Welcome Sports Haters!

Ho-hum.......card games can also be classified as a sport, for what differnce it would make as per the initial context.........none.

Sharp thinking, I'm sure you can find rapists agreeing as per "Then again, if they get pleasure from that, who are we to judge?"

Re: Kuvasz (Post 3594340)

As a middle-aged man who is a member of a health club and is working on a bodybuilding program, I have this to say: The mandatory PE classes of my generation were a cruel joke played on nonathletic kids in a rather hypocritical way. In case you're not able to see this for yourself, there is a difference between promoting sports and promoting physical fitness. You're talking apples and oranges. Those boys who were the most physically unfit, especially those who were scrawny or overweight, never received any help at all. Weightlifting wasn't even offered. Instead, nonathletic boys were forced to play ball games that they were not even interested in, and never received offers of any kind to help improve their poor performance. The only thing I learned from having to take PE was to fear coaches and athlete classmates. In fact, I don't know of a single man of my generation who was either scrawny or overweight as a kid, but became physically fit because he was forced to take PE in school. There might have been a kindhearted coach here and there who took personal interest in a nonathletic kid who was miserable and was struggling in his PE class, but I never heard of any. More than a few boys' PE coaches seem to view scrawny boys as effeminate, which is totally unjustified. Yes, I know that there are people who are trying to reform PE so that it actually promotes physical fitness for all students, instead of just catering to the athletic kids. Not that you would be interested, I'm sure. I enthusiastically support the innovative PE4Life program. (BTW, I don't believe in the "dumb jock" stereotype; and I've always respected athletic prowess and achievement. I just don't like arrogant jerks and thugs, who often are not held accountable for the way they treat others off the playing field.) Your comments "you were a spastic little kid" and "you likely threw a baseball like a little girl" truly give you away. At the same time that you object to athletic men being subjected to negative stereotypes, you apparently look down on nonathletic boys and men and hold them in contempt for no good reason at all. So who's the hypocritical bigot here? Are you aware that there have been intellectual men who have shown great courage? Did you know that some of our brave soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are slightly built men? Ever hear of Raoul Wallenberg, one of the greatest heroes and humanitarians of World War II, a man who detested competitive team sports? (If you haven't, please do a Google search.) You smugly assert "most healthy minded people accept how they were treated in the past and emotionally move on." That's so easy for you to say! What if the treatment was morally wrong and unjustified? Someone who was bullied day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year isn't likely to forget about it soon. You probably were never bullied in your entire life, but received preferential treatment from people who constantly told you how superior you supposedly were just because you were an athlete. And, finally, when some people say they hate sports, what they object to is not the sports themselves, but certain attitudes, mindsets, and practices that are associated with certain (not all) sports.

Wrong. There is no physical component to card games whatsoever; you can even play them over the internet. That is not comparable to sports.

I'm pretty sure you just like to bitch about sports b/c you aren't any good at them, and maybe are a little jealous of those who are.

Cycloptichorn

Yeah, I bet you bullied all the scrawny and overweight boys in your PE classes.

Yes, sir. As I heard so often as I was growing up, football builds character. That must be the reason why there are so many accusations of rape against high-school and college football players. Gang rape especially seems to be popular these days. But there's no problem. Just pack the juries with sports fans.

Have you evidence, sir, that there is a greater percentage of accusations amongst members of football teams than there is in the general populace?

Cycloptichorn

Your argument that "sports challenges mankind to continue our physical development through a series of interesting challenges" just doesn't hold up. Sorry, but acquired physical characteristics cannot be passed on genetically to the next generation. I respect and admire athletic prowess and achievement, but so many of you guys are intolerant of those who have no interest in sports. Boys who have no interest in sports are often accused of having homosexual tendencies, never mind that homosexuals have always participated in sports and every other human activity there is. Your side often seems to be profoundly anti-intellectual; for example, calliing scientists "pencil-necked geeks," without whose discoveries you would be living in a straw hut in a jungle somewhere.

Ah, a new good arguer at a2k. Welcome, wmwcjr.

Personally, I'm in between on all this. I'm fairly clumsy, have a gene for reading in a chair in preference to athletics, but once in a while was pretty good at tennis and softball and beginner's golf as an adolescent. I'm sporadically fitness oriented as an adult. I've followed some sports for some decades, and skipped following all sports for some other decades. Go figure.

My childhood PE classes were devoid of teaching, for the most part.

Be not so quick to judge those that you do not know on the internet. 'My side' is the side that was called those things by members of sporting teams during high school. It didn't stop me from enjoying the beauty and physical genius of sporting competition.

It seems that you may be slightly caught up in the social aspects of sport as they related to your experiences, perhaps? Please understand that this anecdotal evidence is hardly cause to make such sweeping claims about sports and those who enjoy them.

