Ned Bitters

This week’s inductee into the “Overrated Hall of Fame” is … watching sports in a bar.

It would be fun to talk about how overrated the Super Bowl is, but more often than not we are treated to one hell of a game. Ever since the great Cowboys and 49ers teams stopped making the game a yawnfest by the midway point of the second quarter, the Super Bowl is usually a great game that is decided in the last four minutes.

As for the commercials, even the lame ones turn out to be kind of fun, or at least worthy of some discussion at work on Hangover Monday.
Super Bowl parties might or might not be overrated, but being an unsociable, friendless misanthrope, I can’t speak on that. The invitations no longer come, and even if they did, I know I’d decline.

But what can be overrated, at least when talking Super Bowl, is watching the game in a bar. Okay, watching any big game in a bar is overrated, and there are myriad reasons for this.

I ended up in a bar for the entire Giants-49ers NFC Championship Game. The bar is owned by a former NFL great. The TV set-up surpasses that of any sports bar I’ve ever been in. No matter where you sit, you can watch half a dozen of the more than 30 hi-def flat-screens without having to twist your body or neck. Cool memorabilia covers the walls. The servers are fast and attentive. Bud Lites ran a whopping $2.50 for the entire game. The menu was expansive, the portions huge and the food not terrible.

And it sucked because I seemed to have missed half the game. Watching a big game, regardless of the sport, should be done at home and not in a bar.

Here’s why:

There are too many distractions. If your waitress or bartender is even remotely hot, every time you see her (or him, I guess), you get that rapist-stalker tunnel vision thing going, and instead of focusing on Eli Manning’s big third-and-12 pass, you’re eyes are locked into a set of sweet server ass cheeks that are hard enough to play quarters off of. I’m a lifelong Steelers fan, but I guarantee that I’d have missed all of James Harrison’s epic interception return had I been ordering mozzarella sticks and a beer from some poor man’s Jennifer Aniston at Super Sports Bar Emporiama.

Even if your server isn’t hot [see: Last Sunday night], you still have to deal with the constant interruptions to see if you’re “still working on that,” if you “need another round,” if everything is “all right” (you know, as if you’re going to go all gourmand on the poor girl’s ass and complain that the chicken wings are a tad undercooked and the nachos are a bit wanting in the cilantro department) or to see if you’d like the 12-layer Chocolate Thunder to go with that 8th beer.

Another problem is that the other patrons can sometimes be more compelling than the game itself, and that can be true even when the game is a good one. Despite the epic game transpiring on the 37 TVs last week, I was more involved in what was going on at the tables around us. To my left I had the creepy-looking couple with dyed red hair and too much eyeliner. Yes, that includes the male half of the couple. They looked like they had just come from a casting call for World War Z. They were not at all into the game, yet they stayed in a loud sports bar for over three hours. I couldn’t stop watching them. To my right were the strapping high school boy in the Class of 2012 letterman’s jacket and the hot older woman with him who might have been his mother but was more likely some milfish cougar he was banging. One more beer and I know we’d have gone over and asked just the hell their situation was.

And directly ahead of me was the NFL lineman who, after buying megashots for the skanky groupies at his table, made repeated trips to the outdoor patio so that he could autograph their sweet little ass cheeks. It’s hard to pay attention to an Alex Smith screen pass when you hear drunk, dirty blond chicks yelling, “For another hundred dollars you can sign my other ass cheek!” (And they say Terrell Owens is broke. Gee, hard to imagine how that kind of thing can happen after seeing a second-year lineman throwing around c-notes just so he can sign some ass.)

But it’s not just the visual distractions that take you attention away from the game. Having a set of working ears can prove bothersome, too, because every sports bar has those loudmouth know-nothings who can’t resist the urge to broadcast their sports ignorance to everyone within a 20-foot radius of their never-closed mouth. There’s the guy who yells that someone is lining up offsides on every third play. (No flag is ever thrown, making him more indignant with each missed call.) This same guy, if watching hockey, believes every pass is a missed offsides call. If baseball, why, every at-bat is a prime opportunity to go with the hit and run. (This holds true even when the bases are empty.)

And finally, we have the hardcore fans of one of the two teams playing. They sport $400 dollars worth of team garb and come armed with a big right hand ready to do some nonstop high-fiving. Four-yard run off tackle? High five! Good punt coverage? Up high, bro! 32 yard touchdown pass? The high five turns into a prolonged, shaking, clamplike grab, leaving you with shattered hand bones and a possibly separated shoulder.

