Why I think sports are beneficial to society

[Polite24]

OK Impolite24 - AKA Detroitsportsbore08!!!

You still don't get it.


Be careful, because if you keep chewing the same cud over and over again, you'll turn into another fat cow like me since I'm also being force to chew the same cud over and over again in response to your long moronic posts.

Well, at least you do acknowledge that professional athletes are overpaid and that they do get "big headed" and pick on other people. Of course, I don't call it "big headed" but rather, I call it being pea-brained.

But that's not accurate either, because first, one needs a brain in order to be pea-brained, so a more accurate term would be, pin-heads, or zips!

I'm also glad that you concede that non-athletic students get pick on because "suck at sports" so now, we're getting somewhere.

But still, not far enough, because it go way beyond merely being picked on, or verbal teasing, it goes all the way to brutal beatings.

Also, let me point out, it's not only because we "suck at sports" but we are also called unpatriotic or un-American because we don't like sports, and we are called sissies and fags because we like to read lots of books, study science and math, play chess, listen to classical music, and we like art.

But you have yet to answer my question.

Why is it that "nerds and geeks" don't go around beating up on people who don't like science and math, or playing chess and listening to classical music, or doing art. Why is it that we don't beat up on people who suck at reading and writing?

I mean, how would you like it, if I were to clobber some monkey-boy over the head with and Unabridged Funk & Wagnalls Dictionary because he couldn't rear or write.

But things like that never happen.

So, you still need to answer my question. How come, nerds and geeks don't beat up on jocks?

Yes, I know all about the cliques in school, and thy act like snobs, going around thinking that they are better than everybody else, and sometimes we are subject to verbal teasing from them as well as the sports fans, but it's worse coming from the sports fans and the jocks.

The cliques, they don't go around throwing the other students through plate glass windows or down flights of stairs, or throwing beer bottle out of speeding cars at kids on bicycles. For some reason, it is mostly you monkey-boys who commit acts of violence.


I clipped out the rest of the bullshit.

I'm am so sick and tired of seeing that number 99! That's just some figure that you keep pulling out of your ass and rubbing in our faces!

I don't know what the percentages are, but of all the sports fans that I have known, I only knew a very few who had a life outside of sports and did not worship their favorite team. I have known far more sports fans who were total assholes, who worshiped at the alter of sports, and even performed human sacrifices on the alter of sports by making their families shut up and not saying anything when there was a football game on TV, and getting drunk, and then, beating the holy crap out of their wives and kids when their favorite team lost the big game of the season!

You're only 18 years old, I'm 57 years old, therefore, I have know far more sports fans than you have known, and only a small minority had a life outside of sports, and not the 99% percent that you keep pulling out of your ass!

The majority of sports fans are absolute assholes!!!

I won't even attempt to give you any percentages, but I would say, that for every sports fan that I knew who had a life outside of sports, I knew four or five more who were wife-beating child-abusing assholes!!!

I swear to God, if I see you post the number 99 again, I'm going to put my fist through my computer monitor and hope that my fist comes out of your monitor, and I get to jam your teeth down your throat so far that you will need to see a proctologist instead of a dentist to work on your teeth.

I would like to kick your can up into your brain-case so hard you'll have to take off your hat to shine your shoes!

NO MORE NUMBER 99! OK???

WWWOOOOOOOOPEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

I'm so glad that the people who have jobs related to sports are so happy!

Goody, goody, two shoes for them!!!

But I wanted to pursue a career that was not sports related.

In school, I wanted to study science, and pursue a career in Physics and Astronomy, but my high school didn't teach science, we only watched cartoons and learned how to fold paper footballs!

But I'm glad there are a lot of happy morons out there who are perfectly happy and contented selling peanuts, pretzels, and popcorn to all the other happy morons sitting on the bleachers.


Yeah, thanks to sports in school, you only need to be able to read and write at the 4th or 5th grade level in order to graduate from high school.

And the most important skill in life is bagging groceries in a super market, and you also get to develop your verbal skills by saying "Will that be paper or plastic?" and if you can say that without belching, then that's a good sign that you have developed your social skills.

Gee! I always thought that getting a good education was a really great way to escape from poverty and a way out of the ghetto. I mean, reading and studying Astronomy and going out at night with my telescope gave me something to occupy my mind.

But in school, I was not allowed to study science and Astronomy, and that created a really great big void in my life.

So, I really don't give a flying fuck about sports or sports fans.

I would love to see a total ban on sports, and then I hope that all of you morons become so depressed that you all drive your cars off the nearest cliff, all together, like some kind of moronic March Of The Lemmings!

Oh yes indeed! Sports fans are very good at dealing with failure!

When their favorite team fails to win the big game of the season, they deal with their team's failure by going out into the streets, smashing store windows, setting fires, and overturning cars.

Excellent way to deal with failure!


Yeah! Athletes are highly skilled.

It takes more skill to kick a football or put a basketball through a hoop than it does to work out a quadratic equation, write a complex computer program, or make a precision ground lens or mirror for an astronomical telescope.

And they have a much higher big time risk of injuries than a construction worker walking a beam a hundred stories above the ground, or a coal miner, or someone in a job handling toxic chemicals, etc. etc.

And of course, they do deserve good salaries.

In a University, a football coach deserves to be paid at least twice as much as a physics professor.

Thanks for stetting me straight!

Now, I go puncture my eardrums with an ice pick and gouge my eyeballs out with a spoon!

I think I have seen and heard enough!


African American - You need to capitalize proper names!

I see they didn't teach you shit in school!!!

Oh, I'm so happy that the New Orleans Saints finally move back into the Stupid Dome!

But when are the thousand of people, who had lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina, when are they finally going to have homes to move into?

