QUOTE: "Researchers disagree over whether the force and aggressiveness required to succeed in some sports nurture a tendency toward the abuse of women who are physically weaker than the athletes. But there isn't any argument that athletes form a special, distinct, and often protected class of adolescents and young men in high school and college, and that some of these men think their status entitles them to do whatever they want to women.

. . . In Glen Ridge, as many other American communities, beligerence, physical strength, competitiveness, a sense of superiority, winning above all- these qualities dominated all realms of these boys' childhoods from nursery school to high school graduation. Males who demonstrated such traits were cherished.

In a more heterogeneous community, youngsters like the Glen Ridge boys might have found alternative models of masculinity- regular guys who enjoyed watching a tightly pitched baseball game but who also demonstrated compassion, fairness, and thoughtfulness. Guys who took more pleasure in appreciating females than in humiliating them. But in Glen Ridge the few public dissenters from the Jock ethic were treated as social pariahs."

----- quote from Our Guys, by Bernard Lefkowitz, describing the situation surrounding the rape of a young girl by high school athletes, and the idolization of sports in that community.

QUOTE: "Big-time football manifests and reinforces the ideal of masculine identity through its aggressive ethos. The real man is aggressive and dominant in all situations. The weekend trek to the arena is not an escape from the world of corporate America; rather it is a weekly pilgrimage to the national shrines where the virtues of toughness and insensitivity can be renewed. This is especially true in the man/woman relationships. In the football spectacle the role of a woman in our society is clearly defined against the masculine criteria of value. The important action is male-dominated; women can share only at a distance in a man's world. They can shout and squeal from afar, but their roles are accessory to the male event. Ultimately they are his 'bunnies,' his possessions for pleasure and service."

-----from the essay, "The Super Bowl Culture of Male Violence," by Eugene C. Biachi, from the book, "Jock: Sports and Male Identity," edited by Donald F. Sabo, Jr. and Ross Runfola.

QUOTE:"There is nothing wrong with competition in the proper proportion. Like a little salt, it adds zest to the game and to life itself. But when the seasoning is mistaken for the substance, only sickness can follow. Similarly, when winning becomes 'the only thing,' it can lead only to eventual emptiness and anomie.

The time has come, I feel, to blow the whistle on this madness."

----quote from the essay "Winning Isnt Everything. Its Nothing." by George B. Leonard, from the book "Jock: Sports and Male Identity," edited by Donald F. Sabo, Jr. and Ross Runfola.