The power of the jock culture begins in high school if not before.

[Are_grits_groceries]

I taught at one HS outside of DC. I know some of the best players were idolized by some teachers and students.

In one class, I had a great senior football player and a great senior basketball player.(Great by the definition in the school). They did their work, but each of them challenged me by really misbehaving at one point.

With the football player, I threatened to give him detention until he would feel like he was in another class at the end of the day. I did that if any student was that bad, but the FB player didn't escape it.

The basketball player acted up the day after he had scored eleventy billion points in a game the night before. We were reviewing for a test, and I finally looked at him and asked him if he knew that the points he scored weren't added to his test. That shut him up. They knew I didn't play.

I played a lot of sports. I also coached, and I took care of any problems I heard about. No coach or anybody else is doing athletes a favor by treating them differently. The real wold will eventually catch up with most of them and the consequences won't be pretty.

[midnight]

1. What a great comment to the student who made eleventy billion points....

[snappyturtle]

2. I agree. nt

[phantom power]

3. My old hometowm paper had always had a page devoted to star athletes of the week...

Never a page for star academics.

[LWolf]

4. Yes.

I never attended a single sporting event of any type at my high school. I've never been part of that culture. I DID compete in horse-related competitions, but that world is outside of the "jocks" in the mainstream culture.

I teach middle school, not high school, but I've never excused students from assignments when they left early to travel to a game, or when they take a whole week or more off to go hunting. It wouldn't occur to me to favor athletes in any way; we're in my classroom for intellectual/academic purposes. I value my students as human beings, and the actions that I value all have to do with intellectual and academic growth. I know it's not that way everywhere.

[noiretextatique]

5. i used to help my future brother-in-law and other jocks in high school

i tutored them in math and english. my bil was a star football player at our high school (won the state championship 3 of the 4 years i was there) who later played at USC in the late seventies. i won't mention his name, but he played on the team with ronnie lott, charles white, anthony munoz, et al. he hurt his knee in a post season game his senior year, and his hopes of playing in the NFL were over. he and his family banked everything on him reaching the NFL, and unfortunately he wasn't prepared to do anything else. he tried security for a while (for hugh heffner) and he was offered coaching jobs, but his heart was set on playing. he died at the age of 29, after years of being clinically depressed, from untreated diabetes.

he was treated well at USC; he got all the perks a star athelete gets. i don't know if he "earned" those perks, but i do know he was no rhodes scholar. but i could have been one...if i had even half the support for my academic excellence that he got for his athletic prowess. no one ever encouraged him to do anything except play football, and when he lost that...he felt he had nothing. i wonder...if he had something else he liked or loved...would that have sustained him when football was done?

[SoCalDem]

6. It starts with peewee football..little league, ayso, etc

waaaay too many parents projecting their own dreams (mostly unfulfilled) onto their young kids (mostly boys)..

given a choice, kids might prefer to have the equipment needed and the facility without all the kvetching from parents & coaches:)...that's the happy-medium between "win at any cost" & "everybody gets a trophy"...kids like to play the game and can grasp the concept of rules & fairness without helicopter parents & coaches driving them insane with competition and lust for winning..

[Exultant Democracy]

7. It so odd. I went to a highschool where the smart kids were the jocks, musicians and actors

The smart kids were also the group of people most idolized by the high school culture, including a massive amount of special treatment by the teachers and administration. Of course we abused the shit out of it.

The smart kids were also for the most part the most popular and influential, but as I pointed out before the smart kids were the best jocks too, best musicians, artist etc... and if anything the top of the top were the kids who rocked out in school, dominated a sport and had some other type of talent, often in the arts, that they got to show off.

[CrispyQ]

9. Same in my school.

A lot of jocks on the honor roll & also involved in drama, chior, debate, etc. Not many over weight kids, either. This was all a long time ago, though. ;)

[CrispyQ]

8. A football/basketball/track jock in my high school journalism class was the sports reporter.

He missed the deadline for a couple of stories about games our teams had played, so the journalism teacher assigned them to me, rush job. Later she called me aside & said, "You write these so much more quickly than X so we're just going to have you write the sports stories." Imagine my surprise when the two stories were published with his name. When she asked me to do it again, I told her, "Not unless it's published with my name on it."

One of our coaches was a math & science teacher. His players had to do the same work the rest of us did. One day one of the jocks didn't have his chemistry lab ready & the teacher said, "When you're 35 & your knees give out, this is what you fall back on. It's just as important as basketball." That was a long time ago & players didn't make what they make today.

[LeftinOH]

10. The power of jock culture is (IMHO) also keenly felt by those who are non-jocks,

who are fully submerged in jock culture and cannot escape it until they graduate.

There are plenty of kids who are truly ambivalent about balls -the size of balls, the shape of balls, where balls should go vs. where they should not go, etc. Games are fun, but social hierarchy based on balls is not.

[JohnnyLib2]

11. Ha! You've outFreuded Freud!

Not so sure about "until they graduate" though, look at all the ball references in politics.....

:evilgrin:

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

12. Why not just have kids participate on teams outside of school?

Physical education in schools is fine, but sports teams with fight songs and their own colors take on an almost militaristic aspect. I'd prefer it if they put back music, art, and shop programs in school and did away with official team sports, the way most of the rest of the world does it.

[JoeyT]

13. While I agree with you,

if we did that they might get rid of schools in the deep south altogether.

Sports is the only reason to keep schools around according to many here. (Alabama here, not DU here.)

[redqueen]

14. +1