The city is still a mess, and crime is much higher than ever before, and many of the neighborhood are still in ruins, and all you give a fuck about is the Stupid Dome!

Oh, as for 911, the jocks in our schools still bully the other students around, so the monkey-boys still like to make Jihad against the better students!

I bet the Jihad Jocks like to wipe their butts with sand, and they also hate art and music.

I say, send all the monkey-boys off to some Arab country where they can fuck camels, sheep, and goats, and leave our sisters and daughters alone!
]

Well, I'm glad there is something for kids who are retarded or learning disabled.

But now, we need a program to protected the bright and gifted children from all the violent monkey-boys rampaging though our schools and bashing heads against lockers.

Oh wait! There is something that can put a stop to all of these violent monkey-boys in our schools, and to remove them from our schools.

It's called a jail!!!

Very boring post! Ho! Hum!

I kept nodding off, and my face kept hitting my keyboard.


Well, I keep stating the bad parts and you keep ignoring them.

You also keep saying the same thing over and over again, and it's all bullshit!!!

lol, you really have no clue and in no way got the point of my post.

First off, you aren't called sissies or fags because you don't like sports, it's likely due to other things about you. I don't what that could be, but yeah. Is it right? No, but name calling will always exist.

Nerds and geeks don't beat up people probably because they can't. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being a nerd, but yeah.

Cliques in high and bullying doesn't revolve around sports. You haven't been in high school for over 40 fucking years. It's the popular people that bully and make fun of the unpopular people, zero to do with sports!

I don't know the people you met or the sports fans you met, so I can't comment on that. All I can say most sports fans I have met have been pretty good people. Can only speak from my experiences, not yours.

I'm willing to bet I've personally known more sports fans than you. Just become across sports fans from time to time doesn't mean you know them.

Yeah, having a job where you're happy is no big deal. It's just as fine to have a job you hate and make you depressed.

And stop bringing up what happened to you in high school. While I feel terrible for you, it's an isolated incident thus make it irrelevant to the big picture and an exception rather than the norm.

I'm glad you brought up the worst sports job, vendors. Never mind the coaches, broadcasters, sports writers, and all the other good jobs pertaining to sports. Take sports out and those guys go for other jobs, making the competition more fierce and a job harder to come by, thus making our economy even worse. Awesome. Solid plan.

Sports in school have nothing to do with graduation requirements, and there is no fixed reading level you must have in order to graduate. And, very few of the people who struggle to graduate are athletes. Talking out of your ass again, nice job.

Clearly, you know nothing about social skills. Social skills are very vital to jobs everywhere. Being able to talk to people, convince them that your idea is good, work with people and listen, all of these skills are very vital to everyday life and can be enhanced by sports.

There some people who cannot afford college. Sports help them get out of the ghetto and be at a university. You may say, well how come these kids can get out and the other kids who can't afford college can't? That's a vital argument, but really, we have nothing in place that helps the average person who can't afford college go. There's student loans, but some people just can't afford it. So in the end, it's better some people get out of bad areas than none. Also would like to add if you're that good of a student you can get many types of scholarships, so don't cry foul here.

Again, what happened to you in school is hardly the norm and should not be used as any real point.

As far as riots go, obviously they're not right, but for the most part after big wins people just go out and have fun and party, which is always good. Things like overturning cars, and fires have been a rarity. I will agree that it's a problem. But, hardly something that makes sports more bad than good.

At the professional level, the skills demanded of you in sports are probably equal to the ones you mentioned. It takes highly skilled people to do any of these things. And while those jobs are all dangerous, don't underestimate how dangerous football, hockey, or even baseball is. In football, with any hit you can be paralyzed, trust me it's happened more than once. There have also been a countless amount of gruesome injuries, I invite you to look them up. Look up bad hockey injuries too, not good stuff. As far as baseball goes, that may be perceived as a safe sport, and for the most part it is. However, pitcher's and whoever is hitting both face a lot of danger. A fastball coming at your head, or a hit ball coming right back at a pitcher can both be deadly. Whil agreed athletes shouldn't make as much as they do, these are highly skilled people who work hard, face big time injury everyday, and are entertainers for one of the biggest things in American pop culture.

Ok, I can see the football coaches/professor thing. However, football coaches can sometimes have even more of an impact on a kid because they come from such a personal level, at least in college.

My god, you're clueless. Of course the SuperDome coming back didn't fix the city or completely heal it. However, MANY people love sports, and when the Saints came back after a year away it made a lot of people feel normal, and gave them something to think about for 3 hours every Sunday instead of what happened to their city. You cannot put a negative spin on that!

Oh, as for 911, the jocks in our schools still bully the other students around, so the monkey-boys still like to make Jihad against the better students!

What's that even about dude? You clearly ignored the point of the post, and went on a random rant about something stupid.

People don't get beat up in high school these days because someone's a jock and he wants to mess with a nerd. It just doesn't happen.

Either way, that has zero to do with what the New York Yankees did for the city of New York in the fall of 2001. And again, you can't put a negative spin on it.

As far as a protection program, see above post. Those kids are just fine.

[Polite24]

First of all, I'm not meeting you halfway on any of this, because you have refused to address anything I've said, especially the role-reversal challenge. So don't expect me to go easy on anything you've written here.



Oh boy. Let me strap myself in.


What rock do you live on? What one school or community are you basing your 'facts' on? And you're downplaying this, cliques almost ALWAYS revolve around high school sports teams. You defended this in an earlier post. I'm not going to bother trying to find it but it's there...about sports and popularity. Now you're contradicting yourself and downplaying sports as a cause. It's one or the other... it's either popular or it's not as 'big of a deal' as to be the cause of kids feeling worthless. Get my drift?

