Here to have a civilized debate.

[Skul]

Racist? When has he been racist? If he had been, I would've banned him with no hesitation. You mean that Taliban comment? They do blow themselves up, FYI. Look it up on Wikipedia.

Why haven't I banned him for flaming? Because the insults are pathetic. That and we've needed a new Samantha for a while.

And you do need to calm down. If you simply can't, then don't take it out on Andy and Tony. Have they come on, taunting and insulting us? Nope. Simmer down.

[Sergey]

"look at sir gay (sergey)'s"

I call that BS on his part.

[Skul]

Oh wow, the gay insult. Lame, like I said.

[Earl]

Of course, it's stupid. But it's not racist. Hey, a lot of people got their names ridiculed when they were kids. Someone in elementary school once made fun of my last name, but I just laughed about it. Think about it. How much intellect do you think SPORTS ROCK is showing by coming up with that dopey rendition of your first name? Not much. You're smarter than that. This is just elementary school type stuff.

[Fat Man]

I for one do not wish to see SPORTS ROCK banned because I now have a new pet.

I own him now!

I hope he keeps coming back for another verbal ass kicking from yours truly.

[Tony]

Your welcome Earl. I don't think you and I will ever have any disagreements.. I have agreed with everything you have said thus far.

Sergey, I understand that you are mad at SPORTS ROCK, but is that a reason to lash out at me or any other civilized sport fan/athlete? No... he also is NOT being racist... not agreeing with someone is called being HUMAN. Racist, is defined by thinking that someone of a different race is inferior too yours. I doubt you want him killed either... You can keep lashing out at SPORTS ROCK because that is your personal problem with him, but unless I do something to provoke you, you have no reason to lash out at me.

[Sergey]

Oh wow, the gay insult. Lame, like I said.

My name is racial. And I hate him, it's like talking to a wall that can talk, but has been losing wood cells for a hundred years.

[Andy]

Sergey, I would like you to please read the forum rules http://www.sportssuck.org/phpbb2/viewto ... ?f=7&t=923. The first rule posted is No Flaming/Flame-baiting. The same rules apply to Sports-Rule. In case you haven't noticed, my views are separate from his, and we are not linked other than he may have come from the gridiron-palace and that he is a fellow sports-fan. Other than that, we are two separate people, stop treating the actions of one person and thinking they are the actions of all.

Now back on topic,
Fat Man,
I am sorry about how you were treated as you were growing up, but I do believe times have changed for the better at least a little bit. Most of my P.E. teachers were pretty tolerant of the athletic and the un-athletic and treated both equally. Now I know this is not the case with all. I have run into coaches I have not agreed with, and I do agree that in most cases coaches should not also be teachers. I never had the head football coach as a teacher, but my sister did, during football season his idea of teaching government was watching CNN with the class while he worked on the playbook. Now this coach and me never did see quite eye to eye and I don't feel I was treated with the respect I deserved. But to this day I still use him as motivation to work harder in college because he never did recognize that I was going on to play college football (a huge achievement for a high school player to move up to the next level). He never once gave me a congrats, a pat on the back, or a hand shake. Hell he never even mentioned the matter to me. Now on the other hand, I had another football coach who was also my teacher. He was the greatest teacher I had in high school, he taught Genocide while teaching us all about compassion. He is a case where he never even mentioned football at any time during the semester. He always challenged the way we thought and it was thinking on a higher level. Almost more like a college class than a high school class. On the last few days of school we circled up the desks and had a debate about issues that were never discussed in high school such as: abortion, religion, death penalty, ect. He knew he could be fired over discussing the issues with us, but it was a refresher for all of us and opened doors to new thinking. This teacher probably taught me the more about life than any other of my school teachers in high school.

As far as the athletes themselves. It really varies by person. In high school I didn't hang out with many of my teammates in high school because their hobbies were partying and getting drunk on the weekends. While I enjoyed hanging out with a few close friends going bowling or just having some ladies over for some hot tubbing. Although I would say about 75% of my teammates drank alcohol, I would say 85% of the team were still good people in their hearts. They didn't bully and they had goals and aspirations like many of you. Now the other 15% were not as good people, they would get into fights and didn't really care about others. But because 15% of these people were bad people that doesn't mean you should judge the rest of the team. Now that I have reached the college level I have found even more compassionate people that do care about other people. My football team logged something like 5,000 hours of community service over the season. We all just enjoy helping those in the community that support us, especially the kids that look up to us. When I go out into the community to rep my team and provide a good role model for the kids, I know these kids will always remember this day and it means so much to them. They don't care if you are a starter or not, they still look up to us.

