Collegiate Caber Tossing?

I used to enjoy watching (gridiron) football. I became addicted in grad school at Syracuse. I am still disappointed that their current season is now 1-2. Crushed yesterday, no surprise, by Clemson.

But it is past time to note the anomaly: centres of higher learning promoting their students playing a sport now known to regularly cause brain damage. Varsity football coaches are commonly paid more than the college president.

It is odd that this is not a scandal.

I understand its attraction as a collegiate sport: the role strategy plays in the game.

But surely, on the same grounds, the better idea would be to make it a competition among robots designed by the student bodies.  Robot soccer is already a thing.

I understand the argument for “a sound mind in a sound body.” Yet football does not offer this. Aside from the possibility of damaging both body and mind, it does not promote balanced physical development. Football players specialize. A lineman, for example, benefits from being seriously overweight. A running back from having a low centre of gravity—from being short.

This also, I think, makes basketball dubious. Height is too important. Overall health is not the principle factor.

Baseball is my personal favourite; but lacks the attraction of coordinated teamwork and strategy. Perhaps for that reason, it has always been a working man’s sport, not a collegiate one. Same with hockey or lacrosse—which are also dangerous.

You know what might be best? Volleyball.

It is a big ticket on Filipino campuses already; suggesting it can have wide popular appeal. And it is just as popular with women as with men.

NCAA, Paterno, and Penn State

Paterno statue at Penn State: now reported missing in action.

The NCAA, in imposing their recent sanctions on Penn State, are giving us a textbook example of hypocrisy.

This is a scapegoating of Paterno,who never was and could probably not have been convicted of any wrongdoing, but who now cannot defend himself. And it is a sacrifice of the interests of thousands of students, athletes, and employees of Penn State who had nothing to do with pedophilia.

The worst thing is deleting from the official record all of Penn State's wins going back to 1989. Besides punishing the innocent, this is a deliberate falsification of history. And the wins, of course, had nothing to do with pedophilia or the coverup of pedophilia. What does this say to young people, to college students everywhere? 1. That it is okay to lie. 2. That there is no point in trying hard; someone else can just come along and erase everything on you later.

It seems to me as heinous in itself as, and very similar in nature to, Jerry Sandusky's original transgression.