Nutty skipped and skimmed me.

No! The yes was an answer to your question, "Is this tu quoque?". I just... have deep issues with nested quotations.

I read a memoir of the team doctor for the Raiders, back in the late-80s (Lyle Alzado period) and it was... like, HOW can that not be illegal?? Falsified medical reports, obvious doping, violent disregard for long-term health, neglect, stupidity, and Lyle Alzado to top it all off.

It's really disheartening to realize how easily money overcomes things like scruples, forethought, and laws. In people who stand to profit without losing anything, but also in the people who stand to lose their future earnings potential, health, mental health, and lives. It's kind of staggering.

Are football players pre-disposed to violence?

Well... they're better at it. They can cheerfully take and give hits that would flatten other people. There is the fact that when everyone around you gets whipped up you do too much more quickly -- and they do that all the time. And what steroids do to peoples moods and self-control (along with making you bigger and stronger) certainly ad to the mix. Then toss in all the "rich/athletic/etc. people get cut breaks when the fuck up" factor (hey, we'd all LIKE to lose our shit sometimes...). It's not nothing.

I think the NFL needs to not merely not encourage, but activel DIScourage thuggish behavior. I hate to sound like a fifty year old film strip, but there is something to be said for actively embracing the gentlman athlete and sportsmanship and, well, chivalry.

But see...I thought that was the whole idea. Or perhaps I've watched too many feel-good sportsflicks where the ethic includes some sort of nobility and honor while you 'crush the fuckers.'

Yeah. S'not actually like that at all.

I can't agree because I think modern recruitment is far more commerce oriented than political in nature these days. Who is the biggest, meanest mofo we can get who will kill the other guys, make the fans love him and who can multitask enough to run, catch and WIN. I don't think it matters what color he is, long as the job gets done and the pockets are lined.

The NFL has the draft though, which is different than straight out recruiting, and if you have a lower number, or have traded numbers, you're looking to fill in skills gaps and for players who have potential to grow.

It takes some incredibly disciplined leadership to take the kind of environment soaked in money/fame/entitlement/violence to stop that kind of crap, and that's difficult for some coaches when if they're too authoritative-they're fired for rubbing the owner the wrong way (Yep, Jerry, I'm looking at you) or pissing off too many "star players."

Yes. This.

DJ, it cuts a little close to racism for me, too. I think it's a broader problem than that--the one of entitlement, money and fame.

I got the sense from the expose that I saw that dogfighting is more prevalent in the South. All the video footage and people they interviewed who were involved in it were white, so I assumed they were trying very hard to steer clear of any issue of racism in the piece.

What I can tell you from having two hillbilly uncles that raised chickens for cockfighting is that there is not a racial component in it. Just poverty, violence and stupidity.

I haven't heard much dogfighting down here. In Louisiana, I think they were probably much to useful to be wasted on fighting, and in Texas we have/had cockfighting.

Um, I can bring some sports-related outrage that has nothing to do with anything violent or unethical....

Come ON, Mariners, what is WRONG with you? Especially you, Miguel Batista, whom I'd previously considered among the more reliable of our pitchers not named Felix Hernandez! Giving up a grand slam in the first INNING?! Do the words "pennant race" and "Damn Yankees breathing down our necks for the wild card" have no MEANING to you?

I mean, geez. Remember that your team is playing early halfway across the country, turn on gamecast and discover you're down 5-0 already?! In the FIRST?! Come on, Mariners! You want to be contenders, start PLAYING like it already.

(Ouch. Just checked gamecast again and it's 7-0. Oh, the pain...)

The NFL has the draft though, which is different than straight out recruiting, and if you have a lower number, or have traded numbers, you're looking to fill in skills gaps and for players who have potential to grow.

I'm so disconnected from the business of football that I wasn't even thinking about the draft. That's a good point...but given the jockeying and predictions I hear about that contribute to the 'science' of the draft, how does that make the charge of prevalent thuggish behavior closer to racism?

I'm sincerely not trying to be inflammatory. Not in the least. I'm just curious because the engineering of the draft makes it seem no more random than straight recruiting to me...admittedly someone who knows next to nothing about it.

Come ON, Mariners, what is WRONG with you? Especially you, Miguel Batista, whom I'd previously considered among the more reliable of our pitchers not named Felix Hernandez! Giving up a grand slam in the first INNING?! Do the words "pennant race" and "Damn Yankees breathing down our necks for the wild card" have no MEANING to you?

I imagine this will be me come next month. BTW. WHY does our first game have to be against the Colts? Does that seem right to you?

Also, I hope it's clear, I don't mean to defend that kind of behavior in the NFL-or anywhere-at all. I just didn't like that last statement. I'd also like to point out that there are also some really cool cats in the NFL who really do try to make their adopted homes a better place.

The draft pulls from a specific group of people, right? Those people are recruited. If not into the pros at least into college ball. Are the people who are doing nefarious things in the pros people who were squeaky clean in high school? Or are they repeating past behaviors only writ large due to more money?

I think the NFL needs to not merely not encourage, but activel DIScourage thuggish behavior. I hate to sound like a fifty year old film strip, but there is something to be said for actively embracing the gentlman athlete and sportsmanship and, well, chivalry.

I've sometimes tried to look at football players vs. hockey players. Hockey is also a contact sport fraught with violent behavior (even encouraged on the ice). But the violence is (usually) controlled and allowed to play out during the sport, Marty McSorley notwithstanding.

Using anecdotal evidence, I see more NFL players misbehaving off the field than I see hockey players misbehaving off the ice.

Is the fighting that is accepted in hockey a good way to get that agression out without watching it play out outside of the arena?