Football Season

When I was a boy,  there was a saying that playing football builds character. I didn’t  believe it. I knew a number of the football players at my high school. Some were good guys, and some were jerks -  just as with the rest of us. I did not notice the quality of anyone’s character improving or worsening over the years from being on the team.  Nor have I seen much evidence for the idea in the following years.  Big time college football’s and the NFL’s present and recent collections of  thugs,  “domestic abusers”, prancing narcissists, bullies, belligerent near illiterates, and felons do not offer it strong support.

Neither does the behavior of some of the coaches who are said to be instilling all those upright character traits. Urban Meyer, coach of the prestigious and well beloved by the sports media Ohio State Buckeyes recently lied about a serious subject (accusations  of wife beating by one of his assistant coaches and what and when he knew about them)  to reporters and the public at an event where he was officially representing the university. He was caught in his lie and changed his story from a claim of complete ignorance of the matter to one of following the rules explicitly to one of maybe not doing all he should have but only because of his fondness for the accused man’s grandfather.  The university’s bosses suspended him for the time  up to the end of  the season’s first game and prohibited him from  being on the sidelines for two more games.  Most of the arguments I have read have been over whether this was too severe or not severe enough a punishment for failing to do more in 2015. While I have not followed the story thoroughly, I have not seen many people saying he should have to pay for his  lying. It may be that to many fans and people in the sports media, lying by coaches is to be expected and treated as no big deal.

College football often is a sleazy business.  Cheating and buying players in recruiting are said to be fairly common.  Coaches regularly sign up players lacking ability or preparation for college and bring hoodlums and criminals to their campuses while prattling about character and “student athletes”.  Trying to injure opponents in games gets some coaches’ tacit approval or even encouragement.  There is reason to be a little skeptical of the idea that all those three hundred pounders on college teams are the result only of weight lifting, clean living, and eating lots of Wheaties and to be curious about how prescription pain drugs are used on players.

One can know this and still like the game, but a person should take the game as it is and not fall for the character building stuff or participate in any silly idolatry of successful coaches.