International I Hate Sports Club

Earlier this week someone who signed off as "Dara" left a brief rude message on the Guestbook webpage in which she accused us of saying that playing a sport is "a bad thing," which is a complete misrepresentation of the message of this website. She then said in so many words that there is absolutely no connection of any kind between sports and bullying, which she probably isn't even opposed to. She appears to have been another "hit-and-run" type who doesn't have the moral courage to stick around and deal with the responses to her superior attitude. (Oh, yes, Dara, we do apologize for our insolence. We realize that sports are sacred, that athletes are superior to nonathletes, and that there is not a single problem in the world of sports that needs to be addressed.) Well, we're not alone in our views. I've copied and pasted an article on the following British webpage.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/ma ... .education

School sports culture leads to violence

The godlike status afforded to student athletes in America has left the so-called 'nerds' and 'dweebs' feeling isolated and angry, writes Julian Borger

One of the highlights of the US sporting year is approaching its climax. It is known as "March Madness" - and with good reason. It pits basketball teams from across the country against each other in a knockout tournament that is watched by tens of thousands of fans in huge sporting arena and by tens of millions on television.
It is huge business, and the most extraordinary thing about it is that the players are all college students. The idea takes a little getting used to for an outsider.

I played some football (soccer in US terms) at university in Britain, and our maximum crowd numbered about a dozen. Even the good college teams would have near fainted at the idea of being on television.

The only college sports event with a mass audience is the annual Oxford-Cambridge boat race, and that owes much of its popularity to a national fondness for tradition.

The transatlantic difference is even more striking on the secondary school level. In small-town America, whole communities regularly turn out to watch the high-school team play baseball, or American football or basketball.

Schoolchildren can be heroes for the day. It is an all-encompassing social event of a kind rarely witnessed any more in English towns, and it is one where the focus of attention is exclusively on young people.

Nor is this school-age sporting culture confined to boys. Due to a piece of legislation called Title IX, passed in 1972 (at the height of the Nixon era of all times) girls are guaranteed equal spending and support in school sport, and parents appear to pay the game just as much respect. Girls' football (soccer) is even bigger than the boys' version, helped by the fact that the women's team won the last World Cup.

The downside to this phenomenon, however, is obvious and it is beginning to take its toll. If children who are good at sports are heroes, what does that make those who are not?

Underlying the recent spate of school shootings have been stories of bullying and exclusion of non-athletes by the school "jocks".

After a frustrated schoolboy shot two other students dead earlier this month in the Californian town of Santee, an entire subculture of bullying came to the surface.

An angry young reader wrote to the Los Angeles Times: "For school personnel to be at a loss as to the motives of the shootings at Santana High School is hypocritical. Anyone who has attended high school knows there is the "in crowd" made up of sports heroes, class officers and their entourage.

"To this group the teachers and administrators pander, allowing them to do pretty much as they please. Those not in the 'in group' become the subjects of bullying, taunting and ridicule. They are the nerds, dweebs etc."

The relentless rise of college sports has taken its toll in other ways. Many of the colleges have become addicted to the millions that their sports teams bring in, in the form of commercial sponsorship and ticket sales.

Increasingly they go out in search of young talents who have not finished secondary school. The academic role of these underage prodigies is often a polite pretence. In many of the big basketball playing colleges, the graduation rate among the players is well under 50%.

The term "student-athlete" rings hollow in what has largely become a training ground for the professional league, the NBA, and those who do not make the transition often end up with nothing to show for their years in college.

It is a high risk for a fleeting chance at stardom. It would have been nice to have a few more people turn up to watch us play football in our college days, but the most casual glance through the US daily press demonstrates there is a price to be paid for taking student sports too seriously.

Email
julian.borger@guardian.co.uk

Hey, Dara, why don't you fire off an angry e-mail at Julian Borger, telling him how EVIL he is for not saying that sports is the most important activity students can be involved in and that sports is more important than anything else.

