Check this out which was orginially posted over on the hated Raiders
newsgroup:

skepticl1@aol.com - view profile

A Defensive Tackle for the Tenn. Titans was ejected from a game today
after deliberately stomping on a prone player's face with his cleats
after a play was completed. In a world gone mad with right wing values,

deliberately injuring opponents is just another aspect of bourgeois
sports. If you watched the broadcast of today's 49ers game, it was
shown on fox. Commercial breaks were filled with cruelty and vulgarity
as cartoon characters strike each other with fists or boards or other
objects and made crude cut downs all day long. One episode even
included a visit to a torture chamber. Torture is now supposed to be
humorous. In today's press a writer said that a Raider coach should be
water boarded, a form of torture used by the USA in which victims are
drowned. These are the punch lines in an counter revolutionary culture.

All efforts to divide society and influence people to support the US
Capitalist war on the world.

The ugly values are because of Capitalism. Sports do not have to be
this
way. Society does not have to be this way. Sports can further
friendships and cooperation. The 'Me First' attitudes are backwards and

wrong. The NFL is politicized in a reactionary way, but you don't
appear to have the training to recognize this. It is now
considered normal and even praiseworthy to think of nothing but
winning. The idea of purposely injuring opposing players, was what
Raider Jack Tatum was known for. Other forms of cheating like faking
injuries are encouraged.

Below is posted a criticism of the game soccer, but many of the aspects

of the article apply to American football. (From the Article:)

"In a word, this sport is increasingly alienated from meeting the needs

of the people. This includes the need for the masses of people
(including women) to have the opportunity to take part in sports
themselves as well as enjoy high-quality sports performances, and for a

society and values based on cooperation and solidarity, as well as
daring, individual initiative and seeking to create new and interesting

things and advance through a break with the defined and normal patterns

of already set boundaries. The basic selfish logic and brutal ethics
that determine how football is now organized can only favour the
proliferation of the hooliganism, alcoholism and racism that has cost
the life of many and injured and terrorized many more."

And:

"What makes football turn ugly is when all the corruption of
capitalism-not just bribery and petty corruption, as in today's
football scandals, but far more deeply the rotten relations of class
society-imposes itself forcibly on this beautiful game and poisons
the people's enjoyment."

The World Cup: Does it have to be this way?
10 July 2006. A World to Win News Service. For four weeks football
fever gripped the world, and now that the World Cup is over many
millions have been left with a sour taste in their mouths. We saw
victories and defeats, shared the joy and sadness of players and
supporters, witnessed beautiful and ugly moments. We saw the tears of
the players when they lost or were forced to leave the tournament. We
saw ugly moments when the players pushed and injured each other. We
have seen widespread racist insults against black players by supporters

of the opposite team and even fans of their own team. All these and
other ugly moments pose the question: Does this sports event really do
what it's supposed to do, further friendship, cooperation and the
exchange of culture between the world's peoples? Does it have to be
the way it is?

For those who live in this time, it is clear that football is not an
ordinary sport anymore, or it would not set off such a world-sweeping
storm of contradictory feelings. Undoubtedly soccer is one of the most
popular games in the world, and at the same time, football, or at least

the World Cup, is fully politicized. It is a full-force political
scene, with heads of state and prime ministers prominently presiding
over the stadium while their country's team is playing. The US, as
usual, is especially shameless in displaying its reactionary politics.
Its ill-starred team, ultimately dispatched by Ghana to the delight of
many millions, chose the symbolic lodgings of an American military
base, and its coach announced, "We're here for war." When the
side was criticized for an especially brutal style of play in a match
with Italy, a prominent American political columnist mocked this as the

unmanly complaint of the same European "post-heroic and
post-militaristic culture" that had failed to support the invasion of
Iraq. (Roger Cohen, International Herald Tribune, 21 June) But when the

Italian team beat France in an equally foul-studded final, Italian
Prime Minister Romano Prodi couldn't help a little militaristic
glorification himself as he praised his team for "fighting to the
last drop of blood."