I'm glad you have what you think is such a big grip on reality.

Atrocious grammar aside, I'm glad that you once again have enlightened us with a statistic. I'm sure it comes from a reliable source. As in, you pulled it straight out of your ass.

We generalize? This is what I mean by you not trying to meet us halfway. I don't generalize, nor do I argue for or against it to defend my position. You, on the other hand, the accuser of generalizations, are throwing what you yourself are guilty of. Generalizing? You? That's right. YOU.

"Really, you guys generalize all, or most of sports fans into one big stereotype. " < --- And you generalize it into 99 percent of all sports fans being applicable little well behaved angels in your garden of fucking eden perception of the sporting world.

Another thing I keep responding to that you keep ignoring or bypassing. EVERYONE has lives outside of their hobbies, although in the case of the most rabid of sports fans, sports is more of an obsession, but I won't argue that point. The difference is, I don't bring my hobbies to work and jam them down everyone else's throats just because they're popular (which brings me again to segueway into you answering my role reversal challenge). Remember what I said, people make sports into a religion, and many of us are tired of not only being made fun of at work for not being sports fans, but we're sick of being ostracized for this, and for the things we like to do instead of watch or play sports.

This next exercise may prove useful in getting through to your thick skull. You are either getting the point and don't care, or you don't get the point at all.

"Did you see that Cowboys game last night?"
"No..."
"Not a football fan?"
"Not generally, no."
"Oh, that's too bad. You really should get out and watch a game or two every so often. Watch any sports?"
"No..."
"What do you like to do, then?"
"Oh, I have my hobbies..."
"Oh yeah? Like what?"
"Models and miniatures, reading nerdy stuff, working on computers, video games..."
"Ah..."

Person walks away and snickering ensues. Then that person spreads the word to other co-workers, and hilarity at my expense ensues.
Now let's switch that dialogue to make it a church scenario.
Note: I am NOT crapping on anyone's religion here, I'm just saying that sports fanatics and their habits and attitude bear a strong resemblance to the more extreme churches.

"Did you see Brother Bill's sermon last night?"
"No."
"Not a fan of God?"
"Not necessarily, I have my own beliefs."
"What do you believe, then?"
"Oh, this and that..."
"Oh yeah? Like what?"
"That there might be a higher power up there, but I like to philosophically think and talk about it, and..."
"Ah..."

Person walks away, spreads the word to the flock, and the entire church congregation ostracizes me for not coming.

The sad thing here is, for people that need it in their lives, I see a VERY important point to religion. But...

I don't appreciate excess proselytizing. And that is precisely what sports fans do, from the rabid ones to the more subtle ones. They either expect you to already know about it because you're male, or if you do not, they try to convert you, every last one of them tries to be happy go lucky, "oh, he won't resist me", every single time you come across a new person that finds out that you aren't very ahem, sports inclined. It's just like extreme organized religion.

You call us a minority, Polite. But the truth is, so are you. You're a minority because most sports fans don't give intelligent responses like the ones you've given. You need to remember that before you champion something.

Bull. SHIT.

I have one word for you; modern Hockey. And yes, I've been to a game or two.

I find it interesting that you insultingly believe that just because we aren't sports fans means that all of us don't know anything at all about sports.


Yes, I'm sure every single solitary New Yorker affected by the tragedy went to or tuned in to a Yankee's game. I wouldn't have to deal with something that horrible, and chances are, I'm sure there are people like me living in New York. Chances are you're wrong on this. So yes, I can argue the point all I like.

And it's pretty poor taste to use 9-11 as an example to support your arguments, just for the record.

Your other two examples, I don't buy it. Cities come back from disasters because the people living there have pride in what they are, and because neighboring communities care, not because of some damned sports team.

You're overglorifying sports to the point of making all of us ill.

And therein lies the focus of the problem.

I don't believe anyone on this website really thinks that sports are fundamentally flawed, nor that they should be banned, nor should they be done away with. But keep in mind, you are conversing with people who are at the end of their mental rope when it comes to what I'm about to say.

I'm going to say it one more time. It's things like this...you touting a sports team as a way of bringing a city back from an event like Hurricane Katrina...sports FANS and FANDOM, that irritates the lot of us.

There are people out there I'm sure that would actually play sports if there weren't overzealous lunatics like you in it to ruin it for everyone else.

It was never sports that I hated. It's the popularity and fandom that comes with competitive sports, that is consistently shoved down my throat that I can't stand. And of course, you're going to say that 99 percent of sports fans actually aren't the ones doing that to me, because you like sports, and therefore have never had to deal with someone proselytizing something you don't like to you, which again is why I encourage you to take my role reversal challenge and respond to it.

In fact, I'm quite sure you're completely incapable of understanding what it's like being a non sports fan to deal with the bullshit on a daily basis at work, and that's just one walk of life you encounter it in. You hear it so much, that even the people whom you might have judged as having been nice about it begin to annoy you.

One last time. I don't hate sports, I even see a use for them. Popularity and sports fans, though, they can go jump in a lake.


I about rolled out of my chair laughing at this one. So what? So do a lot of things, and not all of them are entertainment based.

Anyway, I'm going to stop here because I have the flu and need to rest. Will check back later.

Another good effort of a post, with valid points brought up, let's get to it.

High school cliques DO NOT revolve around sports. I'm not sure how old you are or when you went to high school, but you're wrong. Do sports play a role? Yes, but they are hardly the reason that teasing and bullying goes on. Again, it's popular vs. non popular, NOT athlete vs. non athlete.

Again, I've never said 99 percent of sports fans are good people. I said 99 percent of them have lives outside of sports, which I stand by.

