The other day I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine about the current state of the National Football League (NFL). With domestic violence, child abuse and murder surfacing around some players in today’s game, we both started to wonder how those players got to those points. And then it dawned on us: Is it because of football?
Football is a very violent sport as we
all know, and in recent years it has been under the microscope after the recent
and continuing
developments football has had with CTE. With many head collisions, on top of
the amount of pressure – physically and mentally – players go through, you have
to wonder if it’s the game itself that is pushing players over the top. The non-stop
travel, the unease you feel knowing your career and job can be taken at
literally any given time. It’s almost like you’re practically on the edge of
your seat in fear every day, right?
I love the game of football, and always will, but with it already being proven that football leads to short-term and long-term brain damage, I’m really starting to think it can lead to creating the monsters in our society today too.
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Aron Yohannes
I love the game of football, and always will, but with it already being proven that football leads to short-term and long-term brain damage, I’m really starting to think it can lead to creating the monsters in our society today too.
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Aron Yohannes
Great blog!! You know I sort of wonder about football myself. This is my son's first year in flag football, and I must say some of the attitudes this little boys have surrounding this sport is a little disheartening. Very critical, judgmental, and somewhat bully like personas. Very different personalities then what my son is use to attending elementary school. Although I love how active it keeps my son, teaching him coordination, team work and discipline, I also wonder and worry about the type of environment football or a lot of sports seems to create in the mind of these young ones, especially if they grow up to be like some of these adult football players! -Stephanie Kohel
ReplyDeleteGood post! Aron and Stephanie, you both make some valid and interesting points. But I can tell you that this has not been the experience of my son, who plays Defensive End for Warren Township High School in Gurnee. In fact, it's been the opposite. He grew up playing with a great group of guys from wonderful families. Today, he still plays with some of those guys on the high school team and I can tell you they are the most polite and respectful young men I have ever met. Gurnee is a close-knit community - the parents, teachers, coaches, players, and even the business owners all know each other. Bad behavior on the part of any of these players would be unaccepted. In fact for each Varsity home game, the moms prepare meals so the players can eat before the games and there's a local sub shop that provides free sandwiches for the boys after every game. At home games, the entire community comes out to watch - families, teachers, even senior citizens who don't have kids. It's pretty amazing. In our town, the kids who are the troublemakers are usually the ones who don't play a sport because they don't have enough people holding them accountable. My son is a senior this year and the majority of his fellow senior teammates have good grades and are getting accepted to good colleges. As for whether football causes bad behavior, I don't think it's so much the sport as it is the terrible personalities and egos of these individuals. The NFL has to raise it's standards and do a better job of picking the cream of the crop - in terms of grades, athletic ability and personality. I do understand how stressful it would be to worry about how long your livelihood will less, but that's not enough stress to cause a person to go off the deep end and do something crazy. There are deeper mental health issues at play. Perhaps at the pro-football level the head injuries and roughness of the game adds to mental problems for these players. But I know at least from what I have observed of the players at Warren High School - we haven't seen these kinds of problems. I think it has a lot to do with the families these guys come from, the nurturing and support of the community and high standards and a no-tolerance policy from the coaches. Maybe the NFL could learn a thing or two from Gurnee. Just my thoughts.
ReplyDeleteGreat Post!
ReplyDeleteI agree with the blog that you wrote when it comes to maybe football having to do with the violence associated with the recent crimes that have been reported. But I feel that there is so much more to these situations than meets the common eye. I think that with some of the violent players that have been noted, maybe they come from a rough past, or have some mentally wrong with their thinking. Also, note that I do not excuse any of their actions by any means cause all of them are wrong. But there is so much more to these stories than meets the eye. Also, there are so many more incidents that aren't reported because they are not in the public eye for everyone to comment on. Again, none of these reasons excuse their actions, I just feel that football isn't the soul reason to defeat their actions, clearly I am a huge football fan!
Brianna Morgen
Aron, in light of your ithought-provoking post about violence and football just heard on CNN that a high school football team in New Jersey is under investigation for disturbing lockerroom hazing incidents against freshman players. Can there be a correlation between football and violent behavior in players, such incidents as this latest New Jersey case certainly does not put my mind at ease on this issue. It's definitely something our society must grapple with.
ReplyDelete