OMFG!! "Those who play sports in school go further than those who don't"

[Rabrrrrrr]

I just saw a commercial showing pictures of US presidents from their high school sports days: Reagan, Carter, Bush I, and probably some others.

And then, the end of the commercial was this line OF FUCKING BULLSHIT: "Just showing that those who play sports in school go a little bit further than those who don't."

And then to a black screen with this text: "Support school sports".

What fucking nonsense.

Certainly this is not to say that SOME who played sports have gone far - clearly, they have.

But to imply that it was sports that made these men become president, or that ALL who play sports achieve greater things than ALL who do not play sports, is abso-goddamn-lute rubbish and nonsense.

The real reason those guys achieved so much? Because they had schools that FUCKING TAUGHT THEM how to think and gave them an education.

But of course, nowadays, we don't want schools that work, we only want schools that make automatons who work just enough to get by and don't ask questions. So let's give more money to the sports programs, and ask the band and orchestra and art students to buy their own supplies or, more than likely, just cut the programs and tell 'em to go play volleyball.

I'm so pissed. :grr:

[LSK]

1. your just pissed cuz you got picked last all the time

:hide:

[matcom]

3. not for wedgie-games

he was always first :rofl:

[Deja Q]

2. ROFL. Why isn't Al Bundy on that list?

Most jocks I know of don't fare so well...

Sports are good things, but there is as much value in intellectual capital -- even if microsoft wants to spout "one click" programs that render thinking obsolete.

[The2ndWheel]

4. No, they became president

because they're willing to exploit and kill other people for the needs of the state.

[seemunkee]

5. I'll bet Bill Gates was a dynamo on the football team

And all those kids on the math and debate team are total losers.

[HughBeaumont]

6. "People love jocks."

"Athletes get all da bitches, you pencil-necked geeks. It doesn't matter that you have the capability of inventing a cure for cancer, can colonize Mars or any other lame Poindextery pocket-protector crap like that. What MATTERS is that you can hit someone hard enough on the field to cause spasms and blood vomiting. What MATTERS is that you can take a ball and put that sumbitch in a hoop. Life is one big competition, and whoever tells you any different probably needs their ass kicked! Kids who play sports beat up a lot more kids who are too fucking weak to be MEN than those who don't . . . or something."



"Life is muscle. Start building it."




"Paid for by the Republican National Convention."

[caty]

7. When I look back

at what my school mates have done, the ones who were into sports did not accomplish very much. Most of them dropped out of college. The students who were "average" were the ones who went on to become successful. I think those who were into sports got an easy pass in high school and then just couldn't make it in college.

[Rabrrrrrr]

8. So true! The only sports people who made anyhing of themselves

are the kids who were smart first, athletes second.

Every one of the celebrated UberAthletes that the community worshiped, a) failed out of college due to cocaine or other drug use, b) failed out of college because of their abject supidity (and when a college fails a full scholarship sports hero, you KNOW he's fucking dumb), c) made it through college with a lackluster, nothing sports career and have ended up taking shit, middle- or lower-management jobs or salesmen or worse, many of them back in the town we grew up in or some other backwater irrelevant shithole.

I laugh sooooo heartily every time I think about it.

:rofl:

[caty]

9. I think the smart athletes

worked so hard in high school, that they were just burned out when they got into college. And the not so smart ones just couldn't cut it in college.

[Rabrrrrrr]

11. And I don't think we had any of our smart ones

who played college sports - or at least, not that got sports scholarships.

When I think of the smart sports people in my class, I can't think of any who thought they would try a career in sports -- the sports were just a source of fun for them, and not something that they worshiped or asked to be worshiped about.

The dumb ones, though - sports were their whole world, they were gonna kill the world with their sports perfection, and the whole community had simultaneous orgasms every time one of them announced the receipt of a full-ride-or-close-to scholarship.

i think of all the money wasted on those piece of shit by both my local school system AND the colleges that gave them scholarships, out of which colleges they flunked or got kicked out, and think of all the people who WERE smart enough for college but likely didn't end up going ebcause they couldn't afford it, but they weren't poor enough for the good financial aid, or stellar enough for merit scholarships.

Out of my class of almost 500 (early '80s), I think only about 220 of us went to college. I bet a lot more could have if colleges offered scholarships for education instead of ball throwing.

I truly wonder how many of my classmates who, while they might not have excelled in college, WOULD have made incredible, honest, and honorable use of a college education, if only the money wasn't tied up in helmets, football fields, basketball stadia, and school-bought prositutes for their "gridiron heros".

[Radical Activist]

10. Yes, many of them go far in real estate and insurance.

That has been my observation.

[Rabrrrrrr]

12. Nah, they make it to the third tier, and that's about it.

They might get their own "office", but they'll never be anything other than a local salesman -- they'll not be asked to move up to middle management, or to corporate. And no way in hell will they ever make it to executive. Same with those that go into brokerage. Yeah, they might have their own brokerage office, but that's all they'll ever have, and they'll forever be passing out their business cards at the local gym when they go to work out and try get rid of the hundred pounds of beer fat they added after their trophy wife had their third child and he realized what a truly empty, vacuous, non-meaningful life of dreariness and broken hopes, hopes pushed into him since his childhood by his equally failure father, he's lived.

