… a passage that captures my thoughts about The Blount Punch perfectly.
… I’m not thinking about the taunting that set him off, Blount’s own actions or the season-long suspension. What bugs me is our whole disingenuous reaction. Here’s what we say to athletes from a very young age: Here’s a scholarship for excelling at a violent game, here’s fame for excelling at a violent game, here’s a chance at millions for excelling at a violent game. We reward young, immature people for excelling at a violent game and then, when that violence crosses over the constantly moving line of what’s socially accepted, we all jump back and gasp in faux horror like total phonies and call for drastic action.
The writer is David Fleming, for ESPN.
September 10th, 2009 at 10:08PM
I take small issue with this clause:
"when that violence crosses over the constantly moving line of what’s socially accepted"
You know, that line really isn’t "constantly moving."
September 10th, 2009 at 11:04PM
I agree, Cassandra. I mean, he’s sort of right, in that there’s a certain dynamism or wiggle room or whatever here — but basically the idea of what’s unacceptably violent is pretty stable.
September 10th, 2009 at 11:13PM
As a lifelong football fan, I find the racial overtones quite unsettling. Compared to their representation in the general population, Division I (or whatever nonsense term they are using now) football players are disproportionately African-American.
So, we encourage the kind of violence you speak of that inheres in the game, but when it crosses boundaries, when the violence no longer seems controllable by the old boys that rule major college football, the wrath is delivered on the perpetrator.
None of this excuses the player’s behavior, of course, but there is an extensive literature on the long history and dominance of the "uncontrollable black man" in American culture, and I honestly see some of it playing out in these scenarios. Lord knows drawing attention to racial issues in college football is hardly a reach.
September 11th, 2009 at 2:13PM
I don’t see this as a racial issue. "…controllable by the old boys…", "uncontrollable black man"? Are you serious? How about an adult being held accountable for punching someone in the face? If it was a white player that punched a black player the NAACP, Al Sharpeton, Jesse Jackson, and who knows how many others would call it a hate crime but, it would still be just one person punching another. Are you saying that he threw the punch at the white player because he is white, out of frustration over treatment of the African-American people as a whole? I don’t think he put that much thought into it.
September 12th, 2009 at 2:04PM
Lou,
The two are not mutually exclusive. As I observed, suggesting the existence of a larger racial context does not preclude holding the student accountable for assaulting another player. And I am unsure how you could interpret my comment to imply that Blount threw a punch at the opposing player because the latter was white. Nothing in my comment says anything at all about Blount’s motivations. The point, rather, was to suggest higher level socializations of race, ones that speak to the social, political, and cultural structures in major college football. If you do not see these structures, fine and dandy. I think they are present, and I am not alone in this perspective.
September 13th, 2009 at 8:35AM
I enjoy UD because the author is so funny and intelligent, as are the vast majority of the commentary denizens, which is particularly satisfying since most of them appear to be academics. I realize that I just play a minor gadfly role in the proceedings. So it surprising, to say the least, to read such sissified poppycock.
Football is a violent game, but that is among its least interesting qualities. In addition to its physical and intellectual beauty is the honing of young men’s controlled aggression. To succeed as a player you need not only the physical talent, but also the discipline and focus to apply that talent within the rules of the game. You play, hard, to the whistle, then shake hands after the game.
The charge of racism in this is both silly and troubling. The integration of college football is one of the most amazing cultural transformations in my lifetime. More powerful than any law passed by any congress anywhere is the local but general effect of a hundred thousand cheering fans, mostly white, rooting for THEIR team, mostly black, on the field. That is the "cultural stucture" in college football that, in less than a generation, changed completely for the better.
I would also argue that this nose-wrinkling to "violent" sports like football is a bad idea, given the relationship between athletics and military prowess. But I have probably overstayed whatever welcome I had, and in any event it seems that the it’s not just the boys in contact sports who have a problem: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/12/AR2009091202650.html?hpid=topnews
September 13th, 2009 at 2:59PM
Far from overstaying your welcome, Shane, you’ve said nothing I disagree with. Well-said, and true.