I'm truly feel sorry for the fact that you must go to work and have to deal with people talking about sports. You sound like a whiner, please look at some people with real problems and continue to complain about the fact people at work bring up sports and you hate it.

As far as your mock conversations go, not a whole lot I can say. They come from your personal experiences, so I can't argue that. I will bring up my personal experiences, in which I associate with many non sports fans and I know plenty of sports fans who associate with non sports fans. Not as much of a deciding factor as you'd think. Obviously, sports fans can gravitate towards each other because that's something they have in common and can talk about.

Watch the HBO special about Ground Zero, New York, and the Yankees, and tell me that didn't have a good effect. Yes, there's people who probably didn't care, but some people finding release and normalcy with the Yankees is better than none.

Poor taste? I don't see how, obviously 9/11 was far more important and serious than that World Series, but those games and those playoffs the Yankees competed in brought people together and made them not think about what had happened as much at least for a few hours.

The Saints and Yankees didn't bring their cities back, I never said that. In fact I made it pretty clear.

And entertainment based jobs are more fun. You guys underestimate fun, and happiness. You're too busy looking at the bigger picture and looking for the something that has real value instead of just living in the now. Life is short man. Sports have real value because they're fun for many people. They don't have to mean something to the real world or anything like that. Some of you need to stop taking life so seriously.

[Polite24]

[Fat Man's post on the previous page]

Read the rules...
-Skul

You're missing the point man. First off, people have different ways of grieving with things. Many people didn't want to be around that stuff surrounding 9/11 all the time because it was depressing, and brought you down. One of the biggest rallying cries for Americans during this time was that we had to keep going, because just stopping and going into shock was exactly what the terrorists wanted to happen.

Going to and watching baseball games helped people move on with their lives, and feel normal and not completely depressed. Obviously it didn't heal any wounds for lost loved ones, but they played their role, and had a positive impact.

I'm not saying sports and the Yankees made 9/11 go away, or became any less important. They simply helped a lot people feel better for a few hours every night, lost loved ones or not I don't know.

Watch 9 Innings to Ground Zero, an HBO documentary on the Yankees in 01 and 9/11, and tell me baseball didn't help a lot of people in a positive way.

[Polite24]

And I will say this Patricia Sexton lady sounds dumb and irrational.

[Fat Man]

And I will say this Patricia Sexton lady sounds dumb and irrational.

WELL FINALLY! WE BOTH AGREE ON SOMETHING!

AMAZING! ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY AMAZING!!!

Oh! I'm in shock!

Oh! Oh! My poor ol' heart!

I can't take this!

Oh! My poor heart!

I need to lay down for awhile!

[Fat Man]

First off, you aren't called sissies or fags because you don't like sports, it's likely due to other things about you. I don't what that could be, but yeah. Is it right? No, but name calling will always exist.

Oh! your absolutely right!

It was probably due to the fact that I wore shocking pink ruffled under-panties, yellow spiked high-heel shoes, a pleated mini-skirt, pink stretch tights, a size triple D bra, a long blond wig with a ponytail tied up with a red ribbon, eye-shadow, and lip-stick, and I played with dolls!!!

Gee! No wonder I was called a sissy and a fag!

Stupid me!!!

And all this time I thought it was because I didn't like sports, and preferred science and math, and working on oil paintings, and listening to both rock and classical music.

Thanks for correcting me!

Oh, by the way!

I'm wearing ruffled under panties right now, because I love the way they make my hips look broader and more rounded out, and my ass look fatter!

Nerds and geeks don't beat up people probably because they can't. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being a nerd, but yeah.

Oh really! Well, in school, I was a nerd and a geek, but I was no "pencil neck" geek. I actually had a fat neck, a double chin, thick around my midsection, short fat legs that could kick ass, and broad hips. I was only 15 years old when I hit 200 pounds, and in high school I was about 250 pounds.

I was actually approached by people who wanted me to sign up for football just simply because of my size and weight. I was even told that I looked like I would make a good football player, but I said no! I was not interested in football or any kind of sports.

And when I said that I was seriously concentrating on science and math, because I hoped to major in Physics and Astronomy at a University, it was after that, I was harassed!

Now, because of my size and weight, I could have very easily cleaned a few clocks.





This is me right now at almost 400 pounds! Can you almost see the resemblance?

Oh! And the ruffled under-panties do make my hips look broader!

Yeah! I'm a real Nancy Boy!!!

Cliques in high and bullying doesn't revolve around sports. You haven't been in high school for over 40 fucking years. It's the popular people that bully and make fun of the unpopular people, zero to do with sports!

Yeah, well i have recently talked to some high school students who are still getting harassed by the jocks, and it's actually worse now than it was when i was in school!

Nothing has changed since Columbine. True, there probably won't be any more school shootings anymore, but that's because they are clamping down harder on the nerds and geeks, while the jocks are still free to bash head against lockers and have their way with our sisters and daughters!

The only reason why there won't be any more school shootings is because the jocks are so stupid they can't operate something as complex as a gun! They can't even operate a can opener so they use their teeth instead!

They don't even know how to open a book, let alone read one!

A typical monkey-boy is so fucking stupid, that he couldn't even pour piss out of a boot if the directions were written on the heel!

I don't know the people you met or the sports fans you met, so I can't comment on that. All I can say most sports fans I have met have been pretty good people. Can only speak from my experiences, not yours.

I'm willing to bet I've personally known more sports fans than you. Just become across sports fans from time to time doesn't mean you know them.

BULL-FUCKING-SHIT!!!

I'm 57 years old, you're only 18 years old, so I have been around long enough to know more people than you have so far! PERIOD!!!

