If you don't like sports, you're gay!

[radicalliberal]

18. Thank you very much for posting and sharing your background with us!

Your story is so compelling that I'm almost at a loss for words. Thank you so much for giving a human face to high-school football, which is something that propaganda mill known as the sports media refuses to do. I appreciate hearing stories such as yours because I'm able to relate to them. When I was in high school, the football players were to me like aliens from another planet. I felt that I had nothing in common with them and that they didn't have anything in common with me. (And, by the way, I did not feel superior to them. I felt inferior to them. Even the jerks.) With the exception of one (a nice guy) who was the son of one of my dad's business partners, I was apprehensive about them.

I don't know if you also read my first long post in this topic. I'll try to avoid repeating myself, but I may not be able to avoid doing that.

Your high-school experience reminds me of a similar experience of a childhood friend of mine who played football at his high school. When he had made the football team, he seemed to discard me as a friend because I wasn't a part of the football crowd. (Not that I ever said anything critical about football. I just wasn't enthused about it.) But several years later he told me that one of his coaches had taught him how to inflict pain upon other players. He actually ended up enjoying the inflicting of pain. But after he had graduated from high school, his conscience finally caught up with him; and he wrestled with feelings of guilt for several years before he finally got over it. He still loved football, but he hated that coach.

That reminds me of an incident that was recently related to me by a close friend who played football at the university where he earned his degree in sociology. He told me that one of his high-school coaches had been a sadist. The coach harassed and bullied him for I don't know how many days. Finally, my friend snapped and punched the coach in the nose, not knowing that the coach had a strong background in boxing. The coach beat my friend so he could watch him suffer in pain.

Like I said, the sports media does not present the human side of athletes, unless it helps them make money. I have a sister who attended a college in Colorado, which had a hockey team as well as a football team. She wasn't a sports fan, but she did get to know several of the hockey players who were in some of her classes. She was familiar with physical pain from the standpoint of her health; so, she was able to relate to them because of their physical injuries. Years later she told me that several had gone into one rough contact sport or another as a form of protection from an abusive family member.

You mention guys wanting to fight you because of your size. I know you'll be able to relate to this: One of the athletes at my sister's college whom I just mentioned (who was also a football player) was also a pacifist. He was aggressive in his games, but was a pacifist the rest of the time. As a result of horrendous psychological abuse during his childhood, he had developed a problem with anger arising from the deep hurt he had experienced. So, he adopted a pacifist mindset to control his anger. Don't know if it was philosophical or religious. When word got out about his pacifist convictions, smaller guys tried to provoke him into fighting so he would betray his ideals -- which, of course, was despicable on their part. He never gave in to them. He never hit back. My sister was amazed to see smaller men, in effect, try to bully a big guy. I wish I had had the opportunity to meet the guy. He would have been a radical departure from many of the characters in my school district.

I was in a really bad mood before I read your post. I am struggling with my bodybuilding program because I suffer from chronic sleep disorder and I have diabetes (type II, thankfully), which means that I can't eat as many carbs as other guys. (Here I'm trying to avoid repeating what I wrote in my first long post.) I have been afflicted with low body self-image to a severe degree for decades. I wish I had dispelled myself of the false notion that health clubs are the exclusive property of athletes, which definitely is not true, so I would have joined one when I was younger. So, I get frustrated at times. Good sleep is essential to bodybuilding, as you undoubtedly know. By following certain directives from a pulmonologist, I hope I'll be able to overcome my chronic sleep disorder in time. I have been making progress, but it's been quite slow. At the age of 63, I've never been this muscular in my life! I've gone from scrawny to medium build. I have the chest of a young man now. I never got that out of P.E.!

There is a book on coaching that I think you would enjoy reading -- InSideOut COACHING: How Sports Can Transform Lives written by Joe Ehrmann. Don't be put off by the subtitle. Joe is a former NFL player who emphatically rejects machismo. He advocates an innovative, humane coaching philosophy he calls transformational coaching. You might be amazed or even feel vindicated. I assume it's available in book stores. I ordered my copy from his website, to which I've provided a link below:

http://www.coachforamerica.com/

I must confess that I haven't actually read it all the way through. That's not because there's anything wrong with the book. That means there's something wrong with me. I have too much personal emotional pain associated with football, one of which is low body self-image. It's not the only book I can't read for that reason. I also couldn't read Our Guys by Bernard Lefkowitz (which exposes the Glen Ridge scandal) without having insomnia for a month because of the injustice involved. Two psychologists recently published a book for the parents of nonathletic boys on how to help them deal with the sports culture. I'm sure if I read that one, I'd start bawling. Don't want that. Of course, I'd still recommend that book to the parents of those kids.

Isn't it funny? I'm not a sports fan, I don't even know how the game of football is played, yet I've recommended a book on coaching!

Again, thank you very much for sharing your background with us. Like I said, I was in an angry mood before I read your post. You have helped me to feel better by reminding me that I can relate to guys who have athletic backgrounds.