As if there weren't enough reasons yet to feel guilty about watching sports, especially football, consider the current kerfuffle over Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice. Rice, as you probably know by now, was caught on video in a hotel, punching his girlfriend (now wife) unconscious, then dragging her out of the elevator.
For what is (last I checked) a violent crime (that is to say, aggravated assault), Rice not only managed to avoid prosecution, but in a league that routinely suspends players for four games for testing positive for marijuana use (yes, even in Denver and Seattle, where it's legal), NFL commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Rice for just two games.
One might say that this is simply the price sports fans pay for enjoying sports -- not the culture of macho posturing and woofing (and yes, in some cases, even domestic violence or suicide), but the culture of enablement that pervades star athletes. For the rare few that make it to the pros, these men and others that have a decent shot are, in many cases, coddled and feted and spoiled from the time they show potential in high school. Whether they knock up a cheerleader, or beat someone's ass in a barroom brawl, the athlete with star potential always has family members or alumni boosters to step in and take care of the mess. After all, the player is a cash cow for these concerned parties, should his career happen to last beyond the 4-year average for NFL players.
An even more egregious comparison to Rice's slap on the wrist would be Terrelle Pryor, who in a convergence of NCAA and NFL punitive action, not only fell to the supplemental draft (costing him millions), but was pre-suspended -- that is, before Pryor was even drafted, he had this punishment imposed on him, thus serving as draft baggage -- for five games. Pryor's high crime? Accepting a couple of free tattoos while he was at Ohio State, possibly a 350Z as well.
See, when it comes to exploiting people, the National Collegiate Athletic Association has the National Football League beaten every conceivable way. To be sure, the NFL makes tons of money off the players, but the players are adults by that point, belong to a professional union that negotiates on their behalf, get high salary minimums, etc. It's millionaires playing for billionaires, but everyone (except the cheerleaders) is at least making some money.
The NCAA, on the other hand, has no such safeguards for its wet-behind-the-ears, straight-out-of-high-school chattel, nor any compunction about using them to turn a buck. The schools make a fuckton of cash selling expensive tickets and jerseys with these kids' names on them, not caring whether or not said kids have enough to eat, much less whether they're able to read in the first place. (which, ah, might in a rational world affect one's chances of, you know, getting into college).
That's bad enough, but heaven forfend any of these kids making a few bucks off their own name, on their own time. Should a player have the temerity to sell autographs or accept a free tattoo, and not give the NCAA their taste, the NCAA will be up their asses with a quickness. And they act the whole time like they're doing these kids this enormous favor by "giving" them a communications degree that won't be worth shit in the real world, because the market is already saturated with retired athletes turned analysts. And good luck if you blow out your knee before making it to the pros.
So I dunno. Do we boycott the hypocrisy of the NFL and NCAA, show them that we're not going to support this nonsense anymore, any of it? I'm getting very close to that point, personally. People who don't watch sports won't get this, and that's understandable, but whatever the sport, fans will appreciate the fact that we become conditioned to look forward to these spectacles. I was a baseball fan from a very early age; my parents had Dodger season tickets until I was about 7 years old, and I followed most of the California MLB clubs until the '90s, when the sport just became unwatchable. It should not take four hours and five pitchers to get through nine fucking innings, sorry.
But I've also watched football and (to a lesser extent) basketball since second or third grade. For those of us conditioned to wait for the season, to run fantasy football teams (I usually run three or four teams online every season, and play a small weekly book with friends), to watch the games so closely that you can analyze and even predict plays, formations, blocking schemes, it's a hard habit to break.
At this point, though, perhaps sports fandom is the moral equivalent of eating a lot of fast food -- all that tasty fat and sodium can't take away the fact that you're perpetuating and participating in the routine torture and slaughter of factory farming, and just because football is fun to watch (though less and less so, the more overburdened with commercials it becomes), you're still supporting the exploitation, and in most cases eventual physical impairment, of young men -- and the abuse of their spouses.
For what is (last I checked) a violent crime (that is to say, aggravated assault), Rice not only managed to avoid prosecution, but in a league that routinely suspends players for four games for testing positive for marijuana use (yes, even in Denver and Seattle, where it's legal), NFL commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Rice for just two games.
One might say that this is simply the price sports fans pay for enjoying sports -- not the culture of macho posturing and woofing (and yes, in some cases, even domestic violence or suicide), but the culture of enablement that pervades star athletes. For the rare few that make it to the pros, these men and others that have a decent shot are, in many cases, coddled and feted and spoiled from the time they show potential in high school. Whether they knock up a cheerleader, or beat someone's ass in a barroom brawl, the athlete with star potential always has family members or alumni boosters to step in and take care of the mess. After all, the player is a cash cow for these concerned parties, should his career happen to last beyond the 4-year average for NFL players.
An even more egregious comparison to Rice's slap on the wrist would be Terrelle Pryor, who in a convergence of NCAA and NFL punitive action, not only fell to the supplemental draft (costing him millions), but was pre-suspended -- that is, before Pryor was even drafted, he had this punishment imposed on him, thus serving as draft baggage -- for five games. Pryor's high crime? Accepting a couple of free tattoos while he was at Ohio State, possibly a 350Z as well.
See, when it comes to exploiting people, the National Collegiate Athletic Association has the National Football League beaten every conceivable way. To be sure, the NFL makes tons of money off the players, but the players are adults by that point, belong to a professional union that negotiates on their behalf, get high salary minimums, etc. It's millionaires playing for billionaires, but everyone (except the cheerleaders) is at least making some money.
The NCAA, on the other hand, has no such safeguards for its wet-behind-the-ears, straight-out-of-high-school chattel, nor any compunction about using them to turn a buck. The schools make a fuckton of cash selling expensive tickets and jerseys with these kids' names on them, not caring whether or not said kids have enough to eat, much less whether they're able to read in the first place. (which, ah, might in a rational world affect one's chances of, you know, getting into college).
That's bad enough, but heaven forfend any of these kids making a few bucks off their own name, on their own time. Should a player have the temerity to sell autographs or accept a free tattoo, and not give the NCAA their taste, the NCAA will be up their asses with a quickness. And they act the whole time like they're doing these kids this enormous favor by "giving" them a communications degree that won't be worth shit in the real world, because the market is already saturated with retired athletes turned analysts. And good luck if you blow out your knee before making it to the pros.
So I dunno. Do we boycott the hypocrisy of the NFL and NCAA, show them that we're not going to support this nonsense anymore, any of it? I'm getting very close to that point, personally. People who don't watch sports won't get this, and that's understandable, but whatever the sport, fans will appreciate the fact that we become conditioned to look forward to these spectacles. I was a baseball fan from a very early age; my parents had Dodger season tickets until I was about 7 years old, and I followed most of the California MLB clubs until the '90s, when the sport just became unwatchable. It should not take four hours and five pitchers to get through nine fucking innings, sorry.
But I've also watched football and (to a lesser extent) basketball since second or third grade. For those of us conditioned to wait for the season, to run fantasy football teams (I usually run three or four teams online every season, and play a small weekly book with friends), to watch the games so closely that you can analyze and even predict plays, formations, blocking schemes, it's a hard habit to break.
At this point, though, perhaps sports fandom is the moral equivalent of eating a lot of fast food -- all that tasty fat and sodium can't take away the fact that you're perpetuating and participating in the routine torture and slaughter of factory farming, and just because football is fun to watch (though less and less so, the more overburdened with commercials it becomes), you're still supporting the exploitation, and in most cases eventual physical impairment, of young men -- and the abuse of their spouses.
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