In a world divided into nations and artificially-distinguished
"races," into haves and have-nots, oppressors and oppressed, many
are looking for their trampled rights. They are looking to restore
their oppressed identities. In a world marked by the exploitation of
human beings by human beings, the domination of nations by other
nations and the hideous concept of "racial supremacy," anything,
including football, can be used for confrontation and contest. Some
people look to the success of their national team to achieve the
self-confidence and self-satisfaction denied them in other areas of
life. While the dominant powers, using public interest in football and
racist organised gangs, are trying to strengthen reactionary and
national supremacist ideologies in the oppressor countries, many people

on the other side in the oppressed countries respond, on the basis of
their own long rage and fury, by fervently wishing for the victory of
their national team. They want to prove themselves at least in this
sphere. Those sentiments are abused by the rulers of the oppressed
countries.

* * * *

The ideological and political abuse of football is not the end of it.
There is also a major economic aspect, in which this sport is used to
boost the capitalist economy in general and especially to bring huge
profits to investors.

It is beyond the scope to this article to analyse all the factors and
complicated elements that make football so attractive, but some can be
mentioned. Like other collective games, the rise of football is related

to the development of capitalism that laid the bases for these kinds of

sports. In its present form, football goes back to mid 19th century
England, at the height of the industrial revolution (although some
people say it was played in a more rudimentary form in ancient China).
Its requirements are those characteristic of the modern world: speed,
strength, confidence, hard work and especially collectivity and
discipline. It consists of hundreds or even thousands of challenges
between the players of the two opposing teams. While efforts are made
to avoid direct engagement as much as possible, the game becomes most
interesting when one team is advancing towards the heart of the other
side's ground. What makes football especially fabulous is the
combination (and dialectical relationship) of collective work and the
high degree of initiative and skills of individuals within that
framework. Its rules are easy and nearly everyone can understand
them-this is certainly one source of attraction. Football has the
advantages of many other sports combined in one.

But because of this popularity, the ruling classes have entered into it

in a big way, especially after the Second World War. This sport has
come to embody serious ideological and political issues, and the
national clubs are run accordingly. Further, the local football clubs
on which the sport is based have become profit-driven economic units.
These reactionary political and economic aims determine everything
about how football is organized and played. It is now considered normal

and even praiseworthy to think of nothing but winning. Nowhere was this

more apparent than in the World Cup final. Especially when competition
reaches this level, so much money and prestige is at stake, for the
side and its members and the capitalists looking over their shoulders,
that highly developed teams and enormously gifted and skilled players
are forced-not only by owners and coaches but also by the logic of
the situation itself-to play very conservatively, putting emphasis on
preventing the other side from scoring, on blocking, psychologically
destablizing and even injuring other key players, and "diving",
faking injuries themselves in hopes of being rewarded with a penalty
shot. As Italian midfielder Gennaro Gatusso put it after Italy's
victory, "Maybe it wasn't pretty, but we are hard to beat."
(Another Italian player said that if people want a beautiful
experience, they should go to the cinema - football is about
winning.) This is what destroys what was once known as "the beautiful
game."

That approach has moulded the style of play and the training of the
players and led to the prevalence of a certain kind of tactics. Italian

supporters and other football fans were increasingly disgusted by the
famous catenaccio ("the bolt"), a very defensive, rigid formation
style of playing especially favoured by the Italians in the 1960s and
'70s. It managed to get Italy to the 1970 World Cup final in Mexico,
but in the final match Brazil's crushing defeat of the Azzurri was
also an overwhelming defeat for a tactic that makes results everything
and kills the initiative of the players. When they came home the
Italian team had to avoid angry crowds. Nevertheless, this vision of
football became especially widespread among European teams.

Attempts to change these ugly features the game had acquired ran up
against insurmountable obstacles rooted in the workings of capitalism.
For example, the emergence of new style of play by the Dutch, who
presented an offensive system at the 1974 World Cup, was hailed as the
best hope of saving soccer's attraction for the masses. However, this
effort was short lived. The new style needed a different system, even
in the most narrow sense of the organisation of this professional sport

