A little perspective please... (sports)

(The Plains) -- Football is a hard and violent game. At its highest levels it is played and coached by people who have been trained -- over the course of a lifetime -- to play by a different set of rules. Further they have come to understand that championships -- the ultimate prize -- are rare and hard to come by; and that they can be more easily obtained by stretching and even breaking those rules in cases where it may go unnoticed or ignored. They know that getting caught occasionally is inevitable but just the price they must pay.

It is we who watch and demand through our support that these people perform at the peak of their abilities who have fostered this system. They are not all bad apples; many are good to the core. But I believe most of us would be startled to learn just how many are not.

Gareth Patterson/Associated Press

With that in mind is our indignation really justifiable when one of these people gets caught breaking one of the rules of larger society? Certainly this different mindset doesn't justify the bad behavior, but can we sincerely claim shock and outrage? Seems unrealistic to me.


--Rufus