If it's meaningless then tell that to the legions of sociologists who document ad nauseum the relationship between crime and poverty.

Octavious knows best.

I think you, like Al, are just trying to wind us up, as you say. You don't seriously believe sociology and criminology are impossible to do.

"Football is the problem. We will look back at this sport in 30 years time and wonder what the hell was wrong with us. It's like the plastic bag of sports."

Prove it.

PROVE the link between football and domestic abuse.

Correlation is not causation...

Unless you have a way of proving that the NFL actively turns nice guys into wife beaters...this is just your being opportunistic again, frankly, and rather than talking genuinely about violence towards women, you seem to be "grandstanding" and using it as an opportunity to rail against a sport which has no proven link, and you cite because you dislike.

I'm not the hugest fan of soccer when it's not a big event...but you don't see me using it to point to all bloody goings-on in South American soccer matches and the like.

Prove the link between football as a sport and violence towards women, or get back on topic and stop going off on a tangent against a sport you don't like. You're welcome to dislike it, but unless you have proof that the game ITSELF is the problem, that's a hell of an unsubstantiated claim.

(Can't even claim that the league's contact/in-game violence is to blame, frankly--hockey has that...)

I really need to show you the laundry list of studies showing the relationship between head trauma and violent behavior, do I?

http://psychcentral.com/news/2011/06/03/head-injuries-linked-to-violent-behavior/26656.html

http://www.injuryresources.com/aggressive-behavior-after-brain-injury/

http://www.neurology.org/content/46/5/1231.short

This is where you lose any credibility.

I already showed you statistics on the ratio of domestic violence arrests to other violent crimes in the NFL, and other crimes more generally.

The 'correlation doesn't equal causation' is the laziest response in the world. It's the response the NFL uses to cover up the effects of head trauma on its players. It's the response cigarette companies used for decades to deny links to lung cancer.

Because in the end causation can never be definitively proven, so we can go on like this forever.

To answer your original, boycott question:

"People don't boycott the NFL for the same reason that people don't boycott Chick-fil-A - it's too damn good!"

I've never eaten there, but even if I had, I WOULD boycott Cick-fil-A...because it actively and esssentially FUNDS discrimination towards LGBT groups.

That's cause and effect--my money on a chicken patty there would go towards supporting a cause I'm opposed morally, hence my boycotting.

Unless the NFL is either 1. Proven to cause domestic abuse or 2. In some way funds domestic abuse a la Chick-fil-A...

Then I'm left with a league where, like most leagues, the vast majority of players are good guys, and a few--even it's more than the "few" for other leagues--are ruining things for the rest of them.

I think my 49ers should be sitting Ray McDonald down right now, or exempting him the way others arrested for domestic abuse recently have been...I understand he hasn't been charged with a crime, but it's still disgraceful that he's on the field, and the team SHOULD sit him down, and I DO take umbridge at that.

But that's 1 guy on a 53-man roster...admittedly, my 49ers have recently become the new Oakland Raiders in terms of rule-breaking in the league (maybe the Raiders are so bad now the 49ers have to fill the role of both Bay Area teams?)

But even taking other rule-breakers on the team, the vast majority of the team hasn't broken the law, and that holds for other organizations across the league.

If most NFL players were guilty of domestic abuse, I'd understand the boycott idea...

But should I boycott any and all upcoming movies from Universal, Warner Bros., MGM, or Hollywood on the whole because of any criminal activity committed by a few of their stars?

Again, without either proving a causal link or that the NFL somehow funds abuse, why would you be in favor of punishing the whole for actions of a few...

...Unless, of course, this has nothing to do with these online attacks towards women or any of that, and this is just you being opportunistic and railing against a sport you don't like just 'cause?

Obi your points would be better served if you shut your mouth. You are your own best rebutter

So Obiwan, in the same breath that he wants us all to be outraged about violence against women, doesn't think the NFL has a domestic violence problem. And anybody who brings it up, is just being a 'hater'.

Got it.

"The 'correlation doesn't equal causation'...It's the response cigarette companies used for decades to deny links to lung cancer."

The difference being that nicotine actually IS addictive, and so there IS causation present?

And yes, there's a brain trauma issue in football, I don't deny that at all.

That doesn't mean that a game is responsible for Ray Rice knocking his fiancee out cold in an elevator...

I again don't see hockey players doing that, and there are plenty of examples of physical damage in that game as well.

Obi, are you claiming that Ice Hockey players suffer a similar rate of head trauma as American Football players?

"So Obiwan, in the same breath that he wants us all to be outraged about violence against women, doesn't think the NFL has a domestic violence problem."

I SAID they had a problem...and likewise said that not every NFL player is the kind of monster you like to paint them to be.

