Homogenized America

What in the world has happened to our American game of football? Where are the tough, rough football players that I grew up watching?   Just this morning, as I was doing my typical business on the computer and listening to whatever the spouse had playing on the television in the other room...honestly, I could get by most of the time with a radio...I heard some player? coach? (not sure) that had lost a game, crying. CRYING, for pity's sake!  Give me a blanking break.

Tom Hanks said it so well in the movie about a 1940's all woman baseball team, "There is no crying in baseball" or football or sports.  Don't take me wrong. My very manly hubby, the one who played all sports from the time he was a boy, the one that was in the Marines, the one that served in the Fire Department for 30 years---that hubby has a soft and sensitive side. It is certainly something that I love about him.  Men most certainly are allowed to cry. Just like women, however, there is an appropriate time and place and reason for it.  Call me cold, I happen to think that the loss of a game, a screwed up play and national television doesn't qualify.  In competitive sports, someone wins and someone losses. That's just the fact, or at least it used to be.

There is a sickening and weak homogenizing of America and our culture,  a stupid movement to make everything even and fair, all smooth and pretty.  Nobody is to get their feelings hurt.  Even all this high drama about injuries and concussions, it's just inane.   When those football players sign on the line for their multi million dollar contracts, every single one of them knows the risk they are assuming. Football is not Ping Pong, it's a contact sport played by large, strong men. Do I think that football and any sport should have every innovation to increase the safety of the players? Of course, I do.  But, the players make a choice, just like all of us do in life, every day.

The hubby might have come home after a bad fire the night before and wept to me in private, cried for loss of life or property. He would've never complained about being burned. He made a choice to fight fires for a living.  I, like millions of women, chose to have children. Did I cry in childbirth? You bet your butt I did.  Childbirth hurts like hell and I knew it when I made my choice. I darn sure didn't wake up the next day and say, "You know, somebody needs to do something about this having baby thing. It's just dangerous and it hurts!"  

This, of course, isn't really only about sports. This is about a ridiculous effort to make everything in our society fair and easy.  An attempt by very misguided "fix the world" people to guarantee that not one person is offended, that not one person has less than another, that everything is all creamy and pure like homogenized milk.  This is not natural and it is completely destructive for the survival of America.  Humans cannot survive and thrive without challenges that test their character and build their strength.  Didn't your momma ever teach you that life is not fair? There's plenty of things in this world to just lay down and cry about---football isn't one of them.  Shake it off, suck it up, act like a man. If that is offensive, sexist, whatever, this old southern sissy girl couldn't care less.  Football, all professional sports are hard. If you don't want the big bucks and the pain, start practicing your ping pong, sweetie.