Violent (US) football players

[Latimer]

New footage from Michigan-Michigan State brawl surfaces

New video footage has surfaced from Saturday's Michigan-Michigan State brawl, showing a Wolverines player being hit with a Spartan player's helmet during the post-game melee.

www.dailymail.co.uk

As many of you will have no doubt heard, a group of Michigan State football players savagely beat two Michigan football players in a stadium tunnel after having lost the game. This brings to mind a number of off-the field violent incidents over the years, at both the university and professional level, in which football players are involved--involved to a degree that surpasses player violence in any other sport. This never used to happen in American football, and certainly never happened at the university I attended.

I know we're talking about only a small percentage of players, but--even then--what has changed? The players? The culture? The drugs? Or is it that this always has gone on, but news of the violence has previously been suppressed?

 

[rareboy]

I think there have always been brawls...but all in all they are still rare.

It is fundamentally a violent sport and all about hopped testosterone and adrenalin.

Hockey has probably had worse and more over the years.

 

[Charon]

If Cormac were around, he'd say something about American football being for sissies since they wear padding.

I have a thing for bloodhungry men who love to fight, be it a street fight, MMA, whatever. There was this one Dan Severn-esque dude at a local gym/training facility who I loved to watch (luststruck eyes and all) as he'd beat the other guy black and blue.

 

[belamyi]

To think that women and their wombs always got all the bad reputation for being unstable, wacky and unaccountable.

 

[Peloso]

Most men are overgrown babies.

 

[rareboy]

Most men are overgrown babies.

But we wouldn't spank babies.

Wheras I feel like bitch slapping these hyper steroidal man-children to next Tuesday.

 

[cityboy-stl]

Football is nothing but war games. Why are people so surprised when players do what they're trained for?

 

[belamyi]

^ To Ukraine with them, then.

 

[NotHardUp1]

I'm not so convinced the incidents have increased, although it would be hard to tell since the news would have been managed as much as possible when universities were involved.

In full disclosure, I've never watched a football game in my life, not any in high school when I played in the band, and not any in college I attended socially. Football has always been a silly glory ritual to me, a lionizing of anyone even remotely associated with a hero, even if the hero didn't win.