So whether it’s the Super Bowl or just some first-round Stanley Cup playoff contest, it’s best to stay home to watch any big game. The beers are cheaper, the bathroom less crowded, the ass-signing cheaper (Mrs. Bitters charges just $25 per cheek) and the only idiot yelling offsides is you.

Ned Bitters is, in fact, overrated. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.

Ned Bitters

This week’s inductees into the “Overrated Hall of Fame” are … post-game comments.

A couple of Sundays ago, always interesting DeAngelo Hall of the Washington Redskins said in a post-game interview that the Skins “need to cut” him because of how poorly he had played that day. Of course, such refreshing honesty provided great fodder for talk show callers and talking heads, who all weighed in on the shocking candor of Hall’s statement. His off-the-cuff comment moments after a heartbreaking loss was dissected more than anything President Obama said that week.

This fan and reporter frenzy over any out-of-the-norm post-game comment goes on year-round regardless of the sport, and it’s about time we all just settle our asses down a bit when it comes to over-reacting to things that athletes say in that first half hour or so after a game.

Most sporting event are a few hours of ultra-competitiveness between the world’s greatest athletes, most of whom are some of the most competitive humans on the planet. (This does not, of course, include any Pittsburgh Pirates game.) Games often involve intense physical contact. Supreme mental and physical strength are required. Athletes exert themselves until they physically and emotionally spent. (Even Alex Ovechkin does this once or twice a week.) Bodies and health are put on the line, and in some sports, athletes actually risk their lives. (NHL skate blades are razor sharp, Major League fastballs move very fast and Tim Tebow believes in an angry, spiteful God who could smite him after a third interception.) They do all of this in front of thousands of live fans and millions of fat, Doritos-stained bastards watching on television.

Yet twenty minutes after a game, with an athlete’s adrenaline still in the red zone, with his body still covered in sweat and dirt, with the pain from the game pounding different parts of his spent body, a pasty, doughy collection of middle-aged reporters are thrusting recorders in his face, shouting questions about the events that just transpired on the field. These often involve the game’s key plays or an athlete’s failure to deliver at a crucial moment. The athlete has had no time to reflect or cool down, and now some judgmental jacknape from the Kansas City Star is asking accusatory questions about a dropped pass on fourth and six.

And when this athlete responds to a question with something other than the 27 textbook athlete platitudes, his comment goes through a week’s worth of intense analysis by the same people who bitch and whine about how most athletes never saying anything honest or genuine in an interview.

Now, I know that with the big money of pro sports comes the responsibility to be more media savvy and to respond to questions in a somewhat calm and polished manner. Most athletes do just that. But these guys are asked loaded questions night after night and week after week by reporters who can’t contain their drool as they imagine their pointed questions eliciting that controversial sound-bite answer that will make every Sportscenter broadcast for the next four days.

How diplomatic would any of us be if forced to endure a string of reporters’ questions at the end of each work day. Something tells me us workaday regular Joes and Josephines wouldn’t be so diplomatic every single day. Let’s imagine a few examples of how this might go.

Reporter: “Can you tell us why you handled that misbehaving student in a manner that just escalated the situation instead of defusing it, Mrs. Teacher?” 

Teacher: “Because I was tired of that little fucknut’s bullshit, which he’s been pulling all goddamned year, that’s why!”

—

Reporter: “What went through your head immediately after you realized you had mis-measured and then had to tear down two hours of work, Mr. Carpenter?

Carpenter: “I was pissed the fuck off, what do you think? Christ, what a stupid-assed question.”

—

Reporter: “How do you not go slit your wrists in shame immediately after jerking off into your fellow porn star’s face, Mr. Porn Star?

Porn Star: “Well, of course I find this act distasteful, to say the least, and I can only do this with a fellow actress who knows beforehand how we will end the scene, for we both know that our jobs entail acting out the largely unspoken fantasies of the average person, and that while these facial ejaculation scenes might titillate and excite viewers, most people never actually perform these acts in their real lives, so if I just look at from a sociological and workmanlike standpoint, and my scene partner agrees to this act in advance, I can live with what I do.”

(Okay, so maybe some regular people would know how to respond calmly and rationally to loaded questions.)

I’m not giving athletes a total pass on stupid or incendiary comments. If an athlete says something stupid or controversial in a planned, sit-down interview, we can be little less forgiving, as at that point he is no longer covered in post-game sweat and blood and still oozing competitive juices and adrenaline.

