Sweet, sweet hippy tears...

[Perd Hapley]

What I remember most of all is the thought that dogged me in the days afterward, as it became clear that a star player had been rendered quadriplegic on national television: Surely the game of football would now be outlawed.

Obviously that never happened....Tatum continued to terrorize opposing players.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/magazine/is-it-immoral-to-watch-the-super-bowl.html


   I guess they're herding up people off the street, and forcing them to play football, now. The poor dears.

[RoadKingLarry]

Part of the bread and circuses bit.  You want to piss off the sheeple? Start screwing with their sports. 

[Hawkmoon]

Recently, though, medical research has confirmed that football can cause catastrophic brain injury — not as a rare and unintended consequence, but as a routine byproduct of how the game is played. That puts us fans in a morally queasy position. We not only tolerate this brutality. We sponsor it, just by watching at home.

The author is obviously using an editorial "we," since he can't be including me in that. I haven't watched a professional or college football game, in person or on television, since I graduated from college in the mid-1960s. Ditto for basketball, and for the same reason: boring. (With basketball, the rules haven't changed but for college and the pros they simply don't enforce them.) No fun to watch.

The author can pound sand. I'm not supporting pro football.

For interesting football or basketball, go to a local high school game.

[Zardozimo Oprah Bannedalas]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/magazine/is-it-immoral-to-watch-the-super-bowl.html


   I guess they're herding up people off the street, and forcing them to play football, now. The poor dears.

Football is the state religion in most of US. It would be easier to ban Christianity or coffee.

[charby]

Football is the state religion in most of US. It would be easier to ban Christianity or coffee Oprah.

FIFY

[geronimotwo]

Part of the bread and circuses bit.  You want to piss off the sheeple? Start screwing with their sports. 

even the romans knew that!

[AZRedhawk44]

The author is obviously using an editorial "we," since he can't be including me in that. I haven't watched a professional or college football game, in person or on television, since I graduated from college in the mid-1960s. Ditto for basketball, and for the same reason: boring. (With basketball, the rules haven't changed but for college and the pros they simply don't enforce them.) No fun to watch.

The author can pound sand. I'm not supporting pro football.

For interesting football or basketball, go to a local high school game.

^ This times eleventybillion.

[Ben]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fraSdN-PG8

[SADShooter]

even the romans knew that!

"Nika! Nika! Nika!"

[AJ Dual]

For the millions the stars make, and even the decent six-figures the mediocre players make, I think they should have weapons and a 1 minute timer clock on fights between plays.

But then I'm also in favor of "Aztec Rules" for most reality television that has an elimination component.

[Jamisjockey]

If it pisses off liberals, then I will continue to watch!

[Fitz]

I hate football

But if the blissninnys hate it, I think I'll start supporting it

[Jamisjockey]

I like the game.  I don't care about most of the personalities involved.  I enjoy it as a spectator sport.

[T.O.M.]

Yet another example of how the enlightened continue to try to tell the rest of us how dangerous so many things in life are, so they must be stopped/banned.  I think back to my youth when we left home at 7:30, spend the day running through the woods without adult supervision, making campfires, cooking hot dogs on sticks, carrying knives, shooting things, with the only rule I had to live by was to be home when my father got home for dinner.  We played tackle football without pads, and hardball without batting helmets.  We shot BB guns without eye protection.  Looked at Playboy magazine, and laughed at the jokes even if we didn't get them.  Sometimes we got hurt, a few stitches here and there, a cast or two.  But we were right back at it the next day, even with stitches or a cast.

Is football dangerous?  Yep.  But so is driving.  So is walking across a busy street.  As i often say, the leading cause of death on this planet is life.  And I don't plan on giving that up.

[RevDisk]

Part of the bread and circuses bit.  You want to piss off the sheeple? Start screwing with their sports. 

I've seen small towns that would go absolutely ballistic if someone accused (with evidence) a football player of rape or other misconduct. Hell, Penn State fans were honest enough to often admit that raped kids were no where near as important as college level football. That's pretty much why I don't care about sports. They'd be fine by themselves, but their fanboys (and fangirls) can be stomach curdling. Like Prius or Apple owners.

If someone seriously tried to ban sports, I would honestly expect them to be ripped apart by a lynch mob or stabbed to death on the Senate floor.

[Balog]

Meh, there's a difference between "sports are dangerous" as a generality and the fact that so many pro football players end up with crippling brain injuries. Doesn't hurt to be cognizant of the fact that you're being entertained by watching young men destroy their health.

On the other hand, I get payed a fraction of the league minimum to do a job that's statistically more likely to kill or cripple me than NFL players, so my sympathy is pretty negligible.

I don't hate sports per se, but the rabid cultish devotion so many display towards it (see Rev's Penn State comments, they're spot on) is truly disturbing.

[Perd Hapley]

I'll let you numbskulls debate the merits of sport, while the rest of us just enjoy the delicious hippy tears. And the irony. I guess next they'll try to outlaw booze, and sex, and free speech, and abortion, and other dangerous choices.   

[Balog]

Again, I don't have any sympathy for either the article referenced in the OP or NFL players, but there's a significant difference between allowing people to hurt themselves and using young people giving themselves brain injuries as entertainment. Not everything is about the .gov, this is a moral quandary insofar as it's anything at all.

[Perd Hapley]

Again, I don't have any sympathy for either the article referenced in the OP or NFL players, but there's a significant difference between allowing people to hurt themselves and using young people giving themselves brain injuries as entertainment. Not everything is about the .gov, this is a moral quandary insofar as it's anything at all.

This a hippy tears thread, about the idiotic mutterings of a hippy who doesn't see that difference.

He also doesn't see the difference between being terrorized, vs voluntarily playing a game for money.

So 

(I don't watch the sport, so I don't quite relate to the moral quandary thereof. Sorry.)

[roo_ster]

Meh no moral quandry.  Their likelihood of debilitating injury is less than for many professions with lesser compensation.  And many would barely be competent such that they could manage lower middle class employment outside of football.  

And the risk of serious injury of the acute or chronic sort is less for football than for some other kids  recreational activities.  Like riding their bike.

The anti football push is about status and imposing a swpl sensibility on the benighted flyover denizens.

And hippy tears are still sweet.

[dogmush]

Meh no moral quandry.  Their likelihood of debilitating injury is less than for many professions with lesser compensation.  And many would barely be competent such that they could manage lower middle class employment outside of football.  

And the risk of serious injury of the acute or chronic sort is less for football than for some other kids  recreational activities.  Like riding their bike.

The anti football push is about status and imposing a swpl sensibility on the benighted flyover denizens.

And hippy tears are still sweet.

  New acronym to me.

[Regolith]

New acronym to me.

Stuff White People Like. Used as a shorthand for progressive white urban liberals.

[vaskidmark]

Questions:

If they reduced the number of innings played, would football be any safer for the players?

Would the hippie be any happier if it were safer for the players?

stay safe.

[AZRedhawk44]

Winning quote from a friend:


"The only leatherbound objects men should be chasing, are women."