chasm

I see you wrote this at 1:46 AM, you must have needed to wind down from your lack of partner help at HIGH ALTITUDE LOW OPENING!!!!!! To the post, I have to agree with you on most points, except for the sacrificing brains for braun. Many professional athletes are quite intelligent, have you ever seen an NFL playbook, they weigh them to decide if they have enough plays. Take me for example I am definitely professional athlete capable and I am rather intelligent; if you asked me. So my question for you is; What did I sacrifice????

To your NFL playbook point, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Instead of reading a damn book with words, they're reading a bunch of x's and o's. How does that help them speak to the meadia? To your personal sacrifices, no comment.

That is fine, but what about Robert Smith? He graduated from Ohio State as a Doctor. He played numerous years in the NFL and than retired to pursue his other career in medicine. I do believe his Senior year he was a finalist for the Heisman Trophy and he won the running back award that year. You are a huge Michigan fan, you should know as well as anyone that getting into Michigan is no easy feat. I do not care that they earn athletic scholarships, and that they have less admissions requirements than other students; to stay in school they have the same requirements as everyone else. If they bend the rules for the players than they have this little oranization called the NCAA that would investigate them for rules violations!!!!(Do I need to mention the FAB 5) Not all professional athletes are academically intelligent, yes I agree with that. You also have to agree that their are many who are quite academically intelligent. Players are one issue, but as a head coach that is another issue. There is no excuse for not being PC as a head coach in the NFL. I also take great offense to Bill Parcells speaking that way being he went to the same high school as my mother. You would think that by now the NFL as become such BIG BUSINESS that all coaches would have a PR Director like POTUS does.

Yossarian, you're babbling. Sure, there are exceptions like Robert Smith (let's try to keep the Ohio State references to a minimum, fucking Buckeyes) so, nice job. Smith, while choosing the debatably nobler pursuit of practicing medicine still made the economically inefficient decision by choosing a profession that will pay him less. That's America's fault. That's what the post is about.

As to your point about coaches. Most coaches are ex-players who made the same intellectual sacrifices just longer ago. I could be wrong but I don't think too many players go back to school to be public speakers between playing and coaching. Why hold them to a higher standard when addressing the media?

Maybe many coaches are intelligent and well-spoken, but lousy, impromptu public speakers?

oopps, correction: Maybe many coaches are intelligent but lousy, impromptu public speakers?

Im in agreement with Tom here, its tough to hold these people accountable for the way they are when society breeds it. You cant expect people to become well-mannered and cultured when they are "grown" to play a sport from day one and thats it. We are all impressed when an athlete speaks with any level of intelligence, kind of sad huh? As for the actual comments by Parcells, the bottom line is, yes that type of conversation occurs all the time between people. No matter how much we fight against discrimination, and how much we say we are not prejudiced, who here hasnt made or laughed at a racist joke? And so what, thats not a big deal, but you dont say it in public. One would think that at Parcells age, he would have learned that by now, I dont think thats holding him up to some golden set of ideals.