Yeah, having a job where you're happy is no big deal. It's just as fine to have a job you hate and make you depressed.

And stop bringing up what happened to you in high school. While I feel terrible for you, it's an isolated incident thus make it irrelevant to the big picture and an exception rather than the norm.

Again, if it had only happened once or twice to me, then you might be able to call them isolated incidents.

But for me, it was continuous, year after year, so they were NOT isolated incidents. That's just like that 99% percent figure that you keep pulling out of you ass and shoving in our faces!

Don't you ever give up???

You have a very short memory. You must be suffering from premature Alzheimer's Disease.

Well, I guess you must have decided to avoid the rush and get a good head-start on your senility!

I'm glad you brought up the worst sports job, vendors. Never mind the coaches, broadcasters, sports writers, and all the other good jobs pertaining to sports. Take sports out and those guys go for other jobs, making the competition more fierce and a job harder to come by, thus making our economy even worse. Awesome. Solid plan.

I wanna see a nice big smile on your face when you ask "Will that be paper or plastic?" come on, show me some teeth!!!

Sports in school have nothing to do with graduation requirements, and there is no fixed reading level you must have in order to graduate. And, very few of the people who struggle to graduate are athletes. Talking out of your ass again, nice job.

I agree! You're absolutely right!

It's what I have been saying all this time.

There are many high school graduates who can't even read beyond the 5th grade level.

And you're also right about the athletes. Very few of them have to struggle to graduate, because they have dumbed down the school curriculum to make it easier for monkey-boys to get passing grades! Otherwise, they wouldn't even be able to pass Kindergarten!

And it's true that sports have nothing to do with graduation requirements.

I should know, because back in 1986, I saw on ABC NEWS NIGHTLINE a segment about a collage basketball player who could not read beyond the 2ed grade level.

So, you'll get no argument from me on that score!

Clearly, you know nothing about social skills. Social skills are very vital to jobs everywhere. Being able to talk to people, convince them that your idea is good, work with people and listen, all of these skills are very vital to everyday life and can be enhanced by sports.

DUH! HUH! HUH!

I have a good idea! Lets tare down the school library to make the gym bigger! DUH! HUH! HUH!

Uh! Will that be paper or plastic? BUURRRRP! BELCH! FARRRRRRRRTTT!!!

You say I know nothing about social skills?

Well, I don't drool from the corners of my mouth when I'm holding a conversation, and if I'm in a collage dorm, I don't go into the TV room when everybody is watching a good movie, and rudely change the channel to sports!

But that's what monkey-boys do!

Oh yes indeed! A perfect example how social skills are enhanced by sports!

There some people who cannot afford college. Sports help them get out of the ghetto and be at a university. You may say, well how come these kids can get out and the other kids who can't afford college can't? That's a vital argument, but really, we have nothing in place that helps the average person who can't afford college go. There's student loans, but some people just can't afford it. So in the end, it's better some people get out of bad areas than none. Also would like to add if you're that good of a student you can get many types of scholarships, so don't cry foul here.

Ah yes! It's good to know that anybody who can read at the 2ed grade level can go to collage and play basketball or football!

I'm soooooooooooo happy for them!

WWWWWWWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

WWWHHOOOOP-DE-FUCKING-DOO!!!

Again, what happened to you in school is hardly the norm and should not be used as any real point.

As far as riots go, obviously they're not right, but for the most part after big wins people just go out and have fun and party, which is always good. Things like overturning cars, and fires have been a rarity. I will agree that it's a problem. But, hardly something that makes sports more bad than good.

(Feeling sleepy, nods off, face hits keyboard)

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HUH???

What waz zat???

At the professional level, the skills demanded of you in sports are probably equal to the ones you mentioned.

Yeah! I know!

Kicking a hunk of pigskin a hundred yards over an iron post takes far more skill then calculating the trajectory of the Voyager space crafts we had launched to the planets.

I'm impressed!!!

It takes highly skilled people to do any of these things. And while those jobs are all dangerous, don't underestimate how dangerous football, hockey, or even baseball is. In football, with any hit you can be paralyzed, trust me it's happened more than once. There have also been a countless amount of gruesome injuries, I invite you to look them up. Look up bad hockey injuries too, not good stuff. As far as baseball goes, that may be perceived as a safe sport, and for the most part it is. However, pitcher's and whoever is hitting both face a lot of danger. A fastball coming at your head, or a hit ball coming right back at a pitcher can both be deadly. Whil agreed athletes shouldn't make as much as they do, these are highly skilled people who work hard, face big time injury everyday, and are entertainers for one of the biggest things in American pop culture.

And it's dangerous for the fans as well.

Some years ago, during a hockey game, a young lady sitting in the bleachers was killed when some monkey-boy clobbered the puck really hard, and it struck the young lady in the face, fracturing her skull, killing her instantly.

What a horrible way to die! Just over something as worthless as a hockey game, and over something as worthless as the monkey-boy who sent the puck flying into the spectators!

And naturally it's dangerous for the jocks!

For example:

Some football player just standing there, jaw hanging slack, drooling from the corners of his mouth and dribbling down his chin, big mouth wide open, he gets hit in the face by the flying football, swallows it, and chokes to death on it!

How tragic!

NOT!!!

BUUUAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Ok, I can see the football coaches/professor thing. However, football coaches can sometimes have even more of an impact on a kid because they come from such a personal level, at least in college.

Well, golly gee! I was really lucky!

My PE instructor had a great impact on me when I was only in the 5th grade!

He punched me in the stomach with a basketball!

Yeah! I really lucked out!

Thanks to him, I feel so lucky!!!

