Is Football Sportsmanship in Jeopardy?
Okay, here’s a fun little tidbit to worry about: In Montgomery County, Md, police are currently invesigating cuts on several high school football players’ hands, resulting from a razor blade in hand during the post-game handshake. After the Magruder (Rockville) team beat out Blake High School (Silver Spring), 55-7, someone connected to Blake High decided he’d cut up the hands of some of the players. According to witnesses, the attacker sat on the Blake bench, but was not wearing a football uniform.
So what do you think about that? When did sportsmanship get completely thrown out of the window, to the point where we’re going to injure the other team for beating us? How did that conversation go?
“Hey man, you’re gonna be sorry for beating us.”
“What?”
“You score on us, and I’m gonna slice you up.”
What’s next? Are we going to start banning the post-game handshake completely? Perhaps we’re going to get players sharpening the bolts on their facemasks so there’s a nice cutting edge to them. That’ll show ‘em.
To me, not only is that poor sportsmanship, but it’s just plain stupid. What exactly was this guy trying to accomplish? Great, now he’s cut a few players, their hands are sliced up, and an entire town is angry. And when this guy gets caught, (don’t think he won’t), the judge is going to throw the book at him, because this is the kind of thing that needs to be stopped right now.
On that same note, we had the incident with Wyoming college football coach Joe Glenn who gave the one-fingered salute to the Utah Utes after their admittedly unsportsmanlike decision to use an onside kick with a 43-0 lead. Is football just falling apart?
I love this game. I think about it a lot, and I wish that I could play today. But it seems like the standards of the sport on every level are really falling. Right now, I just wish we could play some clean pick-up games and not worry about all the stress of the high-level sport. Just the players, the street, and respect. That’s all you need.
Well, and a field.
- Kyle
California's New Gender Law
EDITED – 8 November 2007
Because of overwhelming response and insufficient research, I’ve decided to take this post off the web-log. I didn’t start this blog to make people angry, and I’m sorry if I might have.. I’ll seek to avoid such hot topics in the future, or at least making uninformed opinions on them. (I think I’ll probably stick to just movie reviews. I don’t seem to get as much of a negative response even when others disagree. <grin>)
- Kyle
News sources:
The Actual Bill – Now a dead link. The Senate site is so complicated, that after several attempts, I’ve given up on finding it.
