Links for 2012-04-07

  • The murky water of chastising and celebrating NFL violence - Grantland

    Of course, it's 2012 -- the Year of Internet Self-Righteousness -- which means we need to feign disgust, pile on the Saints, argue for Williams to receive the NFL's death penalty and basically freak out that a football coach would ever do that. So let's concede the following points. No, you shouldn't instruct your players to hurt people. Yes, you should be fined and suspended for that. Yes, Gregg Williams came off like an insensitive Neanderthal, and yes, it would be difficult (if not impossible) to take him seriously as a coach again. His professional career is over. The tape is pretty damning. Even if it's far-fetched that any Saint listened to that speech and thought to himself, Maybe my creepy weirdo of a coach is right, maybe I SHOULD go after Michael Crabtree's ACL! But there's a bigger story here: the laughable notion that anyone can change an ingrained culture of violence overnight.

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