Gregg Williams: Motivator or Masochistic?


EXCUSE THE PROFANITY


Let me say this... I LOVE FOOTBALL.  I have been around it my whole life.  Played football on playgrounds with the boys, but not for real for real, because I wasn't allowed.

I did, however, play organized sports.  There were things said in locker rooms that weren't for public consumption. It is what it is. And I am a woman, who played on girls' teams.  So I know good and well some ugly things were said in my male counterparts' locker rooms.
Gregg Williams
That being said, the "Bounty-gate" scandal that is ripping the headlines now, coming out of New Orleans, is on another level.  The new audio from Greg Williams, defensive coordinator for the Saints, has past and present players talking.

I listened to a radio program today called Barbershop talk, and one guy said he understood Williams saying to go after ACLs and head injuries, and to have Frank Gore walking sideways... If his coach told him to do it, he would do it, because he respected his coach.

That is one of the most asinine comments I have ever heard.  Football is a sport, not war.  There is no reason to maim anyone, to purposefully try to injure anyone, or to lose your mind and be brainwashed by a coach.  These coaches have a job to do, just like the players.  But they have no risk of being maimed themselves.  Marinate on that.

Hard hits are part of the game.  Injuries are bound to happen in any contact sport.  PURPOSEFULLY injuring any player IS NOT PART OF THE GAME.  I don't care who says it is.  It is not. People who play dirty don't have the skills to win off of their athleticism and talent.  That's just the truth.

I remember playing in a game where our point guard had her nose broken by a player on the other team.  The girl literally kneed our point guard in the nose.  Me being the hot head I was, was ready to fight.  (Seriously, got tossed out of the game.) I was angry, because she had taken it out of the realm of the sport, which has rules, and turned it into something else.  When you do that...there are no rules, and now it is no longer a sport.

There's a way to play a sport and "leave it all on the field/court" without becoming ignorantly barbaric.  Greg Williams would never have to suffer the consequences of his "motivation", but the players he "motivated" were in peril of having someone staring them down across the line after having received similar "motivation".  That's why sportsmanship is part of all athletics... The ish you dole out, could be the ish you swallow the next time.

It is easy to sit back and send someone else to do dirt, it is another to have to experience the dirt yourself.  I have no sympathy for the way Roger Goodell came down on the Saints, who are appealing the ruling.  He could have gone further.  I also have no doubt that similar "motivational" tactics occur in other locker rooms, but it needs to stop.

I have friends, relatives, and acquaintances who played football on the collegiate and professional level.  At some point the game will end, but if you were damaged severely by someone playing dirty, you have to carry that with you forever.  How jacked up is that?

And to callously send someone out on the field with the intended purpose of causing someone grievous bodily injury should be a crime.

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