Obviously secular morality says we eliminate football.

Oct 14 09:57 UTC 2000

Oct 14, 2000 - 05:26 AM 

             High School Player Suffers Broken Neck
             in Game, Dies 
             The Associated Press

             BEDFORD, Ohio (AP) - A high school football
             player trying to tackle an opposing player
             suffered a broken neck and died, officials
             said. 

             Marcus Steele, a Cleveland Central Catholic
             sophomore, was injured in the third quarter
             of a game Friday night, Principal Janice
             Roccosalva said. She said a doctor told her
             the youth died almost instantly. 

             The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer reported that
             Steele made the first hit on a fullback from
             Garfield Heights Trinity. Other players helped
             finish the play. When the pile was cleared,
             Steele - a linebacker on defense and a
             running back on offense - lay motionless on
             the ground. 

             As Steele was taken to the hospital, players
             from both teams gathered in an end zone
             and prayed. 

             "Both teams were just doing their jobs,"
             Trinity Head Coach Jim Basha said. "I'm just
             shocked ... In 27 years of coaching, I've
             never seen anything like this." 

             John Kall, a Trinity assistant coach, said the
             play "was just like any ordinary football
             play. Marcus was trying to make a tackle." 

             The game was halted with Central Catholic
             trailing 13-8. 

             AP-ES-10-14-00 0525EDT 
              Copyright 2000 Associated Press. All
             rights reserved. This material may not be
             published, broadcast, rewritten, or
             redistributed. 
               Brought to you by the Tampa Bay Online
                          Network

response 2 of 113:

Oct 14 13:37 UTC 2000

i'd support that in a new york heartbeat.

response 4 of 113:

Oct 14 14:09 UTC 2000

I feel very sorry for the parents here.  They will no doubt
always feel a little responsible for their son's death.

response 8 of 113:

Oct 14 21:00 UTC 2000

What's "secular morality" have to do with #0? I don't see even a whiff of
a question of ethics or morality in the story. People die doing things
they like all the time. The questions that might arise are whether schools
should sanction sports that have risks of serious injury, or whether there
was in fact negligence (improperly maintained equipment, for example)
involved. The former is a policy decision. The latter is liability. 

One of the usual "solaces" for friends and relatives of such a victim
is "he(she) died doing what he(she) loved". Whatever works, I suppose.

response 10 of 113:

Oct 15 01:12 UTC 2000

Agreed.  Ballet can be awful on the body and soul.

response 12 of 113:

Oct 15 02:12 UTC 2000

Re #3:  I disagree.  The "team sports" paradigm also promotes
the formation of violent cliques.  Many's the "nerd" who has
been assaulted by "jocks" in the hallway of the school.  This
is not a consensual act, this is one group which has been
praised for its ability to use violence carrying that over into
another context.  It is school-sanctioned caste dominance.

When campus rapes are reported, they often appear to involve
"athletes".  Not just any athletes either.  I can't recall when
I've heard of a harassment incident involving a swimmer, a runner,
a fencer or a shooter, or even baseball players; it always seems
to be football players.

Maybe it's time to get rid of football, period.

(Now let's see how many flames this starts, starting with senna. ;-)

response 14 of 113:

Oct 15 15:28 UTC 2000

i just say:  "I Like both TEAMS EQUALLY AS MUCH."

response 16 of 113:

Oct 15 15:57 UTC 2000

want some kraut on yore dawg?

response 18 of 113:

Oct 15 17:03 UTC 2000

Well, just *take* the dog. :)  

I've seen little evidence to lead me to believe that football players are more
likely to commit sexual assault than the rest of society.  Societal pressures
are creating a problem for premiere athlets in most  of the major sports,
however.

response 20 of 113:

Oct 15 20:53 UTC 2000

When high school or college students become household names, most likely it's
due to sports.  I've seen plenty of articles about crimes by high school or
college students, including sexual assaults.  When the perpetrator is somebody
we're not supposed to have heard of, it gets burried on some inside page. 
When the story involves one of our heros, somebody whose every action is big
news, their arrest becomes front page news.  I'm guessing that if you examine
actual crime stats, rather than front page news, the percentage of crimes
committed by famous athletes is probably pretty low.  Blaming crime on sports
sounds kind of like blaming crime on the Internet.

Did anybody else notice Baby Bush blaming the Columbine masacre on the
Internet, during the debate last week?

response 22 of 113:

Oct 16 00:30 UTC 2000

RE#19 -- If you stop paying the pros so much then the owners will make a lot
more money and that doesn't seem fair.

response 24 of 113:

Oct 16 04:52 UTC 2000

Sports is a profitable business.  It has created something of a monster as
far as the athletes are concerned.  High schoolers are becoming celebrities
in their teenage years, without learning anything of restraint or judgement.
People wonder how certain athletes could go so bad, but it's not really that
hard to figure out.  They don't have the good traits people would like them
to have because they haven't had tne normal liife to learn them in.  

Not that this is what happens to everyone, just some of the more notable
problem children.  How do you stop this?  I don't know.  What can you do? 
Ban sports?  Sports teams are extremely valuable commodities to their owners,
their fans, and their cities.  Unlikely.