My god, you're clueless. Of course the SuperDome coming back didn't fix the city or completely heal it. However, MANY people love sports, and when the Saints came back after a year away it made a lot of people feel normal, and gave them something to think about for 3 hours every Sunday instead of what happened to their city. You cannot put a negative spin on that!

Uh, God is a proper name and should be capitalized, unless your god is one of them pagan idols made of either wood or stone. Then the lower case "g' should be sufficient.

Anyway, there are sill a lot of people who are still without homes after the hurricane. So, it's going to be a long time before they begin to feel normal again.

Having new home would help,

To fucking Hell with the Stupid Dome!!!

Oh, as for 911, the jocks in our schools still bully the other students around, so the monkey-boys still like to make Jihad against the better students!

What's that even about dude? You clearly ignored the point of the post, and went on a random rant about something stupid.

Well, it's not any more stupid than all the random rants you have been posting since God knows when!!!

People don't get beat up in high school these days because someone's a jock and he wants to mess with a nerd. It just doesn't happen.

True! Jocks don't get beat up because they want to mess with a nerd.

It's the nerds that get beat up because a jock enjoys messing with them!

So, you got that right!!!

Either way, that has zero to do with what the New York Yankees did for the city of New York in the fall of 2001. And again, you can't put a negative spin on it.

The New York Yankees didn't do jack-shit! They just played ball as usual!

It was the brave firemen, the police, and the rescue workers who did everything for the city of New York!

But you completely ignore them!

As far as a protection program, see above post. Those kids are just fine.

Yeah, the kids who were sports fans did just fine! Everybody else has to fall on their collective ass for them!

But the nerds and geeks aren't doing so well.

I know I didn't feel very well after getting punched in the stomach with a basket ball, or getting my head bashed against the corner of a brick wall, or getting kicked in the nuts.

No, I didn't feel very well after that.

But, I'm glad the kids who are into sports are dong just fine. They get everything handed to them on a silver platter.

Well, it's getting late. It's almost 2:40 AM as I'm typing this, so I need to log some sack time.

But before I go to bed, I'm gong to whack myself in the balls with my cane, and maybe this time around it will make me feel well.

Good night, sleep tight, and don't let the chupacabras bite!

[Polite24]

Again, in high school it's popular vs. unpopular, NOT jocks vs. non-jocks.

I'll get to the rest of that rant later.

[Millhouse]

Another good effort of a post, with valid points brought up, let's get to it.

High school cliques DO NOT revolve around sports. I'm not sure how old you are or when you went to high school, but you're wrong. Do sports play a role? Yes, but they are hardly the reason that teasing and bullying goes on. Again, it's popular vs. non popular, NOT athlete vs. non athlete.

I disagree with this. Sports, in especially football and hockey, attract the bullying personality types. The ones who want to play 'badass' in their circle of friends, legitimately.

I'm truly feel sorry for the fact that you must go to work and have to deal with people talking about sports. You sound like a whiner, please look at some people with real problems and continue to complain about the fact people at work bring up sports and you hate it.

You are sorry, but not for the things that I plainly stated. I deal much better with people just talking about sports, that doesn't bother me nearly as much as having them overstated to me, as if I should be a fan, and being pushed on me as if I should feel badly for not being into them.

As far as your mock conversations go, not a whole lot I can say. They come from your personal experiences, so I can't argue that. I will bring up my personal experiences, in which I associate with many non sports fans and I know plenty of sports fans who associate with non sports fans. Not as much of a deciding factor as you'd think. Obviously, sports fans can gravitate towards each other because that's something they have in common and can talk about.

Alike attracts alike, that's beside the point. I am well aware of the tendencies of human nature to gravitate towards people who understand one another. That is why this forum exists, for example.

The problem is, when any form of entertainment becomes as ridiculously popular and commercialized as sports has, it becomes religious in nature. Proselytizing and passing judgment on those who do not understand nor care about what they themselves are passionate about becomes prominent, and I don't know anyone that appreciates that, unless they themselves are also sports fans. Or fans of anything, for that matter.

The popularity of sports is an amazing phenomenon, especially in modern American culture. And to that end, I do not think that people that love sports even realize nor care half the time when they commit either a physical or emotional act of cruelty on a non-sports fan.

That is another thing you need to understand. If it were just as simple as the response "Oh, you don't like sports? Oh well," from a sports fan, this entire forum of people who are fed up wouldn't exist. It isn't sports we hate. In as much as you'de probably try to lump me in with the 'rest of the haters' (which I don't think of anyone on this board), I give every sports fan the benefit of the doubt. My attitude is, you like sports? Great. But sports is so popular that the very definition of popularity dictates that cliques form regardless, and then what happens?

A dirty word, which I haven't mentioned yet. Discrimination.

I don't believe anyone here, not even FatMan, whom you seem to have a personal displeasure at conversing with, believes that sports are truly the issue, though they are at the root. But don't be surprised or shocked if people are going to or do take their counterarguments to extremes because this sort of thing has them so fed up that they become emotional about the matter. And I don't blame them.

I completely agree with the center paragraph on the home page of this website. And for good reason. I personally am not attacking sports. I told you already, and I will state it again, that I see a purpose and a use for them.

Even sports fandom, hey, if you want to go to games and cheer your team on, I think that's great too. Inevitably, I find it silly and stupid, and an excuse to get drunk. I personally prefer to do my drinking at home, but oh well... the point is, I'm not going to crap on you for that, either.

My attitude is, just like with separation of church and state, learn to keep your fandom out of my line of sight. Because it's aggravating.

I would have no problem with P.E., either, except for one thing. Teachers don't bother teaching tolerance to the more physically adept students for their fellow students who might not play as well as they do.

