Several reasons why that piece of shit football program at John Jay will still play...

(And yes, this title is a troll -- I want to see some of those people at John Jay try to defend to me the kids' conduct.  And if the ref is putting up racist diatribes, you have but one alternative.  Leave the field and protest the involvement of that official with the relevant parties afterward.)

But my anonymous contributor showed me something the last couple of days that might explain why, even in the face of a school whose football team was so out of control that what happened last Friday night to the official at the John Jay game should've been no surprise, John Jay will continue, and they'll just hope the fervor dies down...

Cracked put out a list of 5 "brutal realities of high-school football" in Texas -- coming from a player and coach in at least two levels of the state where high-school football is the classic religion.  This is where Friday Night Lights came from, for one example.

#5, The Stadiums

If you need to know why I call football "The National Religion", you only need to start at looking at the stadiums in which these contests are played, and the jawboning that is usually don to con the taxpayers to give more money to said stadiums.

Well, in Texas, the high-school stadiums get the same treatment.

Allen High in Texas spent $60 million on a stadium -- that lasted one year.

The person interviewed for the list, William Lane, had his own nightmare about a stadium, and the hold football has over Texas: 

"I once went to a booster club meeting, during which we discussed approving several million dollars' worth of repairs to our stadium. A school representative who had recently moved to town from New England was appalled that we were blowing this kind of money on high school sports. We were equally horrified to learn that her previous school had cut their football program in favor of improving its chemistry lab.

She might as well have suggested that we spend the entirety of the school's budget on building a rocket, and then launch ourselves into the Sun. We'd never dream of cutting football."

#4, The Town Shuts Down

And not just figuratively.  The only people left in the town not at the game are skeleton crews of emergency response.

In fact, when Lane was injured and caring for his ill grandmother, the cops got called.  It was thought that Lane had to be doing something criminal, because no right-fearing person in the town would stay home from the game!

This part also reports something scary:  The 2013 state title game at Cowboys Stadium for high-school football drew 54,347 fans.  There were four lesser college bowl games that same weekend.  The high-school championship outdrew all four!!

#3, Money Money Money

Lane begins with an anecdote that anyone not involved with the football program was unworthy to represent the school in any capacity.  (Hell, I'm surprised they weren't declared unworthy to attend it!)

But, after he became the coach, he saw the other side:   Some schools actually could make $2 million off of the football team per season, net! 

#2, Player Safety

It's shocking, to me, we don't have more people die in this sport, especially in hot and humid Texas, where some coaches think even "water is for wimps".  The entire exercise is to literally dehumanize these boys into animals who will literally do anything to win (which will often translate into doing the same with their girlfriend or anything else which unfortunately gets in their way!).

Doctors were often banned from games, so there would be no interruptions.  Hell, motherfuckers, why don't you just have a ritual execution of a lesser at halftime instead of your band and burlesque show?

A Federal study into football injuries in Texas in 1992 showed that, on an average (and this does not take into account a single player with multiple qualifying injuries), there was a coin-flip chance that a high-school football player in Texas can be injured.  This was four times the purported national average -- and this is even WITH the reluctance to report such injuries across football in the first damn place!

There were six concussion deaths (just six??) in high-school football in Texas in 2011.

But it's the end point, about why it is believed we need to animalize these players, that provides it's own punchline...

"If you're wondering why it wasn't the parents raising hell about these issues all those decades ago ... well, that's a tough thing to do when playing through injury is considered a rite of manhood. ("Oh, your son collapsed from dehydration and heat exhaustion in practice? Sorry, I thought he was tough.") And it's harder when winning coaches are revered as living legends -- who's going to question their judgment? Even now, with some regulations being enforced, coaches can still get away with a lot in terms of pushing players past their limits. Short of making creepy upskirt videos of female students, it's nearly impossible to get fired."

(To which I say you never have been watching the news:  Chances are that those upskirt videos were also a rite of manhood in many communities.  I mean, Hell, that was the basis of many halftime shows.)

#1, Recruiting and Grade-Tampering

Of course, this should be no surprise to readers of this blog.  Same deal as in Florida.

Job offers from schools would fly in to try to get the best athletes to transfer there.

Grades would be tampered to keep kids eligible in "No Pass, No Play" Texas.  (Remember that farce?)

Just another example of our National Religion run amok.