But when an athlete rips an opponent, coach or umpire or – bless you, DeAngelo Hall – himself right after a game, let’s just enjoy the juiciness of the quote and discuss it a bit the next day at our much more boring jobs, and then let it go. Let’s not declare the speaker of said quote to be a brainless, classless, tactless moron who is disrupting team chemistry or thinking only about himself or unable to control his emotions

Instead, be thankful that, for once, we didn’t have to listen to how his team gave 110 percent and how they left it all on the field and how they have to give credit to the other team and how his team has to get back to fundamentals and how they just need to play their game and how they came out with their game face on.

(Okay, that last one wouldn’t be so cliche if the porn star said it.)

Ned Bitters is, in fact, overrated. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.

Similar Posts:

• Overrated – Athletes coming out of retirement
• Overrated – Athletes thanking God
• Overrated – Updates
• Overrated – Throwback uniforms
• Guest Blog Post – A safe bet

Ned Bitters

This week’s inductees into the “Overrated Hall of Fame” are …empty expressions.

Words matter to me, which is hard to believe if you look at the quality of the writing in these columns. Maybe I should say, “Other people’s words matter to me.” (File under: Pathetic Double Standard, No. 847) Which is why I get so irked by certain overused expressions that should be used less, tweaked or simply eliminated.

Some of these expressions get heavy usage but then die out rather quickly. Not too long ago, you couldn’t go more than 90 minutes without someone saying “At the end of the day” or “It is what it is.” Now those are used mainly by bubbleheaded ex-athletes on ESPN and people who conduct meetings where you work.

But some of these seem to have an eternal life span, and they are irritating because they make no sense, or are used incorrectly, or are empty and meaningless. I’ve heard each of the following used within the past week and I’ve been hearing them all my life. If you use any of the following, please stop.

“The word on the street …”

No one except actual criminals are allowed to use this expression, and then even if they actually spend time out in streets. How many non-felons or non-future-felons do you know who can use this expression without sounding silly? It’s supposed to lend an air of toughness, I guess, but the person saying it is never actually a person from “the streets.” It’s Steve at work, they guy whose lifetime resume of illegal activities amounts to coasting through the occasional stop sign.

I heard a guy at work use these words just this past week when sharing some sensational rumor surrounding the Penn State fiasco. Because he wasn’t actually talking to me (and because he’s a half-crazy bastard who might not understand the rules regarding violence in the workplace, or more accurately, a fist against my face), I didn’t challenge him on what streets he was referring to and which people on these streets were spreading these allegations. It was probably something he heard while buying his weekly lottery tickets, and now he feels all gangsta saying “word on the street is …”

I supposed if you live a major urban center where people seldom drive and instead do a lot of walking on actual city streets in actual urban neighborhoods, then you get to use “word on the street.” But otherwise, just say “I heard …” when you are sharing some cockamamie rumor or conspiracy theory that you overheard in the produce section of the local Safeway. Believe me, we can all tell by looking at you that are not “of the streets.” In fact, in most cases, it would be more accurate to say, “Word in the pasty, doughy, downy-soft whiteboy club is that …”

“Laughing all the way to the bank.”

This one makes no sense because people have changed the most important word in the original expression. The correct way to make this point is to say that someone is “crying” all the way to the bank. For example, if some singer or novelist gets continually flayed by critics but continues to sell millions of CDs or books, the poor maligned artist is said to be “crying all the way to the bank.” He pretends to be stung by the criticisms while raking in millions of dollars. That makes sense. If Oprah gets all weepy about people making fun of her weight, she can be said to be crying all the way to the bank.

Yet people keep replacing “crying” with “laughing” and it renders the expression meaningless. Hell, we’d all laugh all the way to the bank if we were making millions.

“Having a Field Day!”

This one is used when the speaker or writer wants to express that someone is having a great time. Because most people, especially kids, love a Field Day, it make sense. But to some people, mainly Mrs. Bitters, it means the complete opposite. She is a P.E. teacher, and once a year she is charged with setting up a two-day, schoolwide Field Day. This entails endless planning, creating fun, original activities for ten different stations, finding parent volunteers, assigning resentful teachers to day-long duties, dealing with sunburn and heat-related illnesses and at least three injuries that require the school nurse or an emergency room visit, ordering supplies and then actually running an event attended by hundreds of screaming kids who are already batshit crazy with excitement over the fact that their summer is two weeks away. I get enlisted into helping with this every year.

