“Raising a generation of wimps.”
Maybe, but my now deceased father-in-law suffered his whole life from a back injury he suffered playing college football. All these contact sports are fine if it’s really what the kid wants, but all too often, its “daddy” who is looking to “live vicariously” through his kid that drives youngsters to “make daddy proud” of him or her. Funny thing is, when a child is injured, daddy isn’t hurt at all physically.
He can still “live vicariously” sitting in front of his TV farting and drinking beer watching a bunch of overpaid minorities kick the $hit out of each other. Rah, rah!
My father, who played football through his military academy days and into his time in the Marine Corp suffered back pain forever, and had a complete set of false front teeth early one. I don’t think he would have traded it, but...
My nephew in 10th grade suffered a head injury playing football which put him out of school for a year.
There are a lot of instances of wussification, but I don’t know what to say about that.
I love hearing some of the respondent's opinions of manhood while most of them have carefully avoiding risk to themselves.
Having played and coached youth sports in the past, I can say with some credibility that Pop Warner football, Little League baseball, etc. are doing a lot more harm than good. The exposure to physical injuries is only a very small part of the problem.
Years ago I had two sons who were into little league baseball. At one of my elder son’s games I was sitting in the bleachers when it was announced an umpire was needed. The crowd looked at me and I took the task. It wasn’t long into the game when I started getting remarks from the crowd/parents. One lady got especially nasty in her remarks. After one remark I took off the mask ,put it on home plate, and just walked away. After that I didn’t do much to keep my sons interested in little league though I believe the older son had a real talent for baseball.
You sum up the sports wacko dad pretty well.
Another thing about types like that are the guys who call in to the local sports dribble show that I make it a point to change the channel when it comes on that seem to almost worship high school kid football players.
It is sad and kind of scary how these older guys can drone on and on about some HS junior at a school that most people have never heard of.
Back injuries are difficult to cope with. I've long had a suspicion that many back injuries are congenital in nature with some risk factors detectable via xray/mri/ctscan.
All these contact sports are fine if it’s really what the kid wants, but all too often, its “daddy” who is looking to “live vicariously” through his kid that drives youngsters to “make daddy proud” of him or her. Funny thing is, when a child is injured, daddy isn’t hurt at all physically.
That's always a problem. If a boy really takes to football, there are many positive things to be said about a parent then getting involved. I agree that it is never a good thing for a parent to push the kid into things the parent wishes they could have done when they were young.