Put aside the question whether the academic joke, financial catastrophe (UD thanks John for the link), and criminal bacchanalia university football represents makes it a terrific fit with American higher education. Put aside the fact that multiple high schools are unable to field a team because so few guys (thanks for the link, Charlie) are stupid enough to take part. Put aside the ritual militarization of high school games, with fights and gunshots becoming a structural part of the fun. (As Ravi, one of my readers, puts it, we’re heading toward “open carry on the gridiron.”)
Look merely at one professional team, the Raiders, which recently boasted the Three Violent and Insane Stooges (all were rapidly suspended or dumped or whatever).
UD doesn’t get it. If you really want to watch an insane obese male lumber about destroying everything in his path, you’ve already got the President.
October 4th, 2019 at 12:35PM
Romanowski was in the NFL for 16 years. Incognito is in his twelfth season. Burfict, despite his suspension, has played at least seven years. The average NFL career is 3.3 years. This suggests an elevated use of PEDs, or Performance Enhancing Drugs. One of the benefits of that stuff is quicker recovery from injury. These players have remarkably long careers, which adds to the suspicion they’re all on the gear.
Keep in mind, however, that these drugs are primarily synthetic chemicals being injected into the endocrine system, which regulates hormone creation and response. For god’s sake, that’s messing with the body’s building material. It’s going to impact emotional and mental reactions, how could that not happen? Given that all three of these guys decided early on that football would be a career, it’s entirely possible they’ve been using since teenage years.
Big Boy football doesn’t care if you destroy your hormonal balance, nor does it care if you’re driven mad by the game and end up in a wheelchair. When billions of advertising dollars are at stake, when P5 unis are desperate for increased out of state enrollment, and use a high profiled football team as a marketing ploy, they’ll ignore whatever the consequences of PED use. The aftermath will be mentally and physically crippled humans beings…
October 4th, 2019 at 1:16PM
Clarence Boddicker as metaphor for the sports University? I think there’s a term paper in that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5-1nVswz0I
October 7th, 2019 at 12:45PM
Still lots o’ high school football around here, UD. So awash in money are our allegedly starving public high schools that the taxpayers coughed up the cash for two brand-new football stadiums and huge renovations to two others. High school football is one of the few topics the remnant of the local newspaper still covers. Along with detailed critiques of game plans, substitutions, injury reports, and hot tips on the upcoming grade school prospects, we usually are treated to several weekly interviews with star players, all of which sound approximately like, “Coach keeps reminding us that there is no ‘I’ in “team,” and we need to step up and follow our game plan.” At least several times per season, we get a feel-good story about how Jim-Bob or DeShonte overcame that minor scrape with the law, is hitting the books hard for a solid 30 minutes per week, and will no doubt qualify for that full ride at Northwestern Southeastern Western East Central State U.
October 7th, 2019 at 2:39PM
tp: LOL.
But yes – I don’t expect to see the end of high school football any time soon…