So when Mrs. Bitters hears the word “field day” used in a positive light, teeth are gritted and epithets are hurled toward the TV, and when Mrs. Bitters ain’t happy, then I can’t be happy, so stop using “Field Day” like it’s a good thing. It’s annual pain in the ass to some of us.

“One for the road.”

How in the hell did this one ever come about? You’re getting plowed at a bar or party, and as you are getting ready to stagger out to your car and plop your drunk ass behind the wheel of your half-ton killing machine for a game of potentially hazardous Highway Zigzag, the helpful bartender or caring host implores you to suck down one more drink, using the words “one for the road” as an irresistible convincer. You know, as if a bit of sobering up for that boring car ride is simply not acceptable, and that one more drink would be sufficient to keep you plastered and thereby consistently dangerous, for the entire ride home. The message is, “There’s no reason the party has to stop when you leave the actual party! Have one more so you’ll still be shitfaced for that harrowing entrance onto the beltway!”

And finally …

“Our thoughts and prayers.”

Is there any expression more meaningless than this one? It’s a platitude usually offered for someone who is going through some unimaginable horror, such as, ohhh … getting anally raped at ten years old by a former bigtime college football coach in the shower of a major university. (Allegedly, of course.)

I’d love to know how many people who use this expression actually do keep the victims in their thoughts in a sympathetic manner. Or how many actually pray and, of those who do, how many actually pray for the victims of whatever the Tragedy of the Week is.

Worst of all, those thoughts and prayers, if indeed followed through on, don’t amount to shit. You think a victim of childhood sexual abuse gives a rat’s ass about your concern now? You think your prayers are going to erase the permanent psychological scars that kid has? I bet that boy did some praying of his own when he was (allegedly, of course) being railed in a shower by a man he trusted, and if his goddamn prayers weren’t answered then, yours aren’t going to be worth two shits now.

No, the victims of crimes and abuse and natural disasters don’t need your by rote vow to keep them in your thoughts and prayers. They needed God when the trauma was occurring, but he didn’t seem to give a shit then, so there’s no use asking His Incompetence to intervene now. If you get fucked in the ass at age ten, God hasn’t got enough heavenly balm for that damaged soul.

The victims don’t need your platitudes. At the end of the day, just send cash, and plenty of it.

Ned Bitters is, in fact, overrated. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.

Ned Bitters

In the past, I’ve been able to gin up two-page rants for topics that a well-adjusted, rational person would not even bother to notice, let alone work up a churning cauldron of stomach acid over. Not being a member of Club Sanity, I’ve been able to wax apoplectic about hot-button topics as incendiary as, oh … messages on a T-shirt, the all-American diner and Christmas songs. (God damn “Silent Night”! Don’t get me started.)

But some things piss me off only a little bit, and as a result, I can only rage about them for a few paragraphs. So today, instead of wearing you out with two pages on the bullshit concept of the American “Hero,” which I’ll do in a few weeks, I’ll just hit on a few items that are mildly overrated, but still worthy of some of my bitching.

Your Halloween Mask: No, not your costume. Although I’m not a big fan of Halloween, but I enjoy seeing a well made or witty costume. What irritates me are these unoriginal jackholes who buy a plastic or rubber mask and then on Halloween show up at work or school or the nearest shopping center in said mask, looking for some sort of reaction. They’ve reached into their shallow, tepid pool of originality and this was all they could dredge up.

Tell me, Mr. Masked Man, just how am I supposed to react to your standing there in front of me with your face covered? You show up not in a costume, but in just your regular clothes and a mask. Then you stand there and stare at me, waiting for me to … well, what exactly? Guess who it is? Okay, I’ll play along. Let’s see … I know you’re not a friend of mine because I could never be friends with someone unoriginal enough to buy a mask at a store and then try to pass it off as some kind witty statement about … again, what?

I’d laugh, but a mask alone is never funny, especially if you’re just standing there. Oh, you’re Ronald Reagan. I see. Oh, you’re a furry monster or werewolf. Okay. Oh, you’re wearing an ugly old man mask. Well, well. I believe I saw that exact mask at Target. And you went ahead and bought it and put it on. Kudos on your stunning wit. Now can you please move along and bother someone else, because I have no reaction or comment for you. Oh wait, come back, I do have a comment. I just want you to know that your mask is covering up not just your face but the fact that you are such a mind numbingly boring human being that your only hope of eliciting a reaction from others is to put on a five dollar mask and then stand in an office or classroom doorway and wait for a reaction. Okay, now you can go.

