A lot has been said and written about the fragility of Gen Z, particularly in the classroom. They can’t be assigned reading material or watch a movie without receiving trigger warnings, not just about explicit sex, but about such lesser evils as “smoking” and (oddly) “language.”
Upsetting a kid today comes with a heavy penalty. In some states, teachers can be fired for adding controversial books to a syllabus without prescreening them with the local school board. As a culture, we’ve decided our sensitive kids require guardrails.
But when this kind of sensitivity becomes the norm for pro football players, we’ve entered the realm of the absurd. In the recent AFC championship game between the Ravens and the Chiefs, after Lamar Jackson’s brilliant 54-yard pass to Zay Flowers, the star rookie jumped up and made some triumphal gestures to his tackler, cornerback L’Jarius Sneed. Immediately the yellow flags flew, and a 15-yard penalty was called for “taunting.”
Taunting? Seriously? These are 300-pound behemoths blessed with fast-twitch muscles playing a game that requires a soldier’s urge to destroy the enemy. They’re trained to beat the living pulp out of each other. They risk injury every time they take to the playing field. Yet, if they take a moment to gloat after a successful play, that’s crossing a line?
Even the sports pundits seem to feel the no-taunting rule, which was added in 2021 as part of the league’s effort to tamp down unsportsmanlike conduct, makes about as much sense as asking soldiers to shake hands with the enemy before trying to blow them to pieces. “It’s tough for these aggressive guys,” said commentator Ahmed Fareed in a recent edition of NFL on NBC, speaking about the penalty shortly after the AFL Championship game. “It’s like you’re in the ring with people trying to kill you. It’s hard to sometimes make those snap changes, like ‘Don’t get in his face here, even though we’re battling to the death out here.’”
Aren’t there more serious dangers than the threat of psychological harm to NFL athletes? Just this past week, college football Hall of Famer Jerry Beasley died of apparent suicide at age 73 after years of suffering the effects of concussions from college football and in his three years with the NFL. His very injuries produced unbearable chronic suffering throughout his post-football life, ranging from memory loss to headaches, anxiety, and sleeplessness. [Source:
In a sport where you can slam into an opponent with all your force, knock him down, and cause him possible life-long disability, how ludicrous is it that engaging in a bit of “Nyah, nyah!” after a successful play is crossing a line? Football has its problems, but forcing the players to be more congenial in the midst of the brutality of a typical game isn’t one of them. It’s time for the “no taunting” rule to go.
Steven Slon is the former Editorial Director of The Saturday Evening Post, and previously was Editor in Chief of AARP Magazine and Managing Editor of Men’s Health.
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Comments
It’s a total clown world were living in Steven, and the results are all around us. Teachers can’t say this, or do that per the first two paragraphs, yet they’re encouraged and paid by our evil government and pharmaceutical industry to get children to switch genders starting at very young ages; putting them on puberty blockers which will mean being on drugs for life for endless profits, to keep the assigned gender at bay. More drugs to counteract those negative effects, and so on and so forth. To me, this is about as unthinkably low and as diabolical as it gets.
For a football player like Lamar Jackson to have a 15-yard penalty called for “taunting” when he’s doing a few harmless (deserved) triumphal gestures is totally insane. I doubt the guys on the opposing team felt ‘taunted’ when they know what a tough thing it is to accomplish, regardless of which team they’re on!
IF a football player is intentionally pummeling another player out of hatred, OF COURSE there should be serious consequences for that! BUT… let me guess… THAT would be okay in the cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs world we live in!
I feel bad for Gen-Z having their heads screwed around by our neurotic, psychotic, hypocritical society! On top of that, the abnormal, near 24/7 interactions with tech devices with very little, if anything to balance things out. But don’t worry, with the coming onslaught of mental and physical health problems coming the biopharmaceutical complex will have drugs for that, and their side effects, raking in billions.
Several years ago I put in comments about how my 5th grade teacher would read Mark Twain’s ‘Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn’ after the lunch break in the spring of 1968 when things were particularly bad. Uncensored, unfiltered (contained the ‘n’ word), and all she said was this was how some people referred black Americans back then, but it was wrong, and hurtful.
It wasn’t to be mean or hurtful by the kids in the story per the context, but we don’t use it now because it is hurtful, and wrong, and we know better! That’s it. Today she would be fired for possessing the book, much less reading it. Probably arrested, having a police record, and her career would be over with immediately.
The paragraph regarding Jerry Beasley and his apparent suicide after decades of unbearable pain and suffering from concussions from college football, and his 3 years in the NFL, says it all. Why bother making helmets and the game safer to the extent it can be, when the NFL can go after nonsense like a few seconds of happiness to try and make it look like they’re doing something important?!
They’re not fooling anyone anymore than the government is putting our soldiers in countries they have no business putting them, knowing full well they’ll be killed, as justification for more made up wars and killing. The ONLY war the U.S. won, and had justification for being in, was World War II. None since, starting with Korea.
If “OK, Boomer” was a person.