I think the reason why many of you have this notion in your head that athletes are bad people is that negative situations tend to stick in our heads a lot better than positive situations. CNN and news shows such as this know that people are actually interested in negative news, so they show the situations where an athlete has done something bad. But what they don't show is all of the work that athletes do in their communities.

[Sergey]

Alright.

[Earl]

Andy, I deeply appreciate your intelligent remarks. They are a refreshing change from the abuse that we've come to expect from the majority of the sports fans who post at this website. Of course, I realize that the great majority of visitors who actually leave messages at any website are either going to have strong feelings or even be hotheads (on both sides). Many of the reasonable visitors are not going to leave any messages.

I appreciate the many fine values that are manifest in your life. I may have a slight disagreement with you, though, over the question of why some of us are prejudiced against athletes in certain sports, especially football. I'm truly sorry that I have to say this, but some of the men who are members of this forum had bitter experiences as they were growing up that involved individual "jocks" bullying them at their schools. Some of this bullying was physical. I don't mean to make a negative stereotype here, but it really happened.

So, part of the problem is that our own individual experiences differ. None of us -- you and the others on "your side," on the one hand, and the forum members I've referred to above, on the other -- is lying. Everyone is telling the truth. But there may be problems with how our different situations are perceived in our own minds. You (not you personally, but editorially speaking) may not be aware of what some of your teammates are doing off the football field; and the 15% percent you mentioned as being bad is going to seem like a larger (perhaps even considerably larger) group to those who are bullied, because the bad ones will stick out in their memories more than those who were not involved.

There are other issues as well. What I'm about to say may be less true of your generation, but it certainly was true of mine. Machismo was culturally associated with sports like football, and by "machismo" I mean a particular mindset that some men have that influences their reactions and the way they relate to others. Those of us who chose to reject machismo as a standard of masculinity sometimes also rejected sports in the process. (Today I realize that there are compassionate athletes, as you have pointed out. I once saw Mark McGwire interviewed on TV as he was telling how appalled he was when he learned how terribly abused some of his teammates had been when they were children. He almost broke out in tears.) When I was in high school, I thought football players never cried. I kid you not. I really believed this.

Machismo has little use for compassion, and tends to disregard it as a feminine (and therefore undesirable, in their view) trait, instead of the human trait that it actually is. (Cruelty is also a human trait, not a masculine trait. For example, the women officers in the secret police of the Stalinist regime of Matyas Rakosi in Hungary were even more sadistic than the men officers.) Today machismo is propagated by such media as Esquire magazine.

Machismo says that men should never cry, not even over others who have suffered a horrible misfortune. For example, one of the murder victims of the Son of Sam in New York City was out on a date with her boyfriend when they were attacked and she was killed. Her boyfriend survived the attack, but Berkowitz (the killer) shot one of his eyes out. When the boyfriend was being treated in the hospital, his father publicly announced that he was so proud that his son had not cried over the death of his girlfriend! (Never mind that his son may have been too shocked to cry. I had the same reaction when I was told that my dad had died.)

Just to give an example from my own life that is far less severe, in the late summer before my sophomore year in high school, I learned about the Holocaust. In the early spring of the following year, I saw the movie adaptation of The Diary of Ann Frank. The ending brought tears to my eyes, of course; but I felt ashamed of myself for reacting that way. I had picked up that feeling of shame from the machismo in the popular culture that I was exposed to as a teenager. I certainly didn't get it from my parents. Today, of course, I realize that I should not have felt shame for reacting that way; but I resent machismo for presuming to say what one half of the human race should believe and how they should react and treat others. Compassion, which machismo tends to denigrate, has been the driving force behind great acts of courage, such as on the part of those in this country who spoke out against racial discrimination under Jim Crow and those in Nazi-occupied Europe who sheltered Jews. This is not weakness. Besides, men as a group are way too diverse to follow a single pattern of finding and expressing their manhood.

Some reading these comments may think that I'm "fem" for saying all this. Well, I couldn't care less.

[Tony]

So far, the only bullying I have seen at my HS, is a bunch of popular girls picking on the less popular girls and forming huge catfights... you may not like it, but it actually gets kinda funny.. (not physical catfights, just up-in-your face catfights where you insult one another... their comebacks are TERRIBLE! )

[Ray]

Sergey, I would like you to please read the forum rules http://www.sportssuck.org/phpbb2/viewto ... ?f=7&t=923. The first rule posted is No Flaming/Flame-baiting. The same rules apply to Sports-Rule. In case you haven't noticed, my views are separate from his, and we are not linked other than he may have come from the gridiron-palace and that he is a fellow sports-fan. Other than that, we are two separate people, stop treating the actions of one person and thinking they are the actions of all.

