Gotta Disagree, Hub Politics

Hub Politics posted a blog that, as a slightly rotund person, absolutely offends me. Hub thinks that there should be a weight limit on high school football players -- because they're getting too fat. Or something.

First, let's look at this logically. If you were a doctor who had an overweight patient, would you want them going to football practice every day, getting 3-4 hours of exercise Mon-Fri and being required to have a year-round exercise schedule... or would you want them to practice every day, sitting on their ass, playing Madden on the Xbox 360? Football doesn't make that person fat, it makes them that much more likely to get exercise everyday. Believe me, football coaches don't want fat players, they want healthy ones.

Now, let's look at this anecdotally. My father played professional football for 7 years, on the Buffalo Bills. He was a lineman. He wasn't overly large, but was large enough that he passed down his large frame to his even-larger sons. When I played football in high school, I was 6 feet and - according to any medical calculation, "morbidly obese," weighing more than the average Brockton lineman that the Hub railed against.

Of course, I was also the fastest sprinting lineman on the team, faster than people much skinnier than I, and could run a mile in around 8 minutes (not wicked fast, but not wicked slow either). I was at one point a 3 sport player in High School, playing football, basketball and track. I'm just one of those people who are genetically big and will look it no matter how much I exercise or refrain from eating. I was not in terrible shape and could play a whole football game, on both sides - and then some.

That part of my life was around 6 years ago now. It seems like it was yesterday, but that's actually getting close to a long time. Since then, as with any adult, it's been tough to stay as active. I haven't gained any weight since high school - I essentially weigh the same now as I did then - but I'm not nearly in the same shape. I don't look it either.

The thing is, if I wasn't so active in high school, I would have been much less healthy. I'd probably weigh a lot more even today, never having developed any sense of trying to stay in shape. More importantly, just because someone looks "fat" doesn't mean they're necessarily unhealthy. There's plenty of studies indicating that people who are active every day, even if they're overweight, are much healthier, will look younger and live longer.

Many people who end up being the larger lineman on teams are going to be "fat" if they worked out 4 hours a day or if they worked out 4 minutes. It's just how their bodies are genetically built; they're going to weigh close to or over 250 pounds no matter what. As someone who's built that way and has been both active and not, I can attest to that.

What i can't imagine or attest to, though, is the absurd notion that society would ever try to prevent young teenagers - who need all the exercise they can get - from going out for a team because they're overweight. If we want physically fit, healthy teenagers, we need more student athletes, not less, especially when genetics do so much to determine weight and doesn't necessary correlate with fitness.

Note: Below I posted two photos. One is of me in 2001, the other is me yesterday picking apples. I weigh almost exactly the same in each picture (within 5 pounds), the difference - in addition to a few years and a Ralph Lauren jacket - was that I was much more active playing football and other sports nearly every day in 01.

Love This: Pats Use Renewable Energy

The Patriots signed a 4 year deal to buy renewable energy credits from wind farms in the Midwest to use during game days. Each home game, the Pats were using enough energy to power 2,269 homes for an entire game. That's no slim pickings. Hopefully, other teams - like the Sox and Celtics - will follow suit, making a huge environmental impact, as well as boosting the teams' reputation. It's sort of hard for the "bad guys" rep to stick when they're probably one of the few - if only - teams in the NFL making sure that they're not contributing to the destruction of the planet.

Somehow, I doubt the so-called force for good in the world, the Indianapolis Colts, would ever follow suit. But, then again, they just lost their second game in a row (with a missed 29 yard Adam Vinatieri Field Goal) so maybe no one cares. In any event, kudos to Robert Kraft for again showing why he's the NFL's best owner and a very decent man. We need more business owners willing to show the way toward environmental friendliness before we'll ever be able to combat Global Warming.

No Fun League at it Again

While football commentary generally doesn't belong on this website, there are some very real aspects to the whole Pats-Colts game that shouldn't go unnoticed by any audience. Apparently, there may have been cheating again, but this time not from those dastardly Patriots, a team caught doing something the entire NFL has been doing for years now. This time it's the team representing the side of "good," the Colts (yes, I did read a sports column about how the Pats-Colts game was all about good vs. evil, but I'll spare everyone the link). But it's not like we're going to hear anything about it, because the "good" team can't possibly cheat - right? The Powers that Be only want to push the meme that the Patriots are cheating bastards, not just a team that's worked harder and longer at being better than the rest of the NFL. So, shhh, don't let that secret out of the bag.

What's stunned me as a person is how hateful the rest of the country has become toward something as trivial as a sports team, something that isn't altogether different than the political discourse going around for the past few decades. I don't know if we're more or less likely to pick up a column insinuating the Patriots ought to be renamed the Satanists, or hear Ann Coultershock claiming liberals are going to go to hell anyway, so we may as do the dirty deed now and get it over with. Seriously, would either of the two scenarios shock anyone?

It all gets me back to a discussion I had a few months ago with Lynne's husband on how some people - mostly conservatives - think differently. How these people have authoritarian minds. It doesn't matter if it's sports, politics, news or what's the best cookie recipe, a lot of the 'leading voices' on any of these matters all seem to think alike, even if the subjects they're interested in may be different. The Patriots were shown, in public, as a bunch of cheating scoundrels. In the case of the Colts game, NFL officials hushed up the nonsense and essentially said, 'go home everyone, nothing to see here, folks.' And, of course, they're doing many fans - with a certain kind of mind frame - a real service. Everyone else? Not so much. It's important to resist/ignore/deflate talking heads from around the country, because things that are right are often ignored, while the unimportant or trivial matters become the next Lacy Peterson story - all for the benefit of a few who would only be more than happy to be in charge of everything, yet can't be trusted within a hundred feet of a leadership position. Go Patriots!