The Atlantic - Latest Comments in Pimpology

Re: Pimpology

kellyinaustin — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:38:25 -0000

Thanks for this discussion TNC..I on't know what to think. But I do know that all the boys I knew growing up in ATL played football, and I don't want any more of those boys to damage themselves in this way playing a game. They should at least have full knowledge of the risks involved.

I think of all those parents pushing their pee wees (1st graders playing tackle football) had to watch a documentary on the subject before signing the kids up, less kids would get "signed-up".

Where is the free will when you are 6?

In some communities it is football or nothing.

Re: Pimpology

Neil — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:15:58 -0000

Maybe I've been reading you too much, TNC, but this whole post just reminded me of white populism.

Well, first it made me think the Republican Party (how, often, Republican voters vote in direct opposition to their own self interest) and that led me to white populism.

It seems to me that in certain poor, white areas of the country white populism is practically bred into children. I remember being in high school and not being gay myself, simply being a member of the gsa got me tagged a faggot. And I would think that in some areas that works racially as well. Where if you don't subscribe to white populism you are in many ways ostracized. It is just easy to sit there while your father listens to rush limbaugh and not think anything is wrong when he says that AIDS in africa is a scam. People are conditioned that it is their enemies who are more important than what is best for their situation.

Their enemies being the evil liberals who want government to control them by taking away their guns and giving out reparations through health care.

This comment may be a little sloppy as I'm still working it all out in my head. But this is just what occurred to me while reading the post. I hope it's not condescending. It feels like it might be.

Re: Pimpology

Michael E. Sullivan — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:52:45 -0000

Somebody who works for me had her nephew try out for football. Don't know exactly what kind, but he's 11. Coach didn't let them have water except at specific times and controlled how much. Not allowed to bring your own water or gatorade, etc.

He was having issues, showed symptoms of dehydration and finally quite the team. But hearing that story, I wanted to get that coach removed (or beat him down, maybe both), as did my (west point grad) father who was no stranger to brutal physical practice in ranger school. The kids are 11 and playing football, what possible justification is there to control their water and risk dehydration and heat stroke? Are they going to be in a football game somewhere where they don't have access to water? Not unless their coach in that game is a control freak sadist who arbitrarily bars it.

What's going on with these guys is a tribal hazing thing. They dealt with it when they were teenagers in the 50s/60s/70s, and by god now the kids are going to deal with it. Questioning the wisdom of their training is questioning the wisdom of their old coaches which is a little like sacrilege -- even if part of them hated the old bastards.

Re: Pimpology

Devon — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:55:12 -0000

I missed that article, but it's worth noting that a couple of studies on the West coast estimated the average age of entry into prostitution as 14 or younger, and that better than 90% of those in one study reported both physical and sexual abuse prior to leaving home. I worked for a feminist group that helped women get out of the sex industry back in the 1990s, and the free will question came up with great frequency and vehemence around that work. For my part, I don't know what the free will distinction really means: all choices are constrained by some set of internal and external factors, and if you're lucky enough that those constraints don't chafe you, it looks something like absolute freedom. But the poles aren't real - no choice is entirely free, none entirely forced.

Re: Pimpology

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:46:02 -0000

Yeah, I didn't want an apology--even if I hate it.

Re: Pimpology

sv — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:54:06 -0000

you apologize so much ellaesther! personally i'm glad you bring up these points and speak your mind.

Re: Pimpology

Polywogy — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:05:06 -0000

Actually, to be clear, my argument was that there is no proof either way.

Observationally, people do things that are not predictable based on any amount of observation of their previous state. This could be due to chaotic systems, unknown initial conditions or unknown laws, but it could also be because people have free will.

Philosophically, I am not convinced by the 5 points above. Some people may be, like some people are convinced that Descartes proved God. I am convinced by Descartes' argument that I exist, but his argument for God is not convincing to me.

Thus, since I have not been convinced philosophically that free will is impossible, and seeing observationally that there is evidence for non-deterministic decisions, I argue that it comes down to opinion.

Re: Pimpology

Amitav — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:31:23 -0000

I was thinking about it a little differently-- kids love games at a young age for a variety of reasons. I agree that when a kid is 15 he generally has no idea if he's pro material-- but he does know that he's better than many of the guys he plays with, so if he's thinking about college (even JC or walking on at a small school), at some point he probably starts to focus on one sport more than others (obviously there are exceptions-- but a lot of kids make trade-offs like going to football camps instead of playing AAU summer ball, or leaving the track program to focus on off-season football training, etc.)

Now obviously there are guys who just love one sport to the exclusion of all others from a a very young age-- and probably that's even more the case in basketball and baseball, since those guys seem to start specializing earlier and earlier.

