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.