Time Magazine Cover Story: Is Football Worth It?

Not willing to blast him based on one newspaper accounting. Article did say that
school would be providing grief counselors.

Looking at picture of school from article surprised to see snow on ground. Wonder if that was a contributing factor.

 

I don't see anything wrong with how the coach handled it.

I read the last sentence as the reporter talked to the coach as he was leaving the hospital, not that he left immediately after finding out his player had died.

 

Yeah, maybe he then became the consoler-in-chief, but that's not the impression I got from the article.

Even before the news that the player had died, I would expect him to be with his team, not alone in a corner.

 

Here's my issue with a lot of the problems related to football:

We don't play these games to find out if Springfield's 16-year-olds are better football players than Shelbyville's do we? High schools and colleges should be sponsoring athletics because their is an educational component to them.

I love team sports, and felt like they were valuable to me growing up.

But from Penn State, to Notre Dame, to Michigan, to this high school, it turns out that the "leaders" of these young men put a much greater importance on winning games, and covering their own asses than on leading, teaching, and mentoring young men.

What lessons are the players learning?

And, if we have all of these health risks, why are educational institutes still sponsoring football programs?

 

A few sentences later:

"The coach was among 60 friends, relatives and teammates who spent hours at the hospital waiting for news of Cutinella's condition."

There's still no doubt the original sentence was poorly worded, but it looks like a reporter issue, not a coach issue.

 

Agreed. It is unclear what he did after that moment described in the article, but that doesn't mean we should assume he did not console or speak with his players.

 

Money, power, and influence, in no particular order, and that starts with the University Presidents and trickles down from there. Like I have to tell a bunch of sportswriters that, heh.

I mean, do you seriously think that the Wal-Mart fans of Alabama, bless their black flabby little hearts, really give all that much of a damn about the education at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa? Or the state of Alabama, for that matter? State funding for Education has taken cuts for years, while the UA locker room gets a waterfall included in its remodeling.

If you exclude the ten to fifteen percent in the stands who actually went to school there, I bet no more than five in a hundred could point you toward the library. Probably less.

 

I agree. When we get to a level of PC that we expect people to respond emotionally in a cookie-cutter form, we're really fucked up.

 

The coach needs to develop a grief stricken look. Something like biting is lip might help

 

Start preparing for Cincinnati!

 

So, why not just say all of this in the first place rather than play games taking potshots at a coach because you think he might not have reacted in the best way possible to the death of one of his players?

 

Why not just go fuck yourself?