But it seems to me that for a lot of reasons, few athletes are going to focus on track instead of football, or soccer instead of baseball, if they have a chance at playing one of the "big 3" money sports at the college level. Maybe because they like the money sports better, or maybe because they're pushed by family or coaches or schools, or maybe because they think they have a better shot at playing at the next level (especially when choosing among "money" sports, e.g., a guy goes to School A where he can play baseball as a freshman, rather than to School B where he'll redshirt in football), or maybe because the "money" sports have more scholarships or walk-on spots and better recruiting programs that identify prospects earlier and steer them better.

Probably it's a combination of all those factors that varies by person, but I think it ties a little into the free will vs. conditioning question TNC posed. If a guy could play college football or college soccer, and he chooses football, is it because he intrinsically enjoys football more, or could it also be partly external-- football is more popular than soccer, which means more push from outside forces (coaches, parents, friends, recruiters), and also more potential to make money? (And the popularity and money reinforce each other-- more popularity means more money means more air time means more popularity, reaching all the way down to youth leagues).

Even if the athlete has no pro prospects, I can see how the way the system is set up would steer them to focus on the "money" sport where they have the most potential to play the most.

I don't know if I'm making sense. But thanks for your earlier thoughts anyway.

(I'm not touching the "which league has better athletes" debate. Are there any guys left in the NBA who played high school varsity football anymore? Seems like they have to start specializing in basketball when they're 6 years old....)

Re: Pimpology

LonBecker — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:08:42 -0000

It is more likely that he or she had a philosophy professor who thought this was a good way to kick off the debate on free will. You can get the two main views of free will by challenging the premises 1 and 4 and you can see the counterintuitive nature of the two views.

A philosophy professor who ended the discussion there would deserve to be criticized. But one who began the discussion there is not doing too badly.

Re: Pimpology

LonBecker — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:05:51 -0000

While from a philosophic point of view there are problems with the notion of free will. From a more every day persepective we have a sense of what kinds of cases we should count as free. And there are real differences between the child prostitution case and the football case.

What makes the prostitution case work is that pimps prey on girls who do not have a family or outside support system. That allows the pimp to effectively control the inputs to the victim who is both young and has no one to turn to. It is central to the process that the pimp prevents the child prostitute from having outside relationships that could offer a different perspective. In fact there is usually a grouping of people so that the message is reinforced.

The football conditioning may start young. But in all but rare cases the coaches simply do not have the kind of control over the players that could reasonably count as threatening to free will. (There might be cases in which the parents work with the high school coach or the parent is the coach). And then the player passes on to new people who might have similar views but lack the continuity. So in general the intuition that free will makes the difference seems right.

Re: Pimpology

Pesto — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:07:57 -0000

Yeah, I was wrong to say that so absolutely, as if the violence inevitably destroys players' lives. What I should have said, in retrospect, is that it's a kind of violence that runs a substantial risk of destroying players' lives, even at a distance of 20 or 30 years. At least since people started studying it recently, that's what the evidence seems to indicate.

Which, to get back to the original issue, raises questions like: how dangerous is it, really? how much do players know about those dangers (different at each level of play?)? and, to what extent can players act on that knowledge?

Even if you fall on the "free will" side of things, I think there's got to be a whole lot more information available and genuine freedom to decide.

It'll be sad if Steve Young ends up suffering from dementia, locking himself in a dark room, a decade or so from now. I loved watching him play (fighting for yardage after his helmet came off! in a preseason game!), and for now he's perfectly lucid despite all his concussions. But if he ends up like Andre Waters or Mike Webster in a few years, will it all have been worth it?

Re: Pimpology

hilzoy — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:48:51 -0000

"1. All events have a cause.

2. Human actions are events.

3. Human actions have a cause.

4. All events with a cause are unfree.

5. Human actions are unfree."

Wow: you had a philosophy professor who had never heard of compatibilism? How peculiar.

Re: Pimpology

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:33:45 -0000

I'm not doing that, Ta-Nehisi. If you can find the part of my comments upthread that say, "TNC, your love for football boils down to this one thing..." then quote it to me. What I actually said was (a) I couldn't quote you directly and I wasn't going to put words in your mouth; and (b) to the extent that a fan admires a hit like Lott's on Woods, to that extent "that fan's appreciation of football is bound up in the kind of violence that maims players permanently and destroys their lives."

Fair enough. I'd only add that's it's bound up in a lot of other things, also. And that it just strikes me as really judgmental to say that football destroys the lives of players. I think you could marshal a number of NFL cats who would say it saved them.