Sports has a tendency in the developmental years to promote delusions of grandeur, and fails many times to promote humility to the players who excel at sports. Only black and white... you're either a.) a great winner or b.) a terrible loser, and you suck.

In fact, I will go so far as to say (and you SHOULD care about this if you don't, based on everything you've said in all your posts) that the attitudes surrounding school sports may actually cause a person to give up on not only sports, but fitness altogether and become a couch potato.

Watch the HBO special about Ground Zero, New York, and the Yankees, and tell me that didn't have a good effect. Yes, there's people who probably didn't care, but some people finding release and normalcy with the Yankees is better than none.

People come to terms with grief in their own way. In the case of 9/11, I would never assume that someone should have gone to a Yankee's game as a way of coping with their own grief.

We're all different, and that is a point I don't think anyone on this board, including myself, is getting across to you.

And entertainment based jobs are more fun.

Matter of personal opinion to you, completely illogical statement. They can be more fun for some, but not for all. I worked in various customer service positions for years, many of them based around entertainment. Not all of us get to be an announcer or the guy that shoots off the fireworks at the end of a game.

Most of us have to clean up the shitty messes that patrons leave behind everywhere they go, or put up with rude customers, or deal with their screaming misbehaved kids.

You guys underestimate fun, and happiness.

Nope. Fun is where you find it. I do not find it in sports, I find just as much of it in doing other things that please me, including working out. But I think it's fine that you do, so tell the other 99 percent of your sports fans to leave me alone about it, then I might meet you halfway on sports serving an actual purpose.

You're too busy looking at the bigger picture and looking for the something that has real value instead of just living in the now.

If by 'you', you mean all of us, I doubt that very seriously. I won't speak for anyone else on this one, but I look at it from the macro and micro points of view.

Life is short man.

Nah. Life is pretty damn long, especially if you pick the wrong things to do just because they're popular, and wind up doing something that isn't true to who you are.

Sports have real value because they're fun for many people.

The front page of the website acknowledges this in its own way. But until attitudes about it change on the part of the sports fan, the non-sports fans are going to continue to be bitter. When you are made to feel outcast, left out, pissed on, put down for something that you yourself don't enjoy, even though you've made it quite clear that it's okay for the person putting you down to enjoy it, you'll find a bit of a pet peeve, and that is as gentle a euphamism as I can make it, for popular competitive sports and its fans.

They don't have to mean something to the real world or anything like that. Some of you need to stop taking life so seriously.

Pot, kettle, black. Life is meant to be taken seriously when necessary and life is meant to be taken with a grain of salt. It's all about time and place. Here, in this forum, I listen to the stories of people who I have never met, some of them across entire oceans from me, that have had shockingly similar experiences, and my heart goes out to them. We talk, we share stories, we have a laugh at some links.

You, on the other hand, are here, endlessly defending something without compromising the very things we want to be heard on, yet seem to expect us to compromise without hesitation. Maybe in your life, from your point of view, sports 'ain't so bad'. But you need to see reason.

Reread the paragraph on the front of the website. Sports aren't the main problem. Intolerance and attitudes are. And the bad attitude came first from the sports fan, not vice versa.

[Earl]

This post is addressed to all of you. There is a great article on the innovative PE4Life program at a website that I highly recommend you read, whether youâ??re a sports fan or not. Instead of typing up the long address of this website, I think the quicker way to access this article is to first do a Google search on â??Tim McCord bullyingâ? and then click on the underlined heading â??Tolerance.Org: Teaching Tolerance,â? which appears at the top of the very first page of the website listings. This article provides details of this program, which I will not describe here. One very important feature of the PE4Life program that I will mention is that competitive team sports are not imposed upon the nonathletically inclined students. This program actually promotes physical fitness for all students, instead of just being centered around sports. At the time this article was written, this program was in its third year in the Titusville, Pennsylvania, school district. Iâ??ve gone to the trouble of typing up comments made by certain authorities in the district. These comments are telling. Titusville Middle School principal Karen Jez is quoted as having said, â??The fact that kids are equalized in P.E. helps. We donâ??t have as much name-calling, teasing, bullying as we have had in years past.â? Tim McCord, a gym teacher at Titus Middle School who is also a leading proponent of PE4Life, has said, â??Youâ??ll notice they donâ??t hang out in groups of athletes and non-athletes anymore. The kids talk to each other now. They donâ??t worry so much about being different.â? According to John Wiley, PE â??chairpersonâ? at Titusville Senior High, â??Thereâ??s not so much tension between the groups. The athletes and the techies work together.â? I would ask the following question of anyone who reads this website article: Why did the bullying go down in this school district? I think the answer is obvious.

[Fat Man]

Again, in high school it's popular vs. unpopular, NOT jocks vs. non-jocks.

I'll get to the rest of that rant later.

OH! I can hardly wait!

I live and die for that moment!

OK, it was getting late last night, and it was getting harder to think of anything more to say. Yeah, I do have an occasional retard moment, like when I'm up really late at night.

But now, I feel that I need to respond some more to the following . . . . .

There some people who cannot afford college. Sports help them get out of the ghetto and be at a university. You may say, well how come these kids can get out and the other kids who can't afford college can't? That's a vital argument, but really, we have nothing in place that helps the average person who can't afford college go. There's student loans, but some people just can't afford it. So in the end, it's better some people get out of bad areas than none. Also would like to add if you're that good of a student you can get many types of scholarships, so don't cry foul here.

Oh! I'm sooooooo happy that they go into the ghettos, and seek out the biggest and the strongest kids, the fastest runners and the highest jumpers, the neighborhood bullies, and rescue them from the ghettos and train them to play football or basketball, so that they can go on to professional sports, and make millions of dollars as well paid professional rapists!