Assuming that "Dara" is a high-school student, I wonder how she treats other students. Sounds to me like Dara the shallow social climber is in Samdaman's crowd.

I see you're not keen on Dara. I personally think that she didn't look around the forums before submitting her Guestbook message; to be honest, a glance at the main page and the college entry exam for jocks would be enough to give many people the wrong impression. Perhaps sometime she will come back, read through the forums, see how we have differences in our attitudes as a group and submit a more understanding message then. Some people are just too quick to talk without asking or understanding the other side's real beliefs. It happens a lot. Needless to say I don't like the excessive emphasis that teenagers place on popularity which can be affected by sporting ability. I also got left out a lot back at high school; I remember once we had Art class back before we dropped certain subjects for our GCSE courses, and we had two huge square tables in a room which would accommodate 16 people each. So basically I was just sat there, not saying anything, trying to do the work while everyone else was chatting to each other. And a LOT of the time, sports would come up. Having gone to school in London where there are several major football clubs it seemed much more of a responsibility to support one of these teams than it would in some rural area well away from the city. Naturally during the football conversations some idiots on my table would turn to me and ask some questions I obviously didn't know the answer to, like "Oh wasn't that a good game on Saturday, 1981?" Most of the time when I just said to them "Well I wouldn't know, would I?" I got laughed at and they just gave up on me afterwards. But there was one incident when the art teacher left the room to go and pick up some extra paints from a nearby art room and the verbal exchanges got more aggressive. I was getting had a real go at for saying something like "Does it really matter if I like Arsenal or not?" and then some prick sat near me said "Unless you want my fist to go into your face, it does." I was really getting my patience tested that lesson; I remember they had very much chosen to turn on me that time for some reason. I don't know why, I don't understand the bully's mind. I retorted by saying "Oh yeah, threaten to hit me over not liking some men in shorts. That's really manly of you. Dickhead." Naturally being insulted by me, a "nerd", was unacceptable in his book so he absolutely lunged at me over the table, pushed me with both arms and sent me flying off my chair. I went flying about four feet backwards and crashed into a bin and bunch of cardboard boxes next to it. The teacher came back in shortly after I hit the deck and saw me there, lying on the floor, struggling not to bloody scream after being humiliated so harshly for no good reason. The teacher asked what happens and the guy who pushed me said, "1981 tripped over. The piece of paper was too heavy for him." And of course, seeing as how nobody else would grass him in and there was no conclusive evidence to show he pushed me, the bastard got away with it. THEY ALWAYS DID. So I had to assume my place next to that goon for that lesson. Thankfully the week after that he apparently attacked a teacher with a chair after being given a crap mark (which he probably more than well deserved) in a practice exam and was expelled from school. This happened around late 1994, I think. Although my memory with dates wasn't so good then. It was definitely while I was 13.

So, Dara, sports do encourage bullying to some extent. Don't go and dismiss it all as just being differences between students. I know from personal experience that us who lack skill in playing sports or lack interest in the happenings of the professional leagues can definitely expect some ridicule due to that fact. Anyways, that's another mini-essay done by me. I just think it was important to recount a specific experience in my lifetime to prove that bullying in schools does stem from sports to some extent. Oh yes, I sure had assholes outside my PE set who gave me problems. Thankfully when we dropped subjects for GCSE, we found ourself in groups with people more of like mind. Not friends (those I had were critically few in number then), but those who could tolerate me at least. If only PE could have been got rid of at GCSE level. Sadly, it had to stick around...

Best regards,
i_like_1981

Excellent post for more than one reason, i_like_1981. I shall submit a lengthy post tomorrow when I have more time to write.

Earl and 1981. I need to need we make a separate thread or something to archive your best posts.

Thanks for the compliment, Indurrago. But I must say, though, that some of my previous posts do make me cringe. I've lost my temper a few times, as we all have.

That's horrible. That kid might have been their friend but he pushed you four feet into those cardboard boxes and they didn't tell on him? That's crazy.