It is incontrovertible that sporting competition has brought about physical development and social advancement in our species. Physical characteristics displayed by sportsmen are in many cases not acquired, but inherently genetic; successful sportsmen and athletes pass these genes off to an ever-expanding pool of youth, much in the way that any other advantage in our society leads to increased reproductive success.

If you are somehow prejudiced against the typical team sports we see in our schooling, then please consider Olympic athletes. They consider themselves sportsmen; are these people also oppressors of the non-sports lovers?

Cycloptichorn

That is not the point I was making. I was saying that if football built character, then that claim would be manifested off the playing field by decent conduct, instead of mistreating others who often have no way to fight back. Incidentally, some rapes are not even reported because the rape victim realizes that she would get no support. Some years ago I saw an Investigative Reports show about a scandal involving a football player and coaches at the University of Minnesota about the time Jesse Ventura was governor of that state, I think. (I missed the beginning of the show.) One of the co-eds who was interviewed for the show said that the player barged into her dorm room. (BTW, she did not look like a groupie or a slut. She actually had a sort of mousy appearance.) After he raped her, he told her, "Nobody will believe you." Why was he able to say that? Eventually, the entire coaching staff either resigned or was fired (but that was only because a news reporter, not a sports columnist, did some investigating and exposed the cover-up); and the player (who, incidentally, had already earned a bad reputation at another university before he was recruited to play at the University of Minnesota) was expelled. As I've said before, I respect athletic achievement; but athletes should be held accountable for the way they treat other people off the playing field. I'm convinced that there have been instances of college football players who committed rape, got away with it, and are now playing professional football. Unless a video recording has been made of the crime, any young woman who has been raped by a football player or players doesn't stand much of a chance of getting any justice, because the deck is stacked against her. There are people, including a few radio talk show hosts (and, no, I'm not a liberal), who say that ALL accusations of rape against football players are FALSE. A friend of mine who played college football and is now a sociology professor, though, says this stuff does go on. Sorry, I wish it weren't so. The sports media, with their extreme bias in favor of any guy who dons a football uniform, has not been willing to expose these scandals. I've got no beef with you. I just get tired of those who have no interest in sports being denounced as supposedly having nothing legitimate to say; are not justified in criticizing any attitude, mindset, or practice related to some sport; and are wimps or are jealous, etc. I've heard it all before. Sorry, but time is getting short; and I've got to go. Peace.

Well, I guess I haven't left yet. I judge people as individuals. Several of my closest friends played football in high school. They didn't learn to be decent playing football, though. They brought their moral values with them to the game. What I don't like is the preferential treatment. When he was in high school, one of my friends (who, incidentally, was not a "nerd" -- as if that were a crime, which it isn't -- but was considered to be cool) was minding his own business one day at school, as he was messing with his locker. One of the football players, who didn't even know him, walked over and deliberately slammed the locker door on his right hand, which was the hand he wrote with. The nurse who examined his hand said he was lucky that none of the bones in his hand were broken. He had to carry his hand in a cast for two weeks. The football player was never disciplined. In fact, as my friend told me years later, bullying by the football players was rampant. (Most of the football players at my high school were anything but friendly.) Neither the principal nor the coaches seemed to care. Many of the players walked around as if they had chips on their shoulders, and kept to themselves instead of socializing with other classmates, unless they were football boosters. One of them, a guy whom I had admired in junior high, even repeatedly tormented a mentally retarded kid! This is like slapping a five-year-old child in the face. For this offense he was only suspended for a few days (I'm sure he didn't mind), and his popularity didn't suffer one bit. If he hadn't been a football player, he would have been reviled, and rightly so. How often do sports columnists write about this stuff? You know the answer! I admire decent football players. I even once made a financial contribution to the Congressional campaign of a former college football player who was a political hero of mine. I'm even a member of a health club. Sorry, but I really have to go now. Again, peace.

WMWCJR

YOU LOSE, i bullied no one and stopped my teammates from doing it to my non-athletic friends as well as kids i did not know in PE because it was wrong.


btw go **** yourself.

