Defending Torture, Sickly

OVER THE PAST FIFTY YEARS, the University of Maryland football program has only infrequently been successful, a big university in a conference of big football football programs. it may be that administrative pressure to gain some measure of success has driven the shocking abuse of football players recently exposed. The sickness within the program is cultural, and even widespread among football programs across freedom's land, but it is not incidental. In June, a Maryland football player dropped dead of heat exhaustion, having shown all the symptoms, but having been neglected, deprived of the necessary treatment which could have saved him. This is now well known, well documented. Another player, overweight, was forced to cram candy bars down his throat until he vomited, in front of the team. surely that taught him a lesson. Humiliation of players became part of the culture. Gone, or so we thought, are the days when high school and college players, were deprived of water to toughen them, when coaches slapped players silly on helmets on human heads. But not at the University of Maryland, an excellent school academically, but gone far astray of decency footballistically. In a winner take all culture, the team has won little, and over the past few years, since joining the prestigious Big Ten conference, the coaching and training staff has humiliated and tortured athletes, and has killed one of them, in a desperate attempt to kick start success. The president of the university has acknowledged all this, and accepted institutional responsibility for it. presumably the entire coaching staff will be dismissed - the head trainer all has been - and the family of the dead young offensive lineman will receive millions of dollars in compensatory damages. The most remarkably insane aspect of all this is the shockingly large number of vicarious violence addicts, football fans, who are showing support for the coaching staff and their brutality. Gotta be tough in this man's world, and all that tripe. Make the team win by making it miserable, and hopeful that by surviving the young men might be spared further misery.if american society were a horse, it would be shot. We elected a reprobate president, and we find support for a torture chamber college football program. We are bad asses, if a bit psychotic. You can bet your bottom dollar those that the idiots who support Maryland's football coach are the ones who elected the great prevaricator to the presidency.