@Chumly,
Thanks for your kind words.
Before I continue, let me say that my intention is not to deny how some guys benefit from their involvement in sports; and I have no problem with people watching sporting events. I have absolutely no quarrel about that. The comments I’m about to make have nothing to do with your concerns or the joys you find in sports. So, please don’t take what I’m about to say personally.
Traditional sports-centered P.E., which was imposed upon all public school students of the “Baby Boom” generation (thanks to the Kennedy administration), frequently was the bane of existence for nonathletic boys, especially those who were physically weak or overweight. The claim was made that the purpose of mandatory P.E. was to promote physical fitness for all students, but the sad reality is that promoting sports is not the same as promoting physical fitness. I’m not exaggerating when I say that in all the P.E. classes I was forced to take, the assumption seems to have been made that all boys were athletes. No mention was ever made of exercise programs for those boys who were physically weak or overweight. I didn’t even know what an exercise program was, and I certainly never heard about them in any of my P.E. classes. In gym classes beginning in junior high, I never even heard about bodybuilding, which would have been great for me and would have made me more self-confident than anything else. I never even so much as laid eyes on a set of weights in any of my junior-high P.E. classes. (Thankfully, since I was a band student, I didn’t have to take P.E. in high school, which I heard was even more hellish for physically weak and overweight boys than the junior-high P.E.) In none of my P.E. classes was any effort made to teach nonathletic boys how to develop the skills needed in different sports. Instead, they were ignored or viewed with contempt. There was Remedial Math and Remedial English, but no Remedial P.E. The very suggestion evokes chuckles. As a health club member who has worked with personal trainers on a bodybuilding program, I know the difference between an effective exercise program and the sort of P.E. of my childhood that was useless to nonathletic kids. I actually got very little exercise from mandatory P.E.; but I did experience a great deal of dread, humiliation, and sadness. The claim that the mandatory sports-centered P.E. of my generation promoted physical fitness for the nonathletic kids was a bold-faced lie. Before you get mad at me, let me remind you that (as Dave Barry says in his humorous columns) I’m not making this up. This was my experience.
Over the years as a middle-aged guy, I’ve heard some real horror stories from other guys of my generation. Because of a knee injury he received in a car wreck at the age of 4, one friend of mine could not run, and could only walk with a limp. Another friend of mine was born with an eye defect; he lacked depth perception. Despite the fact that they had physical disabilities, they were forced to take P.E. anyway, which defies common sense. They should have been exempted from having to take P.E. (By the way, these two injustices took place in different states, which seems to indicate that this mindless practice was universal.) Both of them were bullied by “jocks” who lacked the common decency to give them a pass on something that they had no control over and was not their fault. Interestingly enough, the only fellow students who bullied my friends at their schools were “jocks.” None of the coaches cared to stop the bullying. When my friend who lacked depth perception finally struck back at one of his tormentors (and, incidentally, cleaned his clock), the coach punished my friend the victim instead of the perpetrator, who happened to be an athlete. This suffering could have easily been prevented by not making P.E. mandatory. The athletic kids still would have had the P.E. they wanted to take and enjoyed, and the nonathletic kids would have been left alone. And I wouldn’t be writing this now. Neither of these two friends of mine are sports fans today. I think you can understand why.
I even know of an instance when a star athlete was actually physically beaten by one of his coaches. I’m referring to a friend of mine who played football in high school before he played at a university. (Today he’s a college sociology professor, and refers to this time in the history of American P.E. as “the dinosaur age.”) He once told me of this coach who constantly harassed him to the point of making his life miserable. Finally, my friend had had enough one day and punched him in the nose. This gave the coach the pretext that he had been looking for all along to subject him to a beating.
I could go on and on. Fortunately, today there is a movement to reform P.E. so that physical fitness will actually be promoted for those students who need fitness programs badly. Forcing nonathletic boys to participate in competitive team sports is like putting the cart before the horse. The quickest and most efficient way for a physically inactive person to get into shape is by getting and staying on an exercise program, not by playing sports. The traditional sports-centered approach ignores the fact that different kids have different physical fitness needs. For example, a boy who is obese needs to do exercise that involves constant movement. Forcing him to play baseball, for example, is utterly pointless and useless. (And, no, I’m not denigrating the sport of baseball, please.) Not only doesn’t he get the exercise he needs; but his presence on the team is deeply resented by his teammates, who make his life miserable and discourage him from being physically active. (No, I was not obese when I was a kid.)
I’m convinced that historically more bullying has taken place in mandatory traditional sports-centered P.E. than in all the academic classes combined since this approach actually creates friction and antagonism between athletic and nonathletic kids. When the innovative PE4Life program (which dispenses with competitive team sports for nonathletic kids and even puts physical fitness demands on the athletic kids, who are not always as fit as they think) was set up in the Titusville, Pennsylvania, school district, bullying actually went down, which was an unforeseen consequence of this program. Instead of hanging out in their separate groups, the “jocks” and the “techies” (nerds) actually started socializing with one another.
Just so I’m not misunderstood, I favor the traditional sports-centered P.E. classes as an elective for the athletic kids and those who simply want to participate in sports. The much-emphasized football program will still be successful, since those kids who want to play football don’t need to be forced to take P.E. If honest-to-goodness physical fitness classes are not to be made available for nonathletic students, then they should not have sports forced upon them against their will, which is unjustified and unproductive.
Please notice the reason why I have gone to the trouble of writing this very long post. This topic is entitled “Welcome Sports Haters,” which means that those who want to critically examine the role of sports culture in the lives of nonathletes should be able to do so. The sports fans have plenty of topics and websites to choose from. I wouldn’t bother posting these views at a sports website, because it would be pointless. I know this has been a long post, but I had to get my points across. I shouldn’t have to say this, but I have not knocked anyone’s involvement in sports. That’s not the point.