The U.S. Military Going Green: I saw a headline on the front page of the Washington Post a while back that said that our military was going to up its greenness factor by using different fuel and who knows what else. I read part of the article and then bailed, as the whole concept seemed too absurd.

What, at its core, is the main function of the military? No, not national defense. (Okay, its main function is actually fighting bogus wars drummed up by businessmen and orchestrated by crafty, flag-waving politicians all for the sake of making already fat corporations downright obese with tax dollar cash, but that’s a bitchfest for another day.) The military’s primary job, when called into action, is killing. Everything the military does is aimed at making killing easier, more cost efficient and more effective.

So this vast entity, which has perfected the art of killing humans, is going to get greener, which means they’ll start doing more to protect the earth’s resources while they are in the process of killing the very humans who, had they not had the bad, collateral luck to get killed by a not-so-smart bomb, would have availed themselves of the precious resources the military is trying to preserve.

We’ll still drop bombs that will cause huge pillars of toxic black smoke after they’ve leveled homes and buildings where actual humans lived, but at least the jets dropping these bombs will be greener.

Bashing Courtney Love: Sure, the chick a batshit crazy, self-promoting revisionist, but her music isn’t that bad, the “early good stuff” wasn’t written by Kurt Cobain and she didn’t kill that suicidal narcissist. He offed himself. The level of hatred directed at this woman is baffling. If you worshiped Cobain and are pissed that he disappeared before he was 30, don’t take it out on his moderately talented widow. If you think she profited from his death, imagine how much richer and more popular she’d be if Cobain had lived and if they had stayed married? Killing him would have been bad for her brand.

The most absurd thing about all of this? The fact that my insane, perpetually pissed off ass is telling others to quell their irrational anger.

Frank Zappa: Some people hear the name Zappa and they seemed programmed to have to exclaim, “What a genius!” Frank Zappa was no genius. He was a shockmeister who didn’t write one singable tune. Go ahead, sing one Zappa song right now. Hell, even hum a few bars of one of his songs. See what I mean? You can’t, because you don’t know any. But he’s a genius, man!

This genius’s songs never really made it onto radio, but not because of the raunchy language. He got no airplay because his songs were garbage. The technology to “bleep” out objectionable material predated Zappa by decades, so had he written good songs, commercial radio would have found a way to get them steady airplay. Even in this age of satellite radio you never hear his music. I don’t know one person who has or had a Zappa record or CD. I can’t name more than two song titles, and the only riff I can hum in my head is the chorus to “Catholic Girls.” If you know any disk jockeys, ask how many request they get each year for Zappa songs.

Still not convinced that he sucked? How about this. You probably know more of his kids’ names than his song titles, and that’s because he burdened them with silly names just to get his untalented ass in the news. And don’t tell me he was brave and ahead of his time. You could call him brave if he had been an established rock star who then, with new controversial and profanity-laden lyrics, pushed boundaries that threatened the money train’s monthly stop at his bank account. But that wasn’t the case. His “music” didn’t make any grand statements. He was just shocking, but shocking in an unwitty, unlistenable manner. It took Rap to make “shocking” listenable.

Ned Bitters is, in fact, overrated. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.

Ned Bitters

This week’s inductee into the “Overrated Hall of Fame” is … being labeled a high school football player.

Every so many months you’ll hear or read a news story announcing the death of some high school boy who smashed his car into a tree, caught a bullet in a drive-by or died in some other devastatingly sad, premature fashion. Even a miserable bastard like me can’t help but feel awful for the kid and the kid’s friends and family. Sure, being a teenaged boy, the kid was probably a total douche-nozzle, but that’s no reason for the kid to die young.

But sometimes, when I hear or read these stories, my sadness can be shortlived, and my normal mood setting – irrational anger and irritation – returns, and then all is right with the world again. What could possibly piss me off about a poor kid dying in a fiery highway death or bleeding out on a city street? It’s when an anchorman or reporter leads the report by referring to the kid as a “high school football player.”

How in the hell can a kid’s entire life be summed up as “high school football player,” as if that was the young man’s entire identity? Oh wait, I know. Because this country has a sick, over-the-top obsession with that lunkheaded sport.

This kid probably had dozens of interests in his life. Perhaps he was a music lover. Or an artist. Could be he was a member of a choir. Or one hell of a gamer. Maybe he was a boyfriend. He was no doubt somebody’s son, and there’s a good chance he was a brother, cousin, grandson and nephew. He was most certainly a friend. And a student. Maybe he was also a cashier or dishwasher.