Re: Pimpology

CitizenE — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:21:36 -0000

I did not think your post and point was rude, rather heartfelt, though I can certainly understand how some might find it dismissive; I don't feel owed an apology, nor feel ignored, and I think it provoked a whole variety of responses that are worthy of your reflection, though I understand that all that oppositional response, its adamance, might be--how to put this--hurtful because of your risking an opinion that you would not even feel safe to risk in your own household.

Don't like football do ya? All that macho posturing and aggressive testosterone wigging out in the living room, eh? George Carlin's all time funniest routine discussed the difference between baseball and football, just in its imagery, and in a lighter fashion made some of the same points.

My response to you was not to win an argument, nor dismiss your concern, but to try to clarify in a way that would be helpful to you in understanding why others get football, why so many men, who are quite serious about the same issues with which you are concerned, get it, so that it would not be such an alienating issue.

But I do, because I don't understand your confusion about my analogy vis a vis ballet dancers, wish to extend a clarification: as a father of a daughter who early in life was interested in ballet and having at that time read books by ballet dancers in which they wrote quite movingly about the kind of physical torture they had endured and what extremes of punishment their choreographers demanded from them in order to present a fairy tale view of femininity, I found it to be an apt analogy and did not mean it to be flippant nor dismissive nor tangential.

Of course my daughter got such a charge out of it--those girly costumes and showing off her natural gracefulness--(and was quite fickle in her passions at the time), so I gave her nothing but encouragement. The next year she was running circles around the boys on the soccer field.

Re: Pimpology

sgwhiteinfla — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:20:11 -0000

Welcome. Just hate I came in so late to the thread.

Re: Pimpology

sgwhiteinfla — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:16:39 -0000

I can only speak for me and my experiences. I don't think most kids start off even thinking the NFL or even college is in the realm of possibility when they first start playing the game. They watch it on TV and they have their heros and they want to be the next so and so but not in their wildest imaginations is going pro possible. But they play, maybe because they like it, maybe because their parents want them to but for whatever reason they play. And as time goes on they get better and their body usually gets bigger and so it goes. But you have to think about how many guys get to the NFL after having gone to junior colleges or no name programs that draw less than some high school games in Texas. Most cats at Troy State don't necessarily think when they go there that the NFL is the likely next destination but both DeMarcus Ware and Osi Umenura played there. Most guys just want to play maybe until their junior or senior year and then they might actually be able to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Now don't get me wrong, there are some guys that seem like they are predestined for greatness. Say for instance Maurice Clarett. Everybody just assumed even when that kid was in high school that he would be an NFL guy some day. But the overwhelming majority of NFL guys didn't come up with that kind of shine behind them. They just loved the game, loved hitting people, loved hearing the roar of the crowd.

Now one thing about when people say NFL guys would play basketball if they had the chance, a lot of that is just about hubris because of the kind of outstanding athletes that are in the NFL. I have said many times that the caliber of athlete in the NFL blows the NBA away by far. I mean it isn't even close. NFL guys are on average, bigger, stronger, faster, quicker and can jump higher. But height is usually the factor. But that doesn't mean those guys would just have automatically ended up in the NBA. As athletic as many of them are, most of them couldn't hit a fat bear in the ass with basketball let alone a three pointer. So I am not sure that when people make that statement that it means what you think it does.

Re: Pimpology

Pesto — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:06:06 -0000

Rereading your comment Pesto, the simple answer is that you can't take one post--out of the many I've written about football--and use that to explain why I love it. Th doesn't strike me as fair.

I'm not doing that, Ta-Nehisi. If you can find the part of my comments upthread that say, "TNC, your love for football boils down to this one thing..." then quote it to me. What I actually said was (a) I couldn't quote you directly and I wasn't going to put words in your mouth; and (b) to the extent that a fan admires a hit like Lott's on Woods, to that extent "that fan's appreciation of football is bound up in the kind of violence that maims players permanently and destroys their lives."

I worded that very carefully. I'm not saying that appreciating Lott's hitting ability means that a fan wants players to be maimed or injured. And I'm not saying that appreciating that aspect of the game means that a fan doesn't also appreciate strategy, or the balletic athleticism of a wideout, or the quick decision-making and precision of a great QB. Hell, as I said, I've watched and enjoyed quite a lot of football myself. That doesn't mean my fandom is the same as yours, but it does mean that I "get" what's fun to watch about football.

I don't think any fan enjoys watching Tim Krumrie or Joe Thiesmann getting his leg snapped in two, or seeing Napoleon McCallum's leg get twisted into two pieces. I do, however, think that a lot of fans (myself included, to be honest) enjoy watching big hitters like Lott when they flatten guys. Maybe part of the enjoyment has been the assumption, in the backs of our minds, that NFL players are such amazing athletes that they aren't suffering really serious damage from those hits. But the evidence seems to indicate pretty strongly now that it's not just the Tatum/Stingley hits that destroy guys' lives.

