I Am So Over Football 2

2 comments

1. George Smith

   October 24, 2014 at 2:23 am

   You know, it’s not just football. It’s an American athletics thing. I was hazed relentlessly in junior high by seniors on the football team when I was in preliminaries for the wrestling team. Paradoxically, the wrestling coach had encouraged me to begin training because, he said, it was fair, pitting people of equal weight against each other. A couple of them thought the humiliation was funny; I was small, they were very big. What was the result? I spent so much time in the weight room and on the mat I frightened the popular big athletes into leaving me alone or risk having their ability on the field imperiled by someone who might break their bones if pushed too hard as I gained weight and height. I won dual scholarships in academics and athletics to undergraduate but it was scarring. I remember having to put students against the wall or very painfully beat them in the gym to get the word out in the school that I was not to be trifled with. Hazing results in retaliation, bringing out the worst in a bad cycle.

    
2. Frank

   October 25, 2014 at 2:04 pm

   I don’t remember much of that at my high school, but it was very small. My graduating class was 70. Everyone knew everyone and their parents. The jocks and the geeks drew from the same small pool.

   There were some dirty tricks from time to ti me (woke up one morning to find an outhouse deposited at the end of the lane and I may have been involved in t-ping one teacher’s lawn), but we did have not the concerted, almost organized taunting and torture one hears about these days.