The only problem I have with school sports are all the unneeded perks that go along with being involved.
Teachers bumping up your grade to a “C” so you can still participate in football, even though your real and deserved grade was an “F.”
My high school, like all schools, are in a huge financial bind. They cut the technology and science budget in half - yet they built a brand new jacuzzi(sp) and steam room for the football team. Our teams sucks, by the way.
THAT is why I hate school sports, the fucking emphasis and superiority of it that puts all the shit that actually matters in school on the backburner.
Nevermind that the vast majority of the jocks were assholes. Competition builds neck-breaking egos, not character.
Here’s my point. Yes most of the jocks are assholes. But most teenage boys are assholes. They’ll still be assholes if you take away football. Actually they’ll be bigger assholes because they have to take our their aggression on you instead of the field. Football did not make them assholes.
Tell me there are 60 kids on the swim team…there were that many on my highschool football team. And besides, football is a huge resourse for school funding. Especially in college. Maybe if you could get more people out to watch the tennis team or volleyball then they’d get more funding.
Football injuires aren’t anyworse than any other injuries. I’m a little guy so I was scared of playing football in middle school and my freshman year. Then some friends on the team talked me into being on the team and it was great. Young boys need a place to let out there aggression. We don’t hunt anymore and we aren’t allowed to establish dominence as animals are…so it’s pent up energy. And really, football doesn’t hurt near as bad as it looks. Under the right conditions, and I agree these need to be addressed, it promotes teamwork, physical fitness, fair competition, sportsman like conduct, good times bad times…it’s a metaphor for life.
Yes, some kids get cut. but that’s life, baby. Not everyone gets the job. Not everyone gets to be mayor. I was cut from the track team every single year. So what? I had to find my place, my niche.
Cite? Please? Anyone come up with enough examples of this to warrant it being mentioned as often as it has here? I’m not doubting it happens, but to assume it’s par for the course of having a sports team is bullshit. It was certainly not the way at my high school.
Maybe that’s just because my school has had only one winning season in nearly thirty years and to watch them lose every Friday night is a social event. But most of our other sports all kicked ass, so I doubt it.
Kids will be kids, I agree. IMHO, though, the one muscle kids should be flexing is their brain. I wonder how lowly the USA rates as far as our education in the big picture, in the world’s scheme of things. Will a sport save the world? Feed the hungry? Wipe out disease? I think not.
And as for changing a grade for a kid to keep playing a high school sport, that is sickening. It shows the kid that cheating is good, it’s acceptable… “everyone’s doing it”. It’s downright idiotic!
Earn your future, don’t steal it.
Parents and coaches… God. They are one of the biggest problems. Don’t live through your child because you didn’t get a sports scholarship or win a medal, or go to the Olympics. Anyone remember the man who killed another man over a soccer game? Organized sports, my ass.
Sports = unchecked aggression imprinted into impressionable minds. Coaches are more like drill sergeants. Pride? No… domination. Parents are like cult leaders. Building character? No…
You’re living your messed up life through your innocent teen, making them fit your mold.
I’d love to be a fly on the wall in some of these people’s houses. See how they “motivate” their kids.
IMPORTANT – I do not mean all soccer/football/basketball (etc…) parents and coaches, and silly you if you think I did. Shame shame!
Isn’t fighting obesity and laziness a noble cause? I guess not then.
Football… maybe. I never played football so I can’t say how it went at my school. Soccer, Tennis, Swimming, Diving, Golf, Lacross, Volleyball, Basketball, Hockey, Rugby, Track, Field, Cross Country? You can’t really teach a sport like that. Hockey you might be able to, but for only so long before Gordon Bombay realizes the sport isn’t fun when your kids nickname you “Coach Blood.”
Some do. There’s just no stopping those kinds of parents who want their kids to “succeed.” There’s no stopping those parents who torture their kids who play instruments, or to get good grades, either. Let’s not cut funding for Art and Music, please. IMPORTANT – I do not mean all soccer/football/basketball (etc…) parents and coaches, and silly you if you think I did. Shame shame! **
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That most parents/coaches/sports are like that is the impression I got in this post. Until the disclaimer at the bottom, of course.
How many news stories are there about someone stuffing a colored pencil or a flute up another kid’s bum? You don’t hear that kind of thing, you only hear about the jocks hazing other kids, ya know?
I have been a teacher for over seven years. I have flunked athletes. I have never been asked to change a grade by an administrator, nor would I consider doing it.
I have been asked to change grades by students… but they weren’t all athletes.
I have seen mediocre students learn where they would have been inclined to blow off school completely, because they were determined to maintain their eligibility. For these students, athletics motivated them to get a better education than they might have otherwise.
I don’t play sports, and don’t particularly care about them, but as far as I can see, they have a lot of legitimate benefits to the kids who participate, both in teaching social skills and in motivating academics.
I assume you have at least one or two activities that you enjoy. Will those activities save the world? Feed the hungry? Wipe out disease? Probably not.
And you know, you can’t learn everything in the classroom. Please read the second paragraph of my earlier post to Gassendi. I don’t know how you could learn that to have that level of teamwork in a classroom setting.
I have never, in 10 years of playing football in Junior High, High School, or College, seen this happen. The team rule at college for me was this: Practice starts at 4, with film review from 3-3:30. But some people had classes or labs that ran until 4 or 4:15, in which case, you WERE TO BE IN CLASS until class was over. (I once got disciplined by the head coach for skipping class to attend a film review). Of course, once your class finished, you got to practice ASAP.
I’m not denying that it may happen occasionally, but I don’t think it’s nearly as widespread as you’d like us to believe. And if and when it does happen, IMHO the teachers who are changing grades should be fired.
Yes, some parents are assholes. The vast majority are not. My parents, for example, never pressured me to compete in any sport. But they did support the hell out of me all through high school and college, attending games in December when it’s 20 degrees, windy and snowing, for example.
Yes, football teaches you to be agressive. But only to a point. If you’re too agressive, you’ll miss an assignment, get a penalty, make a critical mistake. But the other thing about football… it also forces you to be able to turn your agression off in a split second when the whistle blows. There’s also the lesson of “Leave it on the field”: Play your ass off, but once that game’s over, it’s over. Last year after we lost the National Championship game in a very hard-fought and agressive contest, we went out for dinner and drinks with the other team, and it was one of the most fun experiences I’ve ever had.
See my comments above about asshole parents.
Well, good to hear it, although the tone of your post seems to be advocation of the removal of all sports because of a few jerks, which is major overkill.
BTW, there’s an article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune about my football team. I encourage yout to read it, it may give you some insight into the good of football.
Ummmm… wasn’t there an incident in Chicago just this spring with Senior girls hazing the hell out of some younger students? I’m sure you can dig up a cite for this without too much work.
I’m amazed that all of us formerly teenage boys who didn’t play football made it through high school alive and unexploded by all of our pent-up energy.
Or to put it another way, what a load of old crap.