. I don't see how that coach could have done that to one of his best players. It beggars belief. Was he trying to put a promising young athlete off sports? Why? People like that need to be checked out. Actually, people who abuse the teaching profession by means of violence and provoking students with intent to cause physical harm need to be locked up. For the safety of young minds.

Best regards,
i_like_1981