I’m Not Knockin’ football

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Categorized | North America

Posted on 03 September 2007

Columnist - John Sammon
Why is high school football like Iraq?

Strange parallel, you might say. Not really. One leads to the other.

Let’s start with high school football. Football is the most important activity in your high school. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be on the very first page of the yearbook. My yearbook.

Your high school team isn’t on the very first page of your yearbook?

Okay.

High school football is the only activity in the school that appears above the masthead (title) in your local newspaper. They never read, up at the very top, English Department Scores High, at the top of your newspaper. They never read, Joey Shay Writes Brilliant Essay.

Ball Ball But your paper does say, Chiefs (or whatever your high school team is named) Looking Good in 43-35 Win.

Why is it, that an activity that only at tops about thirty boys participate in, and no girls unless they’re sycophantic pom pom bimbos. Why does this tiny activity that is fringe, peripheral at best to what the school is all about. Why is it so important?

The school wasn’t built to teach football. That’s just an elective. The school was built to teach the students English, history, math, things they need to get real jobs.

How many high school players on the football team go on to play college ball or the pros? Maybe one. Since every student goes into every kind of job except football. Why is football the single activity that has big pep rallies, big attendance in the stands, press coverage?

Power. That’s why. Stepping with sharp cleats on people’s faces. That’s what’s important. Bashing their heads in. Screaming kill the sonofabitch. Chanting hit ‘em again, hit ‘em again, harder harder!

I’m not knockin’ it.

I’m not against football. You want to go scream at somebody chasing a piece of leather on the ground. That’s your business.

I was called effeminate in high school for taking drama class, which had two boys and twenty three of the most gorgeous girls in the school. Why would I fritter away my time in drama school playing the part of Romeo in a play, being close to beautiful girls, and also being a sissie, when I can be on a bus whose windows are fogged up with sweat from thirty five sweaty guys who are scratching their asses?

I’m not knockin’ it.

Football. You want to scream our team won. Go ahead. Our team? If your team wins, do you feel better about yourself�?�superior? We kicked ass! We kicked butt!

Does that make you feel good?

Are you one of these people who watch pro football on TV? Remember, none of the players are from your high school. You know all the players names on the pro team and all their stats? How many passes they caught and all the rest?

They represent a city you don’t live in. A big city like Oakland. Or Cleveland. For that matter, none of the players themselves live in the big city they represent. They’re all millionaires who live somewhere else.

If the truth be known, if you’re white, most of the players are members of so-called minority groups who have no shared experience or connection with you. They don’t even look like you. They’re twice as big.

But if they win. Does that make your little meaningless life seem more rewarding?

I’m not knockin’ it.

If that’s what you like.

FootBall Fan Go ahead. Drink your beer and scream kill the sonofabitch. Run over his face. Better him than you. You don’t want your face run over by sharp cleats. But you want his to be (one time I was at this moron’s house and he was engrossed watching football and a big hit was made and like a wild animal he literally screamed SHIT!).

Everything else the high school does is nothing.

The high school football players are the big men on campus. In reality, they’re really big big boys with injured knees.

Football brings prestige, power.

We haven’t advanced much from cave men. It’s still who hits who with the biggest club. That’s what matters. Not learning. That’s not important.

How is this like Iraq? Kill him! Kill him! We won! We’re better.

That’s how.

Book Review By ‘Josh’ [Click Here For More Reviews & Product Details]

I am also a Captain in the Army, so I was excited to come across a written account of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan written by one of my peers. I thought this book would be interesting and relevant to my own experiences in Iraq. However, I was very quickly disappointed by the book’s one-sidedness and lack of insight.

One of McGovern’s main themes is that the positive stories from Iraq and Afghanistan are seldom reported, while violence and strife always make the nightly news. While there is truth to this, McGovern takes the opposite approach to the extreme. He cites children waving at soldiers and Iraqis voting as proof that US policies in Iraq are working and progress is being made, but he completely ignores any and all evidence to the contrary (worsening violence, Iraqi political ineffectiveness, millions of refugees fleeing the country, a steady decline of electricity and other services, children throwing rocks, etc).

By far, the biggest flaw in this book is that McGovern never addresses or acknowledges the negative impact of having an occupying army living and operating for years within a civilian population. In the effort to catch the terrorists, soldiers kick in doors, round up detainees, seize and destroy private property, create collateral damage and civilian deaths, etc. These are the unavoidable side effects of fighting a war. Add to that the unscrupulous actions of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib and Haditha, and you’ll find that the longer we stay, the less popular we become, and the more support the insurgency receives from the local population. A recent poll indicated that over half of Iraqis now support attacks against American soldiers. By ignoring half of the issue, McGovern abandons a reasoned, balanced appraisal in favor of blind ideology and wishful thinking.

I haven’t mentioned McGovern’s career in the NFL or as an attorney, because the autobiographical aspect of this book is actually rather secondary to his promotion of US policy in executing the War on Terror. In this regard, none of his points are new, original, or insightful. Conservative ideology is haphazardly sprinkled throughout the book whether or not it is relevant to the ongoing story. For example, here is a quote from the NFL portion: “Of course, the hate [Vince] Lombardi was talking about was the football kind, not the hate that drives people to fly airplanes into buildings.” By the time you reach the end of the book, it starts to sound like a White House press release from 2003. If you are primarily looking for a good inside account of the NFL, life in Iraq/Afghanistan, or the DA’s office, this isn’t the right book for you. If you’re hells bells behind the war in Iraq and want to read something you’re sure to agree with, then you might want to pick this up.

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