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Violence in Sports
York Times, December 1, 2002.
On the tradition of snapping goal posts, The New York Times' Bill Pennington tells the story of Meg Cimino, who in 1983, when she was an 18-year-old college freshman, was struck by steel goal posts felled by celebrating football fans. He writes that the posts fractured her skull and damaged her brain stem and cerebellum. When paramedics found her, he writes, she "was bleeding heavily from her mouth, ears and nose, and her heart soon stopped. She had no vital signs." Now, nearly two decades later, when Ms Cimino sees crowds surging onto the field after games she wonders what the reasons are for letting this behavior go on.
Pennington explains how the tradition of toppling goal posts got started and how circumstances have changed such that "There are no good reasons for letting it go on." He writes, "It is time to do whatever it takes — educating fans, providing extraordinary security or simply greasing the goal posts — to bring a permanent halt to this hazardous ritual." For more on this tragic story, see "In the Snap of a Goal Post, Life Can Be Forever Altered," Bill Pennington, The New York Times, November 26, 2002.
On violence in professional football, sports columnist Sally Jenkins gives us her take on who is accountable for drawing the line between toughness and violence, between a hard collision and a needlessly violent one, between a disciplined tackle and a cheap shot, an accidental helmet hit and a malicious one, discretionary force to send a message and sheer sadism. She says the NFL can try to regulate football violence, it probably can't realistically legislate it. She thinks "[t]he violence level is more realistically established and controlled by the participants, between themselves." Given that players have a choice as to how they play the game, she writes, "… violence is as much a matter of a player's choices as it is of the rules. To say otherwise is to suggest he's not entirely in command of himself." See "NFL Violence: It's a Matter Of Choice, Not Just the Rules," Sally Jenkins, The Washington Post, December 1, 2002; Page D05.
On the NFL's approach to regulating on-field violence, sports commentator Ron Borges writes, "The suits who run pro football show their hypocrisy more and more every week. They fine players for legal as well as illegal body contact. They issue manicured press releases abhorring violence, then sell it every Sunday and in every video game store in America." He says the NFL is teaching and selling violence and that if it really wanted to reduce the violence on the field, they know how to do it. "It's by going after the coaches and the management of teams that teach the 'put a hat on 'em' mentality. Until they do that, they're attacking the victims, not the problem." See "NFL is hypocritical about violence," Ron Borges, MSNBC.com, November 20, 2002.
"To players, it's the height of hypocrisy that a league that baldly markets violence then turns around [next page]