I'm terribly sorry I don't care to paint with quite as broad a brush as you.

Actually, I'm not.

CTE rates among football players are double that of ice hockey.

Thanks for playing.

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/writer/jon-solomon/24643655/ncaa-settlement-football-players-3-times-more-likely-to-have-cte-symptoms

"College football players are three times more likely than the general population to have symptoms related to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a debilitating disease associated with repetitive head trauma. That's roughly the same risk level seen in former NFL players. The risk of having CTE symptoms in NCAA contact sports other than football -- lacrosse, wrestling, ice hockey, field hockey, soccer and basketball -- is one-and-a-half times higher than the general population."

The nhl has the same problems but the league gets less press and players aren't as big public figures. It's still an issue.

Same for UFC too. It's not just the brain damage but also the cultures that these organizations foster and promote.

Plus the side effects from PETs.

It's an issue even if you are too dumb to understand Obi.

My argument, if you'll recall, was on football ITSELF (as was yours, Putin, you yourself drove this away from the NFL and college football to the nature of the game itself) and arguing that the game is not anti-woman.

That's my only stance there.

Chick-fil-A is anti-gay, so I'd never eat there...

Football is a game that can be played by men and women, and enjoyed by both, and is not in essence anti-woman.

I'm not here to defend the Ray Rices or Ray GET OFF THE 49ERS McDonalds of the world...as evidence by the fact I have no said repeatedly 1. That shit's fucked up (to use the legal jargon) and 2. I don't want ANY player on my teams who do that to stay on that team, no matter how good they are.

PEDs

"I SAID they had a problem...and likewise said that not every NFL player is the kind of monster you like to paint them to be."

No you didn't. You taunted me about not having 'proved' any link between head trauma and domestic violence. You emphatically denied there was any problem, only that the NFL had a few 'bad apples'.

"It's an issue even if you are too dumb to understand Obi."

*sigh*

I NEVER SAID IT *WASN'T* AN ISSUE.

I only said the game isn't inherently anti-woman and thus isn't in the Chick-fil-A category, which IS inherently anti-gay.

"My argument, if you'll recall, was on football ITSELF (as was yours, Putin, you yourself drove this away from the NFL and college football to the nature of the game itself) and arguing that the game is not anti-woman."

I don't know what the hell this even means.

"Football is a game that can be played by men and women, and enjoyed by both, and is not in essence anti-woman."

Football is a game that causes serious brain trauma which study after study has shown increases violent behavior. Since it is played overwhelmingly by men and the people these men are around the most besides the teammates they are beating the shit out of are their families, there is a direct line between the game of football and domestic violence.

You're being deliberately obtuse because you get great entertainment out of this sport, so anybody who brings up the connection between football and domestic is ridiculed and dismissed by you.

"You emphatically denied there was any problem, only that the NFL had a few 'bad apples'."

I said that playing football doesn't turn you from a peaceful Jekyll into a wife-beating Hyde, and that I don't penalize a league when most of the players are law-abiding.

I AGAIN ask why you don't extent the boycott call, if you're sincere in it, to movie studios that employ the degenerates of Hollywood who beat and assault women as well?

Concussions and brain damage are a problem for football...

That does NOT make the game anti-woman, or an instant way to turn from a fine person into a wife-beater, as evidenced, again, by the fact the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of players DON'T do that, or break the law.

The problem is that people value the entertainment from watching this barbaric display over the need to treat humans as such or the cost of creating a culture of testosterone-polluted men who are actively misogynistic and homophobic. The people from this culture are then given a direct line into the rest of the continent, and are deified by the public.

There is an inherent problem, Obi, and I am sorry that you are too pathetic to realize you support something that does net SIGNIFICANT harm to the world and your country.

Go re-read the Icognito/Martin text message conversation and tell me there is NOT a anti-women culture and attitude present.

Their conversation IS representative of what the NFL culture as a whole is.

You're right on one thing Obi - not 100% of NFL players are bad guys. But that doesn't tip the scales back to righteous.

"Since it is played overwhelmingly by men and the people these men are around the most besides the teammates they are beating the shit out of are their families, there is a direct line between the game of football and domestic violence."

NOT. MOST. PLAYERS.

You are AGAIN generalizing hundreds of thousands of players in the collegiate, CFL, and NFL ranks for the actions of a comparative few.

That does *NOT* make the few any less egregious or excuse the horrendous way in which the NFL brushed things off with Ray Rice initially (that WAS sexist and wrong, and Roger Goodell SHOULD be forced to resign) but you are still being unfair and treating 90% of people who play this game and are fine people in the same way as you'd treat Ray Rice.

That's the issue I take with your position.

"I said that playing football doesn't turn you from a peaceful Jekyll into a wife-beating Hyde"

Well you're flat out wrong. Because that's exactly what CTE does.