In your piece introducing the Lott video, that you link above, you give a different perspective:

"He hit like he had nothing in the world to lose. I know a lot of pro players have paid for that mentality, and I guess that's why its kinda bitter. At the same time, there is something deeply spiritual about watching this dude continuously sacrifice his body."

The problem, I think, is that guys are sacrificing their minds and their sanity as well. That seems like a bigger price to pay than ripped up knees or bad backs, especially if they don't realize that they'll be paying that price when they deliver or receive those hits.

So, what I'm saying is that the appreciation of those kinds of hits, and the players who deliver them, is bound up in a really serious kind of violence -- a violence whose severity hasn't been recognized until recently, but seems to be very real and very, very dangerous. And that, to the extent that one's appreciation of the game is based on that kind of hitting, one's appreciation is, in fact, based on, in the end, pretty serious violence.

Is that 10% of a fan's appreciation? 25%? 50%? That's not for me to say. I don't even know how I'd say it about my own appreciation for football. But my gut feeling about my own watching of football is that it's like junk food to me: tasty and appealing, but especially if I have too much of it, it makes me feel kinda gross and it's bad for me.

Re: Pimpology

CitizenE — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:42:30 -0000

Thanks sg; I always like reading your commentary; and it seems more than appropriate that you chimed in here.

Re: Pimpology

ellaesther — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:34:24 -0000

Apology ABOVE, apparently.

Re: Pimpology

ellaesther — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:31:47 -0000

@ all who responded - first of all, please note my apology to TNC below -- I am sincerely sorry to have brought this up, because it was, plain and simple, rude of me.

I will only say, to those who brought different sports (or professions) into the argument, that I was talking about something that I see as being very specific to football. That's what I see, but I am very clear that I'm in a tiny minority in seeing it. I can't get into how I don't see this as analogous to ballet, or golf for that matter (golfers were mentioned), without re-stating the very argument that I have just admitted was rude of me to make. So I won't reply to the various replies, but please understand that this is not me ignoring you -- it is rather an effort to bow out of the conversation as gracefully and respectfully as I can.

Re: Pimpology

ellaesther — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:25:31 -0000

I apologize (quite genuinely) for bringing it up. I realize that, given the comparisons to dogfighting and prostitution, it felt like a reasonable thing to say here, but in retrospect, I can see that a community in which the game is so highly valued was not the place. I wouldn't crash your Super Bowl party to deliver this screed, not even if you were involved in a serious discussion of your own concerns about the game -- but being online can make it easy to forget that however cyber the social setting, it's still a social setting. I overstepped, and that was rude of me. I apologize.

Re: Pimpology

Persia — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:36:28 -0000

Gymnastics and jockeying (is that the word) also have endemic eating disorders, which can lead to another ton of health problems, while we're on it. I can't even watch gymnastics competitions any more-- they depress me too much.

Re: Pimpology

Amitav — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:01:11 -0000

Really insightful comments and great point about ballet dancers. Surely gymnasts, divers, and other child athletes fall in this category.

I love your second to last paragraph.

On your last point-- I can't follow sports news (or even really watch any sports on a "must-see" basis) anymore because it's often about minutiae (contracts, personal disputes, "storylines") that are so far removed from what we loved as kids-- the pursuit of an objective measure of excellence, and the pure fun of running around and being alive.

Re: Pimpology

sv — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:52:28 -0000

This

Re: Pimpology

Amitav — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:49:43 -0000

I definitely agree with you about how the dynamics change as players grow up. That's why I said before, I just don't think it makes sense for boys to play tackle (as opposed to flag) ball before junior high or possibly high school, even (maybe especially) if they are college prospects. And I don't think pro players are being pimped, though in college it might be a better analogy.

But about nothing really being rational, I wonder about something. I have heard guys say that most players in the NFL would play in the NBA if they could-- either they have the wrong body or didn't develop basketball skills early, but whenever the decision came, football was the best option for them to make it to the next level (HS or college). If that's true, I'd say that guys who go pro basically want to be pro athletes at an early age (as opposed to specifically being football players), and football is their best option-- so high school guys do what it takes to get to college, and college guys get what it takes to go pro, and bubble guys do what it takes to make the regular roster, etc. Basically every guy on an NFL roster was a star in some other high school sport. If the economics and availability weren't there, wouldn't a lot of those guys be playing baseball, or boxing, or playing soccer or something? I agree that the game itself is irrational at some level-- but isn't the _decision_ to play the game pretty rational, given the other choices at hand and the potential payoffs?