[Radical Activist]

16. lol

yeah, that pretty well sums it up.

[Coventina]

13. Just propaganda from the Jock-tocracy.

Believe me, none of the guys from my HS football team are headed for the presidency.

:eyes:

[philosophie_en_rose]

14. Well, everyone knows jocks are easy.

:sarcasm:

:rofl:

[Burma Jones]

15. I played High School Football, Varsity for 3 years

we were 1-9, 2-8 and 4-6

so, a lot of us were smart first...........

[Rabrrrrrr]

17. I played on the "Rat's Ass" softball team in college.

We were the team that had cigarettes brought out to us when we were on base.

I don't know that we won much, but we had fun. :-)

[hedgehog]

18. School sports need to be shaken up.

Enough with the football, basketball and baseball for the select few. Let's have more track and even new sports like Ultimate Frisbee. The gym teacher voluntarily stays after many nights to supervise on hour of Ultimate Frisbee. About 20-30 nerds and geeks show up on any given day to spend an hour racing around. It's the kind of exercise they need to prepare for hours at the key board.

[Quantess]

24. At the rate obesity is going

schools of the future are going to have "The Biggest Loser" competitions.

[Chan790]

19. Devil's advocate here

Not that I think HS sports are the end-all but competitive intermurals (whether sport, debate, math team, drill-team, band(perhaps band isn't competitive anywhere-else but here it is), JROTC, artistic competition or quiz-bowl) teach vital skills to students:

* drive
* teamwork
* sacrifice
* leadership
* strategy
* time-budgeting

Frankly, I think schools should mandate intermurals every semester. (That is, you don't have the choice to not participate.) Then again, I think education should be mandated fully-funded too to fund those programs.

[Coventina]

20. Non-competitive activities can teach all those things as well

Like drama, choir, dance, etc.

[Chan790]

23. Those are rather competitive at my alma mater too

It was prep-school with a mandated intermural policy (minimum of one intermural a year for all scholarship students) so 50-250 kids audition for every role, every spot, and every solo.

Parts of that kind of sucked honestly. I always wanted to act, for example, but the number of kids enrolled on arts/drama scholarships was greater than the number of parts available. You had to be pretty damned good and have the right motivation to be cast as tree #4.

Even if it wasn't that way, I'd argue that those are all competative...there is no adversary tougher than yourself.

[ChoralScholar]

27. Choir IS competitive.

Not only within the program, but between schools.

We compete for ratings several times per year.

[Quantess]

21. Yeah, right.

I bet Bill Gates wasn't on the football team.

OTOH, there is something to be said for physical fitness. But, I was never on any sports teams, and I've always been physically fit. I don't like sports but I do like exercise. Take that, varsity jocks.

[SteppingRazor]

22. While I don't think that athletes are necessarily more successful....

I don't see the problem with saying "support school sports." What exactly is wrong with that? :shrug:

[Rabrrrrrr]

25. Two things are wrong with it -- one thing good with it -

First, the three things wrong:

One, is in the context of the advert: which is saying that sports people are the only ones who end up "going further" in the world. It is an implicit "Support school sports or watch your children end up failures".

Two, is that school sports have more than sufficient funding already, and often to the detriment of other programs, and to the detriment of many children (that is, the sports budget benefits let's say X people (X being the number that is allowed on a team), while the same amount of money could benefit 10X or more people if spent on something that one didn't need to try out for and that didn't have a built-in limitation on participation).

Three, is that there is no concurrent advert out there asking people to support their school music programs, school drama programs, school debate teams, or anything else the school is doing. In America, only sports gets attention.

And now, the one that is right:

I don't how to say it without making it seem that sports is to be worshipped, but yes, for those who want to play sports, they should have that opportunity, just like those who want to play an instrument, be on the math team, do debating, play chess, or be involved in drama in some way.

[SteppingRazor]

29. Couple things about that...

Your first point, I wholeheartedly agree.

Point two I would say isn't necessarily true -- programs such as choir and drama also have limited capacities. And, in fact, I would argue that those limits may not be all bad -- or would you like to have a tone-deaf person in your choir?

point three, I would counter-argue with two points:
-- First, sports generally require much larger budgets than most other activities -- for example, the cost of equiping a football team is considerably more than the cost of equipping a chess team.
-- Second, there are a wide array of programs that support high school music and arts. The National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts is one that springs immediately to mind, because it was so instrumental to my own high school arts education.



Also, your original post was maybe a tiny bit over the top in condemning the ad to now turn around and say it's OK to support sports, don't you think? I mean, just a little? I agree with your first point, as I said -- the idea that athletes are somehow more successful than non-athletes in high school seems bogus to me. I guess maybe I read to much into your tone.

For the record, I played football in high school. I also did choir, school musical, school play, and Amnesty Int'l, among other stuff

[ChoralScholar]

26. Yeah... like sports in schools LACKS support?

Come on down to Harrison, Arkansas, and watch the progress on 3.3 million dollar FedEx Stadium and the 1.8 million dollar Mosco Cash Indoor Practice Facility.

[Taverner]

28. How about "let EVERY kid play school sports"?

My biggest beef with school sports is not sports itself, its the elitist "only room for the top" attitude they have.

If every kid had a chance to play, then it would be worth it.