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Football: The University’s Front Porch

There is without question an important discussion to have — an unheated discussion not made for sports radio — about why violence against women and football seem to walk arm-in-arm. We could discuss the inability for football players to compartmentalize violence, taking the hyper-aggression of their sport home with them — something that affects families in the armed forces as well. There is a discussion we need to have about its connection to traumatic brain injury, and the ways that some of the side effects according to the NFL’s own neurologists, are mood swings, fits of temper and the inability to connect emotionally with the people in their lives. There especially is a discussion we need to have about a culture of entitlement that starts in high school and runs even more profoundly in college football, where young men produce billions in revenue and are often “rewarded”, since they can’t be paid, with a warped value system that says women are there to be taken.

Margaret Soltan, July 25, 2014 1:07PM
Posted in: sport

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3 Responses to “Football: The University’s Front Porch”

  1. John Says:

    a most compelling read:

    http://www.amazon.com/Scoreboard-Baby-College-Football-Complicity-ebook/dp/B00JDY7214/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406330243&sr=8-1&keywords=scoreboard+baby+a+story+of+college+football+crime+and+complicity

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    John: Thanks for that link.

  3. theprofessor Says:

    “We could discuss the inability for football players to compartmentalize violence….”

    Over the top. ALL football players, as is clearly implied by the writer? Inability, as opposed to unwillingness?

    On the other hand, the culture of entitlement does not start in high school. It starts in grade school in some places.

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