"that I don't penalize a league when most of the players are law-abiding."

Not everybody who smokes gets lung cancer. I guess that means that smoking is just fine and dandy.

"I AGAIN ask why you don't extent the boycott call, if you're sincere in it, to movie studios that employ the degenerates of Hollywood who beat and assault women as well?"

I don't even know who you're referring to as I know nothing about movies. Is acting linked to domestic violence?

Why is your first instinct to say there are other bad things out there rather than address the issue of football?

"Concussions and brain damage are a problem for football..."

Just not enough of a problem for you to give a shit about it.

So until 51% of NFL players are arrested for domestic violence, Obiwan will continue to act as if there is nothing special about football.

Because having a disproportionate problem is not sufficient, I guess.

"Go re-read the Icognito/Martin text message conversation and tell me there is NOT a anti-women culture and attitude present."

Frankly, Lando, I think those texts show a hyper-masculine culture rather than one that's anti-woman, which is just as bad, but to explain what I mean by the difference:

It's totally possible I missed some texts, but none I heard read or broadcast referred to women, or chastising, belittling, raping, or otherwise assaulting women the way the degenerates threatening Emma Watson did.

Instead, the texts seemed more aimed at Cognito making the piece of shit argument that Martin wasn't "man" enough, to simplify--

And I frankly think that's a problem that's Western-culture-wide, and so not an NFL-specific culture.

You can argue (and I'd agree) that sports like football, hockey, and other contact sports exacerbate them bullshit that is that whole overly-macho mentality...

But 1. That seems different to me than people like Elliot Rodger, actively threatening and then killing women, and 2. That's a problem that's Western-culture-wide (frankly worldwide) and not limited to the NFL, any sport will have that--IT IS STILL 100% WRONG, I'm just saying the NFL isn't unique there.

So the only time sexism is present is when a man is actively threatening and then killing a woman?

(Which, by the way, occurred in the case of Ray Rice, Ray McDonald, Greg Hardy, and plenty of others...)

So because they were not direct threats and they were not as violent as what is being directed at Emma Watson it's not an issue?

Keep in mind the people threatening her now are anonymous people who have little public sway.

Now, when pro football players actively refer to women as objects and getting laid as a conquest it's not an issue. Because surely there is no way celebrities setting a poor example could affect the general population. And because you apparently agree that women are objects to be chased without regard for their wishes or safety?

"Not everybody who smokes gets lung cancer. I guess that means that smoking is just fine and dandy."

That doesn't fit--I'm arguing most NFL players are good people and don't break the law, which is different than saying some of them aren't affected by a disease...

Disease =/= moral standing.

I'm saying that most NFL players are good morally, and your counter is something that has nothing to do with morality.

"I don't even know who you're referring to as I know nothing about movies. Is acting linked to domestic violence?"

Well, you seem to hate tossing out "correlation = causation" so I suppose by your logic, the fact that so many movie stars end up in prison MUST mean that its the movie business that causes it to an extent...

"Why is your first instinct to say there are other bad things out there rather than address the issue of football?"

Why won't you admit that, whether you agree with my position or not, I HAVE been addressing the issue of football for about 30 posts now?

I think the NFL DOES have a problem,
I don't think the game itself is any more anti-woman than other contact sports,
Most NFL players are not monsters, despite how you unfairly you wish to view them,
And Roger Goodell is an ignorant sexist prick who bungled this and should be fired or resign as commissioner, NOW.

That's my stance.
That's my addressing football.
That the NFL has a leader it must depose,
That the game needs better safety measures,
But that MOST NFL players are good people,
And so I'm not going to view most football players as degenerates like you.

There IS a male macho-ness problem that leads to these assaults but, again, as I stated to Lando, that's a worldwide issue, within and without sports...that's not exclusive to the NFL in any way, shape, or form.

Name a sport where men play, or a field where men compete, and you'll get the terrible statements of "not being man enough" and all the rest.

But that doesn't make football a game that can't be played safely and in a way that doesn't make you Ray Rice, whereas, yeah...smoking WILL pretty much kill you in the end.

"So the only time sexism is present is when a man is actively threatening and then killing a woman?"

No, I'm saying that while both are wrong, there's a difference between that which is vaguely macho-manliness culture and that which is EXPLICITLY anti-woman and targeting women, that's all I'm saying with that differentiation, that there's a difference between the former (which can hurt men as well as women and is often more vague) and the latter (which is an explicit attack and therefore an explicit threat towards women.)

"So because they were not direct threats and they were not as violent as what is being directed at Emma Watson it's not an issue?"

See the above statement.

There's no difference - both will degrade women's equality in a drastic fashion if unchecked.