Re: ossobuco (Post 3605491)

Thanks for the welcome and the compliment. Your comment about your own childhood PE makes my point. What really stuck in my craw was the coach's comment that the nonathletic boys in his PE classes were "smart-alecky." Yes, I realize that some students in ANY class are determined not to learn. For eleven years my wife was a high-school math teacher who occasionally had to deal with a few. I sympathize with all dedicated teachers, including PE teachers whose approach is humane (unlike our coach here). But in the PE classes I was forced to take, I never was smart-alecky. (The same can also be said of MOST nonathletic boys who were/are forced to take traditional PE in school.) I never laughed or even smiled. I was apprehensive the whole time, wondering in what way I was going to be humiliated that day. At a website promoting PE reform, I read a post that had been written by a sympathetic (unlike our coach) guy who had been an athlete in high school and could still remember the look of despair in the eyes of the nonathletic boys in his PE classes. Why should kids like that be forced to put up with the likes of our coach? I'm amazed at how common this contempt for nonathletic boys and men is among coaches and athletes in certain (but not all) sports. I keep hearing from nonathletes of my generation just how lousy their PE experiences were. Mine were so bad that I still remember the periods when I had PE in junior high. Each school day I always dreaded that period. (Fortunately, I was exempted from having to take PE in high school because I was a band student. I heard that sensitive, physically weak boys were dead meat in those PE classes.) In 2007 I spoke to a former junior-high classmate I hadn't seen in years. He was an overweight guy who had seemed to be cool, and had seemed to have had a lot of self-confidence. It was all a front. His PE experience in junior high was so terrible that when he was in his twenties, he had to undergo psychological therapy to overcome his bitterness. (BTW, all through junior high when he was being forced to take PE along with the rest of us, he never lost any weight, and was just as fat as he was when he started junior high. So there really was no point in taking the PE classes that were forced down his throat.) Here's another example of just how boneheaded some PE coaches really are. My wife has RP (retinitis pigmentosa), a degenerative eye disease that eventually results in total blindness. She has been able to see some, but less and less over the years. She was declared to be legally blind when she was a young girl. At the university she attended in the early 1970s, she was required in a mandatory PE class to play badminton, even though she could not even see the birdie, because she lacked peripheral vision! The coach would not listen to her when she said she was legally blind, even though the State Commission for the Blind had a case file on her! So my wife, who had always excelled academically, received a "C" in a course for the very first (and only) time in her life! (As Dave Berry would say in one of his humorous columns, I'm not making this up.) I could go on and on. So you can understand why I'm not exactly impressed with what's-his-name. I'm quite thankful there now is a movement to reform PE. Excuse the rant. It's over (for now). I don't have the time to visit this website every day, but I'll check in every now and then. (I do visit sportssuck.org a lot!) Best wishes.

The eloquence of your response is truly, well, something. Just what I expected.

This is a follow-up. That jerk coach is still around. He responded with another brief reply of mine with the comment "go f--k yourself." This is the sort of intellectual rebuttle that would really impress that great debater, the late William F. Buckley, Jr.; right? Of course not. I'm being sarcastic. But I'm not the least bit surprised. This is just what I expected. Sorry, but I don't think I'll be coming back after all. I dislike jerks like him so much that I won't be coming back here. There's no point in trying to reason with someone who is totally closemined and totally self-righteous. I don't intend to waste time with this jerk. No offense to you. Take care.

Well, you sound like a real ******* whiner. And one who assumes things about people on the internet who they've never met.

Cycloptichorn

hey dickhead, it takes a real hypocrite to accuse a person of physical assault without any evidence while accusing the same party of closemindedness and self righteousness. you are just projecting your own attitude onto others. you need to get over your tortuous past and the demons of phys ed.

its not so much that your remarks about athletes are so off the mark but you're clearly tainted by the bullying done to you and you need to get over it.

......don't let the door hit you on the ass as you leave.

I'm with you. Spectator sports are boring.

A person doesn't have to be a smart aleck to not like PE or gym class. I and practically everyone I know despised PE. Going to PE was like going to the dentist: always unpleasant. At least going to the dentist is productive. Going to gym class doesn't produce anything --except maladjusted boys. My high school coach was a bully. I didn't realize it then but today, as an adult, I do: a man who chooses to be a high school coach probably does so because he can't make it in the real world with real men. He may even be a sadist who prefers to remain with boys weaker than himself so he can make their lives miserable.

Are you seriously citing the PYRAMID OF SUCCESS?? BWWAAAAA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA --that's one of the funniest things I have ever seen. Is that over-stated collection of common sense attributes actually used as a teaching aid for gym coaches? Did a coach actually claim responsibility for this as a working solution to anything?? Is this what passes for knowledge among jocks?? I am incredulous. I could have made a better chart than that in 5 minutes. I can just picture a health teacher / gym coach using one of those old wooden pointers to whack the chart to emphasize this or that quality. As if... man... I missed the boat. If I had chosen the athletic arts, I would have towered over my competitors.

Sports are a rite of passage? Are you serious? So you're saying that only 10% or less of boys in high school made the rite of passage? Only football players passed the test and went on to adulthood and true MANLINESS? BWAA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAHA

The only thing that the football players I knew in high school went on to was to work at the supermarket bagging my groceries and that was about it. That doesn't seem too manly, does it?