) On the other hand, I feel compelled to dissociate myself from extremist positions on my side that sometimes reach the point of rejecting just about all athletes as individuals in a bigoted fashion akin to racism.But there is a particular attitude expressed by some (seemingly many) in the sports crowd that really irks me, and that is the â??Youâ??re just jealousâ? line. Over the years Iâ??ve heard it many times. For example, suppose that someone (on the basis of his own personal knowledge, either because of what he himself has experienced or what his friends have told him about their own experiences) truthfully points out that a particular high-school football player is a bully (as opposed to making an unfair negative generalization about all football players as a group). Many of those in the sports crowd will respond by saying, â??Oh, youâ??re just jealous because football players get laid more often than you.â?
Well, dealing with that particular variation of this insipid line, when I was in high school, I never cared to date any of the girls who chased after the football players because most of those girls, if not all of them, were shallow. They were the sort who were pretty on the outside, but ugly on the inside. (Besides, my future wife turned out to be a young lady who hadnâ??t even attended my high school. And never mind that some teenagers, including individual athletes, choose to abstain from premarital sex out of strong religious convictions.) Decent teenage girls want to date guys who have good character (regardless of whether theyâ??re athletes or nonathletes), not guys simply because they happen to be status symbols. Decent teenage boys donâ??t want to date girls who are stuck-up and cruel to others and donâ??t have any moral values. Decent teenage boys realize that such girls are not fit for them to choose as future mates. So, no, I was never jealous of any high-school football players who were having sex with girls whom I never wanted to touch with a ten-foot pole and who fail in comparison to my wife.
Actually, I feel sorry for any guy, regardless of whether he played sports in high school or not, who is married to a vain woman. Talk about misery.I have never denigrated athletic achievement in my life, and I have always respected and even admired individual athletes who were decent guys. I even once gave a sizable (for my income at that time) monetary contribution to one of them in 1976 -- then Texas State Senator Bob Gammage, a maverick liberal Democrat who had been a college football player (over six feet tall and built like a brick wall) -- when he ran for Congress. Some of the forum members who defend this website may be scandalized to learn that I have chosen my username from Earl Campbell, a former Houston Oilers professional football player who, by all accounts, is a decent guy and whom I personally admire.
But sports have become the new religion in this country. Every single institution in this country is subject to critique (and rightly so) from Congress to country clubs, but NOT sports. Sports -- and that includes the sports culture, unfortunately -- is considered to be above it all. Sports is regarded as sacred. According to this view, no one has ever been deeply hurt by the sports culture. Anyone who says so is either exaggerating or is a liar. â??Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.â? Football coaches and former players (not all, but too many) say, â??Football builds characterâ?; and no one -- I repeat, NO ONE -- is allowed to challenge this assumption. School coaches (not all, but too many) say, â??Athletes are a better class of people than nonathletesâ?; and we all know that this is true, donâ??t we? Anyone who doesnâ??t like sports is considered to be an inferior person; and anyone who dares to criticize even any particular aspect of the sports culture is considered to be a bad, if not dangerous, person.
The jerks who say â??Youâ??re just jealousâ? are not even trying to listen to what others have to say about their own experiences, because their minds are completely closed to any truth that would even slightly disturb their preconceptions. If they bothered to listen, they would detect emotional pain beneath the anger in the voices of many who say that they hate sports. But that pain makes no impression on them, because their minds are completely closed. And they just donâ??t care, anyway.
Totally absurd claims are continually made as to what sports supposedly can do. Earlier this week I read an online article written by a university professor who claimed that sports promote empathy. Say what? Empathy for whom? Empathy for nonathletic teenage boys who are bullied by â??jocksâ? at their schools? Can anyone see how ridiculous such a claim is, or am I the only one who does? By the way, why would this professor even want to say that sports promote empathy? After all, the mindset of machismo holds that kindness, empathy, and compassion are not masculine traits, but are feminine ones instead (which means that they are undesirable in men). Never mind that traits such as kindness and cruelty are human traits, not sexual ones. And when I deny that sports promote empathy, I am in no way denigrating sports any more than I would if I said that playing chess does not promote empathy.
The line of â??Youâ??re just jealousâ? is only a means to deflect and discredit any critique of the sports culture, and is not an intellectually honest assessment. But I will concede that these people are right after all.
I would tell a high-school or former high-school football player who used this line, yes, Iâ??m jealous that when you were a young boy, your sexual orientation was not repeatedly called into question simply because you were not interested in sports.
Yes, Iâ??m jealous because you were not bullied simply because you had no interest in sports.
Yes, Iâ??m jealous because none of your P.E. coaches ever treated you unfairly or showed a lack of interest in, or any concern about your physical fitness needs simply because you were a nonathlete.
Yes, Iâ??m jealous because you did not have the experience of your P.E. coach not taking your side against the athletic creep who had been physically bullying you for months, and punishing you instead of the bully merely for defending yourself. (And why should the athletic creep have been punished, anyway? After all, the rules don't apply to him.)
Yes, Iâ??m jealous because you did not have the experience of a young athletic thug in your P.E. class smashing your face with a cricket bat and breaking your nose simply because you could not play cricket well. (I must say that I borrowed this line from Mrs. Earl.
)And to be sure that I am not misunderstood by anyone, I would not want an innocent athletic guy to suffer because of the bad experiences of nonathletes â?¦