Oh! Golly gee! I'm so happy they can escape the ghettos.

But what about the weaker kid, the little nerd wearing glasses, living in a poor neighborhood, but he hangs out in the public library where it much safer than being out on the streets, and he spends his time reading to improve his mind, and then, while walking home from the library with a bunch of books under his arm, the stronger more athletic kids jump him, knocks his books to the ground, stomps on his glasses, and beats the crap out of him!

Who is going to rescue him from the ghetto?

It's only the sports promoters, who are owned by the MAFIA and organized crime, who go into the ghettos to rescue the more athletic kids.

But the little nerd in glasses (now broken) nobody goes into the poor neighborhood to rescue him from poverty.

So, I must cry . . . . . . .

FOUL! FOUL! FOUL!

[Polite24]

They give out scholarships to those kids who are good enough students..there's tons available

[Fat Man]

They give out scholarships to those kids who are good enough students..there's tons available

Yeah! Tons of Football Scholarships, and you have to take a bunch of dumb-ass PE courses that interfere with your academic studies!

I should know, from a conversation I once had with a young student.

He wanted to attend some university, but they were only offering Football Scholarships which would have required so many PE courses.

REMEMBER:

Organized Sports = Organized Crime!

[Millhouse]

This post is addressed to all of you. There is a great article on the innovative PE4Life program at a website that I highly recommend you read, whether youâ??re a sports fan or not. Instead of typing up the long address of this website, I think the quicker way to access this article is to first do a Google search on â??Tim McCord bullyingâ? and then click on the underlined heading â??Tolerance.Org: Teaching Tolerance,â? which appears at the top of the very first page of the website listings. This article provides details of this program, which I will not describe here. One very important feature of the PE4Life program that I will mention is that competitive team sports are not imposed upon the nonathletically inclined students. This program actually promotes physical fitness for all students, instead of just being centered around sports. At the time this article was written, this program was in its third year in the Titusville, Pennsylvania, school district. Iâ??ve gone to the trouble of typing up comments made by certain authorities in the district. These comments are telling. Titusville Middle School principal Karen Jez is quoted as having said, â??The fact that kids are equalized in P.E. helps. We donâ??t have as much name-calling, teasing, bullying as we have had in years past.â? Tim McCord, a gym teacher at Titus Middle School who is also a leading proponent of PE4Life, has said, â??Youâ??ll notice they donâ??t hang out in groups of athletes and non-athletes anymore. The kids talk to each other now. They donâ??t worry so much about being different.â? According to John Wiley, PE â??chairpersonâ? at Titusville Senior High, â??Thereâ??s not so much tension between the groups. The athletes and the techies work together.â? I would ask the following question of anyone who reads this website article: Why did the bullying go down in this school district? I think the answer is obvious.

Earl, I want to thank you for bringing this to the forum's attention.

I highly encourage everyone, particularly Polite24 to read it.

http://www.tolerance.org/teach/printar. ... 317&pi=ttm

This is what I've been preaching all along, the top story alone being a great example of what I'm speaking of.

Some memorable quotes from that story:

"Gym class used to be the bane of non-athletes' existence, a place where kids were often humiliated, and where social hierarchies formed and flourished. Now it's an essential part of Titusville's campaign to cut down on peer harassment."

""Ask any group of 10 adults for their memories of gym class," A. Virshup writes in Women's Sports and Fitness magazine, "and seven of them will launch into litanies of frustration and humiliation: the groans when they came up to bat, the failure to do a single pull-up on the annual fitness test, the gruesome uniforms."

So much for your 99 percent nonsense, Polite24. And so much for your assertions that this isn't as widespread as you seem to want to convince everyone of as part of your evidence to support your facts.

""P.E. seemed less a class than some tribal ritual for jocks to enjoy and the rest of us to endure," Virshup recalls."

" Three years ago, Tim McCord was beginning to wonder himself. After two decades at Titusville Middle School, he had plunged into a gym teacherâ??s version of existential angst.

"I was a drill sergeant," he says. "For 19 years, I taught the same way. We were your basic everyday phys-ed program. The athletes dominated. The kids who were not as talented skills-wise, or as physically gifted, basically fell by the wayside. How much good was I doing those kids?""

"Fifteen years ago, Lawler went through his own gym-teacherâ??s crisis. "When P.E. was being cut, we were forced to look at our offerings and say, â??What do we offer thatâ??s of value?â?? I mean, I canâ??t stand there in front of my school board and say, â??Hey, I teach volleyball, basketball and football skills. You canâ??t cut my funding!â?? ""

See? Even intelligent gym teachers knew that being able to teach jockcentric sports wasn't the way, and that things needed to change.

So much for your theories and suppositions and claims. Here was a school district with people in it intelligent enough to know that P.E. needed to evolve, because students were sick of it. So much for "jocks beating up non jocks is always going to happen, you can't change it".

Horseshit.

These people did, and I'm very impressed with what they did, and I hope their ideas spread like wildfire. This is precisely how required fitness in schools needs to evolve.

""Now we donâ??t have kids refusing to dress," she says, still sounding a tad surprised. "They enjoy P.E."

That sums it up.

[Earl]

You're welcome, Millhouse. Phil Lawler and Tim McCord are new heroes of mine. PE4Life would have had such a positive impact in my life when I was a boy. It would have saved me a lot of grief later on.

[Ray]

I like this quote from the link you gave..

"A 1999 national telephone survey by ESPN found that nearly three-quarters of high school students expressed some level of tension between athletes and non-athletes in their school. High-profile incidents of violence at suburban schools in recent years threw the perennial problem of the campus pecking order into bold relief. "


I can easily believe that figure (75%).