Earl wrote:Thanks for the compliment, Indurrago. But I must say, though, that some of my previous posts do make me cringe. I've lost my temper a few times, as we all have.

I think those are posts that'll be the hardest to find. You've kept your cool better than most, including myself, despite your frequent posting.

Hey Turudes welcome to Sports suck! Enjoy your stay!

Indurrago wrote:Earl and 1981. I need to need we make a separate thread or something to archive your best posts.

Thanks for that, Indurrago. Good to see my massive posts are taken kindly to. This is why I don't use chatrooms on the internet... half the people who go on there would suffer a brain meltdown if someone went and forced as much text on them at once as I would do! Too much information! Too much information for a tiny brain. Anyways, I kind of get taken in a lot when I start writing a huge post. I start telling my story and instantly keep coming up with more to say or labour under the delusion that I haven't explained myself good enough yet and have to keep writing in order to do so. But I'll only write huge posts as times of serious discussion when I feel there is a point definitely worth making. Who on earth would want to read a mini-essay in the Forum Games section? (Although there's more than likely a few there already.)

I haven't been on here in four days. That's quite a lot by my standards! I suppose my brain went kind of funny. Things slip my mind, even this place. It seems I missed a lot, including the return of Andy, but now I've gone and got my mini-essay into that topic I don't feel so bad about it. It's never too late for a mini-essay.

Best regards,
i_like_1981

Lol, can you even write a paragraph in a chatroom? I'm guessing you can't if its the same as normal online chatting. If not I don't see why it can't be programmed that way include that much text per message. I don't do online chatting, ever really.

Indurrago wrote:Lol, can you even write a paragraph in a chatroom? I'm guessing you can't if its the same as normal online chatting. If not I don't see why it can't be programmed that way include that much text per message. I don't do online chatting, ever really.

I was on the chatroom on this website a few weeks back and there didn't seem to be any limits on how much one could type. Of course, I'd probably get laughed at on a chatroom elsewhere for typing in standard English and not txtspek (omg u goin out 2nite! supa!) so I don't bother. Forums are more my cup of tea.

(Incidentally, what did happen to the chatroom on this website? Come on! It was brought back for a reason.)

Best regards,
i_like_1981

Interesting, I do use text-speak but only if I'm confident that the person at the other end will know what stands for. WUU2, was a new one(for me) I had no idea till the beginning of this year. Stands for what U(you) up to? Otherwise, frankly writing it all out just looks better to me. I always liked writing out "you" especially. Keyboarding was one of the most useful classes I've taken and still is.

I'll type out words on chatrooms, and will rarely use text speak. I'll say things like "brb" and stuff, but for the most part, I type fully. The only thing I don't do is use capitals and periods. Considering it's live and you don't have all the time in the world to reply (not if you want to keep the conversation going, that is)...... I don't know how to end this sentence.

I pretty much only use text speak while texting, and even so, I don't use heavy text speak that causes the message to be unintelligible. Outside of texting, the only text speak I use is things such as LOL (Laugh Out Loud) and it's variants such as ROFL (Rolling On the Floor Laughing), but I don't use it because of it's brevity, but because it shows that I think that a certain thing is funny and that it caused me to laugh.

HugeFanOfBadReligion wrote:I pretty much only use text speak while texting, and even so, I don't use heavy text speak that causes the message to be unintelligible. Outside of texting, the only text speak I use is things such as LOL (Laugh Out Loud) and it's variants such as ROFL (Rolling On the Floor Laughing), but I don't use it because of it's brevity, but because it shows that I think that a certain thing is funny and that it caused me to laugh.

My favorite one is ROTFLMAO which is Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Ass Off!

Fat Man wrote:My favorite one is ROTFLMAO which is Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Ass Off!

Haha, what about ROTFLMAOOL which is Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Ass Off Out Loud?

On a side note, ROFLCopters can't fly. That's because they're rolling on the floor laughing, and they obviously can't fly while rolling on the floor, LOL.