But the headline in the newspaper or the teaser before we go to commercial is that a “high school football player” has died, which sickeningly implies that out of all the other things he did with his life, being a football player was most important and what sums up who the kid really was, and all the rest was just filler. Then again, maybe it is just stating a sad and disturbing fact. Maybe to most people who knew him, and maybe even to the kid himself, that is what he was.

Many parents start identifying their sons as “football players” when the little shits are playing mite ball. They don’t say the kid “plays football.” Damn it, he’s a football player. At six years old. This insidious molding of a kid’s persona into an athlete above all else only intensifies as he ages and climbs the ladder of crappy kid football. (And let’s be honest, all kid football is crappy kid football and not worthy of our intense emotional investment, unless one of the kids is your close relative, then it’s okay to get into it … but only a little, for even then it’s still just kids football and should therefore serve only as a pleasant diversion from the mundane daily activities of regular life for those of us not actually on the field.)

If a kid goes to the right (or wrong?) high school, this can cement the sad and inevitable evolution of the kid’s false identity. I work at a school in which the two main administrators are ex-football players whose favorite smell in the world is not perfume on a pillow or pussy on their faces; they get off on the sweaty, musky odor of a high school locker room. So, of course, they foster a school atmosphere in which the words “high school football player” are actually supposed to mean something special when it is screamed over the PA. Exceptions are made, corners are cut, schedules are changed, infractions are covered up and unseemly adoration is encouraged. This message is sent loudly and clearly.

Now, I’m not some ex-high school nerd who harbors a decades-long resentment against high school football players. Okay, that’s not completely honest. I was a super mondo nerd. But I was so much of a dweeby dork that I was beneath being bullied or ridiculed by high school football players. I’m pretty sure I didn’t even register on their radars. And I’m not bitter about one of them stealing a high school girlfriend. I had no girlfriends for the stealing. But I do remember a sizable percentage of them had a high percentage of asshole-ishness about them, an asshole-ishness cultivated by fawning parents and coaches. But I didn’t hate them. Just like I don’t “hate” them now, even thought that disproportionate level of asshole-ishness still exists.

I actually admire the kids who play high school football for several reasons. They are willing to give up sitting around the house for the last few weeks of summer for the privilege of sweating their balls off in sweltering, twice-a-day August practices. They lift weights throughout the year. They are willing to go out and bust heads and bodies with kids from other schools who have also lifted weights all year and are looking to knock them into next week. It takes balls and dedication. And at certain times, that affords them the right to be called “football players.” You know, like during the actual football season and especially on Friday nights.

But don’t let that appellation sum them up when they die, especially if they die in March or June. Or even while they are still alive. If you’re a parent, don’t say your kid is a “football player.” Say you have a kid who plays football, and probably mediocre-ly … or, more likely, badly. He’ll almost surely never play for a D1 or D2 school. He might, if he is decent, find his way onto a shitty D3 team, where he’ll have four more years of fun playing a game he hopefully loves. Chances are, because he grew up believing that he was a “football player,” he won’t have the grades or brains to get into a college.

Because a lifetime of playing football might be why so many high school football players are window-licking mouth-breathers. Many of these kids were enrolled in organized football soon after mastering the whole potty training thing. This means they’ve taken a few thousand shots to the head by the time they make the big, bad varsity squad. I don’t care how “safe” today’s football helmets are, ten years of banging your head into knees, the ground and other helmets has to take a toll on a kid’s intellectual development.

Add in the fact that many parents and coaches have sent, throughout the course of a kid’s life, the implicit message that learning and academics aren’t that important, what with a lucrative NFL career surely in the offing, and you can see why too many kids who wear a high school football jersey struggle to read, write and actually give a shit about learning. Not all of them, of course, but a damn high percentage of them.

A teenager who plays football isn’t a football player. Calvin Johnson is a football players. Aaron Rodgers is a football player. Steve with the pimples, who is failing Algebra II and who is having trouble with his girlfriend and who hopes to get his job back at Safeway after the season and who has a sick grandfather he worries about and who wants to go to culinary school because he loves to cook and who can kick every one of his friends’ asses at Madden … he isn’t a football player. He’s just another one of the countless American teenagers who play football.

Ned Bitters is, in fact, overrated. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.

Similar Posts:

• Murphy’s Law – Mammas, don’t let your babies grow up to discuss politics