itself, not to mention the economic and social relations and values of
the social system it is part of. It proved impossible to play football
on this model and keep the old organisation, including the coaches,
some of the old players, the plans for training, equipment and so on.
More than that, clubs had to be ready to put at risk the stable
situation that every team or club had at that time. To play matches
where the score would not be the only thing that mattered, much
preparation would have been required for the players-and the fans.
Further, such a change would have required a tremendous amount of
resources that football clubs could not or were not willing to spend.
In any case, even to the degree that this new style was introduced,
again the only criterion was results-winning at any cost, which
inevitably reproduced other ugly tactics and moments inconsistent with
the stated aims of this fundamental reorganisation of the system. One
of the ugliest features of modern football remains its
defensiveness-what is most prized is not a team's speed and
offensive abilities, but its ability to keep the other side from
scoring. So the occasional appearance of good football, due to the
injection of highly developed techniques and hard discipline, cannot
compensate for the burden that the dominant politics has put on the
back of this sport.

* * * *

How else could it work-how could there be any basic change in the
gladiator nature of today's soccer when teams play only for profit?
When coaches train and organise their side to get the desired results
or lose their job? When supporters are lured to promote national
chauvinism and despise the opposite side, and even worse to strengthen
openly fascistic reaction and racism? When the host country undertakes
the games to promote tourism, including sex tourism, and give a boost
to the profits of its ruling class? When players are under inhuman
pressure not to make any mistakes, to use violence against players from

the other side, and still look like actors or fashion models-and when
many of them are alienated from the spirit of sport and miserable about

being forced to violate what are hypocritically upheld as the norms of
play? If players try to break with the real, ugly norms of play and
somehow don't "succeed," or if they make a mistake, then a howl
goes up from the tabloids and media, not to mention the coaches and
owners and sports establishment and its authorities. These players end
up with a profile that will never be wiped from their dossier. Their
market value plummets and they may fall from the top to the depths.
Whoever scores is the champion, with little consideration for the
side's collective work or the quality of the game. Despite the
hard-won organisation of the team, the spirit of taking initiative is
rare and what generally rules is conservatism and fear of breaking
patterns.

This is why attempts to change at least the defensive and boring
aspects of European football have failed. According to César Luís
Menotti, "If you look at the last three rounds of the World Cup, all
of them are, in a way, an insult to offensive football... In a way, all

the teams have been more or less oriented in the tradition of
catenaccio and were seeking to win in a defensive game." (Interview
in the German newsweekly Die Welt, 30 June 2006. Menotti was the
Argentine football team coach between 1974-1982. He is famous for
refusing to shake hands with Argentina's ruling generals when the
country won the World Cup in 1978.) These aspects have changed the
features of football. Football is supposed to be a sport, but it is no
exaggeration to say that what matters least in football is the game and

the sporting spirit.

In a word, this sport is increasingly alienated from meeting the needs
of the people. This includes the need for the masses of people
(including women) to have the opportunity to take part in sports
themselves as well as enjoy high-quality sports performances, and for a

society and values based on cooperation and solidarity, as well as
daring, individual initiative and seeking to create new and interesting

things and advance through a break with the defined and normal patterns

of already set boundaries. The basic selfish logic and brutal ethics
that determine how football is now organized can only favour the
proliferation of the hooliganism, alcoholism and racism that has cost
the life of many and injured and terrorized many more. When everything
is sacrificed for the profits of the rich clubs of the rich countries,
and when a sport is organized in the service of the ideological and
political aims of a reactionary ruling class, then the ugly moments
we've witnessed in the past month are no surprise.

Obviously if competitive games aren't played to win, the fun is lost,
but when winning is made an absolute, or even the primary goal, it has
a disastrous effect-including on the fun of the game for players and
spectators alike. It spreads the seeds of conservatism, kills the
initiative of the players and prevents the development of the game.
Most importantly, instead of promoting friendship and solidarity, it
gives rise to hostility among the masses, exactly the opposite of the
role that an international sport and in fact any sport should play.

What makes football turn ugly is when all the corruption of
capitalism-not just bribery and petty corruption, as in today's
football scandals, but far more deeply the rotten relations of class
society-imposes itself forcibly on this beautiful game and poisons
the people's enjoyment.

Does it have to be this way? In a world dominated by imperialism and
capitalist relations, it seems there will be no other way until we have

won a new world where profit is not in command.

The Shadow wrote:

The Shadow wrote:

The Shadow wrote: