In my personal observation, the coverup issue seems to be the case more often with small-town student athletes than the big-city pros.
I agree that hero-worship is a problem. The thing is that it doesn’t start or end with a particular sport or with athletes in general.
Don’t hate the game, hate the (rapist) player.
The football rape culture starts in high school and continues from there.
Your citation is interesting in that it shows how the violent incidence is higher for NFL players than the national average. Yet, when compared to adult males it is lower. What it does not do is give us numbers on how many of those adult non-NFL males were in high school or college football.
I also think it’s interesting that with the piles of cash they pay these NFL players, their incidence of crime is only slightly lower than the national average. That’s very telling.
Finally, you are looking at arrest rates. If nothing else, Steubenville shows us that the local authorities may not arrest you if you are good at football giving lie to your position.
Of course, with the piles of cash these players make, it may never end in an arrest. Just a civil court case with an off the books payoff to the victim.
You don’t even have to be outside highschool to enjoy the coverup http://www.local21news.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/coach-charged-trying-cover-up-rape-teen-4859.shtml
Or even a player
Wow, I’d never heard of Jerry Sandusky before!
For Christ’s sake. I said blame society, not football. You say blame football culture. Well, I think society and culture are the same goddamn thing and football culture is American society.
I think we may be kind of close to agreeing with each other but getting stuck in a semantic rut (with the obstacle of me enjoying watching a particular sport that you can do without).
I’m obviously not in support of giving athletes special privileges and you cannot possibly believe that the game of football’s rules inherently promote rape or attract rapists.
But we digress. I believe Kluwe’s account, so fuck Mike Priefer.
I don’t think the game of football or the rules of the game inherently promote rape. I think the subversion of our educational system to place a higher value on athleticism over academia is the root of the problem.
It creates over-large people who are used to going around acting the fool and paying no consequences for their behavior. These people are rightly justified in thinking this way because the average person is intimidated by them and authority figures will make excuses for them just to make sure they have a winning team. They are allowed to matriculate with 3rd grade reading levels and praised as roll models.
They live in a bubble.
That would have to be one huge ass island.
I get it, and 50 years ago, before the veil was lifted, that would be cool. But now, it isn’t really. We can see into so much, and so easily, that separating the on-field from the off-field isn’t so clear-cut.
I used to love watching football (UK), but now, knowing what those people get up to, knowing how much money they’re given due to the slobbering adoration of their millions of fans, I can’t be bothered. And I want no part of it - none - which means not participating in any manner whatsoever - so that it’s clear and distinct to everyone around me that I stand on the other side of the river.
I get what you’re saying, and that my stance is different. But which, you have to ask yourself, is going to make a difference to people getting raped? Anywhere, by anyone?
Kluwe was probably cut because of his performance AND activism combined. That’s pretty much at the heart of this kind of discrimination. It’s hard to fight because there’s no way to prove it.
This is also the reason women, POC, gender and sexual minorities in general have to be better than average in their jobs. Because the only way to know if you’re being discriminated against because of your views or status is to be fired when you’re one of the best.
Sure about that?
However, ergi – unmanliness, basically – was a death sentence. In fact, if someone accused a man of being ergi, he was obligated to kill them to answer the insult. If he didn’t, it was open season on him.
Practicing magic was considered ergi, and in the Lokasenna (a story about Loki trying to provoke everyone at a party into murderous rage), Loki cheekily points out that Odin practices magic.
Thanks. That sent me down a wikipedia hole and I finally read some Poetic Edda.
Fordham University’s website is a Jesuit website like Georgetown University’s is, and their faculty is as independent as those at Georgetown.[quote=“anon85524460, post:20, topic:18341”]
He was making $5 million per year, to be a mediocre , middle of the road punter.
[/quote]
He also says that the Vikes never asked him to renegotiate his contract.
Maybe, but he had an AV of 2 for his final 4 seasons, and his [numbers from 2012 are basically the same as in his last 4 seasons][1].
[1]: Chris Kluwe Stats, Height, Weight, Position, Draft, College | Pro-Football-Reference.com[quote=“anon85524460, post:20, topic:18341”]
We don’t know what that coach said, and we do know there were other witnesses and NOT ONE OF THEM SAID A THING YET. Only Chris Kluwe. And he only waited until after it was certain that he wasn’t going to play in the NFL again.
[/quote]
Well, if Kluwe is correct in the ramifications of speaking and his logic of waiting until he knew he would no longer be in the NFL, which of the witnesses are going to say something? Maybe a star player could afford to speak up without fear of short-term repercussions, but even then they may feel uncomfortable about rocking the boat.
IIRC the article I linked to indicated that unmanliness was worthy of derision (not something you want heaped on you in a cold, isolated, windy village really). I’ll go with the death thing though; although I’d wager there were more than a few killings in answer to the ergi insult business.
The article pointed out that if a male was seen as the submissive partner in a homosexual relationship, that was derisive, but given that would be a known cultural facet, which fool would allow themselves to be seen as such? Only a real fool. If you were in a healthy relationship, you would seek to avoid the insult of ergi by ensuring your bases were covered, and being pretty badass about taking care of problems.
The Vikings weren’t simpletons. They operated with sophistication, albeit not everything they did agrees with me.
I’d venture that the irony I suggested that exists in the tension between the team name “Vikings” and the correlating easy-going views on homosexuality vs the idiot coach’s views remains valid.
I was drawing the link between the traditionally very homophobic catholic church and the authors of the article - and implicitly admiring the text for its apparent moral objectivity on the subject. With my catholic filter glasses on, the article, on my brief scan, was even-handed and usefully descriptive. Didn’t read anywhere that all the Vikings were in hell for homosexuality.
My point—apparently ill-conveyed—was that it’s not like Fordham University’s website is some religiously-motivated website. It’s the website of a University with Jesuit roots, but it’s not like the institution’s religious background has a much influence on its faculty or their writings. I mean, it’s not like you think of Georgetown (which I assume most people are more familiar with) faculty as religious spokespersons or things appearing on their website as Jesuit-affiliated, so I don’t think there should be any surprise that things appearing on Fordham’s website should be “even handed.”
Ah - gotcha. I don’t know either particularly, as I’m London, England based. Thanks much for clearing that up!
Yeah, the fact that men in power aren’t arrested as much as average Joes isn’t an indicator of fewer crimes committed in that demographic.
It’s not like Georgetown has had any religiously-motivated moments in the media spotlight recently, right?
Sure, and that was a Georgetown Law student leading the charge against it. But you’ll, if your click through the WaPo piece to the Law Weekly source note that the faculty health plan does cover contraceptives. Regardless, the University’s stance on health care (and it’s historical money-losing provision of comunity health care through its Medical Center) has little to do with the academic and religious freedoms of its faculty or the independence of what they write on the University’s web site.
Arrest rates have nothing to do with how much rape actually happens. A very small percentage of all rapes are ever reported to the police and I’d imagine that if it’s done by someone famous (whether it’s “college team’s star player” -famous or nationwide famous), you’re even less likely to report it.