Do not lecture Sergey. He has been a long time member and supporter of this forum and though I may not agree with what he says all the time, he is family. You have absolutely no right to come to this forum and with post number 1, act like you own it.

[Andy]

Earl,
I must agree with you on the part of Machismo, I believe that football players are held to a certain point of machismo when people view from afar. And I wish there was a way to change this, but in reality there is not. On the field I may not be the most compassionate guy but off the field I show so much compassion people often interpret it as fake. But it is real, my heart feels for others and I do not like to see someone else in suffering. As for not crying, throughout growing up I will admit I actually cried a lot. I felt it was a good way to let my emotions go without having to go beat the shit out of someone. After we lost the championship game my senior year I will say every senior on that team balled their eyes out. Not really because we lost, but because over that four years we had built a bond, a brotherhood. And we all knew that it would be the last time we would all be able to play football together as a team. Yes some of us went off to college, but for many players on the team that was it. The ones that were going on to college felt for these other players. On a side note, I have visited the house in which Anne Frank was hiding in. And it sent chills down my spine to think that a group of people could do this to another group of people. I actually think my understanding of the holocaust and other genocides that I received from my Genocide class led me to be an even more compassionate guy than I was before. Showing me how being prejudice against someone for their beliefs can be ridiculous at times. And I hope that someday people will look back on the prejudice that the jocks showed the nerds, and the reverse, and realize how petty and ridiculous the sides were being.

Ray,
I did not intend to insult anyone, I made it a point in my first post that I wanted a civilized debate and that I did not want hostility from either side. I was simply pointing out the rules that your forum has decided to put into play. It should not matter how long a person has been here, everyone should have to follow the rules. I'm sure if a sports hater came on here and disobeyed the rules and started flaming, you would have his posts restricted. All I'm asking is that you treat us equally.

Sergey,
Thank you for understanding, I hope you can see where I am coming from and realize that I am a good person at heart.

Thank you to all who have been civilized in this debate,
Andy

[SPORTS ROCK.]

Sergey, I would like you to please read the forum rules http://www.sportssuck.org/phpbb2/viewto ... ?f=7&t=923. The first rule posted is No Flaming/Flame-baiting. The same rules apply to Sports-Rule. In case you haven't noticed, my views are separate from his, and we are not linked other than he may have come from the gridiron-palace and that he is a fellow sports-fan. Other than that, we are two separate people, stop treating the actions of one person and thinking they are the actions of all.

Do not lecture Sergey. He has been a long time idiot and I never agree with what he says because it's normally about boring video games. It's impossible to get anything through to him. He's an angry young lad who feels rejected by society. You have no right to tell him what to do as you're kinda talking to a brick wall.

have to agree with you there ray.

Andy took the time to submit a massively long post with plenty of good, meaningful information and Sergey's mere response was "alright". Laughable. and who said sport fans were the most stupid people? oh yeah, you lot did. If you don't know what to say, don't post anything at all!!!!!!!!!!! now come on, your warhammer account may be getting neglected. "Last sign-in: 14 minutes ago." OMG 14 WHOLE MINUTES! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO! I HAVE BETRAYED IT!

[Fat Man]

Sergey, I would like you to please read the forum rules http://www.sportssuck.org/phpbb2/viewto ... ?f=7&t=923. The first rule posted is No Flaming/Flame-baiting. The same rules apply to Sports-Rule. In case you haven't noticed, my views are separate from his, and we are not linked other than he may have come from the gridiron-palace and that he is a fellow sports-fan. Other than that, we are two separate people, stop treating the actions of one person and thinking they are the actions of all.

Do not lecture Sergey. He has been a long time member and supporter of this forum and though I may not agree with what he says all the time, he is family. You have absolutely no right to come to this forum and with post number 1, act like you own it.

duh! i agree wif Andy! duh!

dats becuz he's a football player and you is all a bunch of nerds! duh! huh! huh!

i like sports becuz sports is simple 2 understan. we retards gotta hav sumpthin to keep ar mines bizzy!

i cant help it if im a moron!

duh, huh, huh, huh!

I have to agree with you there SPORTS ROCK.

You are a moron!