Sean Taylor - RIP UPDATED

[hondo]

But there are times when being a journalist in today's climate embarrasses me.

Oh. WE embarrass YOU. Now that's forking priceless.

Yeah ... certainly a touch of irony there, eh?

There isn't an ounce of shame in that assclown.
Shut up Dan ... now go give Ricky his neck massage.

 

[Simon_Cowbell]

this story is about football players - and the kind of mentality it takes to play a violent game - and why that mentality leads to violence off the field

What on earth is this about? You complained about Whitlock using a broad brush and then this? And what does this have to do with anything?

And how many Presidents played football in either high school or college?

You can play the game violently, but playing the game does not make you violent.

Oh, I think there are more than a few studies, and a whole potful of anecdotal evidence, that what is required to play football at the highest levels is a powerful inducement to become a violent person.

From the guy who would have every extremity amputated with rusty cutlery before entertaining the notion of the electric chair being any sort of deterrent, we get this crapola.

From a guy who's never pursued a coherent thought past the point where he gets distracted by his toes we get this crapola.
Life is full of ironies.

Since you would never admit to having been beaten to a pulp, I will consider this flaccid reply as such an admission.

 

[henryhenry]

this story is about football players - and the kind of mentality it takes to play a violent game - and why that mentality leads to violence off the field

What on earth is this about? You complained about Whitlock using a broad brush and then this? And what does this have to do with anything?

at that level the game requires ultra aggressive behavior. grossly aggressive behavior. especially from defensive backs - who most often deal out the cheap shots and helmet-to-helmet shots. its part of the DB culture.

so how do you turn off that behavior when you take off the helmet? some can, but some can't. i'm guessing that taylor gored a lot of people - out of habit - and somebody came for revenge.

 

[Simon_Cowbell]

I responded to the Le Batard regurgitation (at this point he is simply Mad Libbing in his occasional column to the rag... I would be surprised if he still knows his logon) on the original thread... discussion belongs here though:

Robertson barely scratched the surface of how much UM players/products are involved in a) illegality or b) tragedy.

And there are degrees of illegality. Certainly driving 80 mph in a 35 and crashing into a tree is "less" illegal than shooting someone to death at a Plantation apartment.

But the list of documented reckless driving incidents involving these young men, added to the incidents of other illegal conduct, added to incidents of assault and/or tragic death, is jaw-droppingly long.

Whether it involves having too many kids who are so lacking in self-awareness to think they are invincible and can hop away from a car wreck, or kids with a more sinister core or set of surroundings, UM has utterly failed to well-enough incorporate character into its football signing process.

Before someone says it ain't a UM thing, show me a pile of incidents related to a single other college that is remotely close.

And, to the putz who mentioned Aunese Colorado or Switzer Oklahoma.... forking child's play compared what's happened to UM football players and its alumni since Jimmy left in 1989.

Reading this column, I was wishing two things: a) that Taylor had been white and b) he hadn't gone to UM.

That way, Le Batard never would have written this pile of disingenuity.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

this story is about football players - and the kind of mentality it takes to play a violent game - and why that mentality leads to violence off the field

What on earth is this about? You complained about Whitlock using a broad brush and then this? And what does this have to do with anything?

And how many Presidents played football in either high school or college?

You can play the game violently, but playing the game does not make you violent.

Oh, I think there are more than a few studies, and a whole potful of anecdotal evidence, that what is required to play football at the highest levels is a powerful inducement to become a violent person.

From the guy who would have every extremity amputated with rusty cutlery before entertaining the notion of the electric chair being any sort of deterrent, we get this crapola.

From a guy who's never pursued a coherent thought past the point where he gets distracted by his toes we get this crapola.
Life is full of ironies.

Since you would never admit to having been beaten to a pulp, I will consider this flaccid reply as such an admission.

The passive-aggressive victory dance is old, too.
Now, to respond to those people who aren't spiking their Crayolas in triumph prior to nappy-time, the notion that football engenders violence in its participants isn't new. It's part of the reason why they banned the sport at the turn of thre last centiry. Dave Meggysey and Pete Gent limned it in fiction and nonfiction 30 years ago. The very nature of the game is so astonishingly violent as to be dehumanizing. It certainly makes as much sense as blaming a random home burg;ary on whatever it was the victim listened to in the car on the way home from practice. The idea that it might have an effect off the field on its participants is hardly a stretch -- nor is the idea that it might act as what the arson cops call an "accelerant" to tendencies lying otherwise dormant. (That's not even to get into the whole drug-rage arguments).

 

[jgmacg]

Violent people certainly find a home in the NFL.

But ... pro football is an "inducement" to become violent? No forking way.

A grand majority of NFL alumni, even among only the black members, are citizens who have never hurt a soul except for between the lines potentially.

Yep. I saw that before.

So you're saying that earning millions of dollars a year in a testosterone-fueled league like the NFL - playing a sport that prizes choreographed violence more than any other, and with an average career span of no more than three years - provides no inducement to violence? Whether kept on the field or not?

I'm not sure what retirees have to do with this either, insofar as they're no longer competing for those same few jobs.

And while I understand and agree with the notion that at the elite level - the NFL - the population of players is self-selecting for those most productively violent on the field, to deny that the war-like nature of the game itself, and the Darwinian, Dickensian apparatus by which we produce its stars isn't both a cause and consequence of the inducements and attractions of refined violence is to deny American football's very essence.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

Blame shifter.

 

[BBJones]

So football players engage in these acts because their sport is violent? When will the wave of hockey murders start?

Always looking for someone to blame makes the real reasons easy to overlook.

 

[IU90]

the notion that football engenders violence in its participants isn't new. It's part of the reason why they banned the sport at the turn of thre last centiry.

I don't believe this is quite accurate. Unless my historical ignorance is showing, I thought the game was nearly banned solely because of the ON FIELD violent nature of the game, in particular because of gruesome injuries and even deaths that had occurred DURING games. But not because it induced the game's participants commit more violent acts OFF the field, which is the theory that HH floated and you seemed to support in this thread. It's a completely different analysis.

 

[jgmacg]

Blame shifter.

Cultural relativist!

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

Whitlock will be on Rome's second hour today.

 

[jgmacg]

So football players engage in these acts because their sport is violent? When will the wave of hockey murders start?

Always looking for someone to blame makes the real reasons easy to overlook.

Never said that, and I'm not looking to blame anyone or anything - simply trying to add context to a national debate which tends toward hurried oversimplification.

As to hockey violence, the NHL's problems are mostly on the ice rather than off. Ask them why Jesse Boulerice - suspended for a year, and indicted, for beating another kid in the face with his stick in the OHL 8 years ago - had to be suspended 25 games this year for doing exactly the same thing. Again.