Thugball

The lead news story I heard on the radio this morning was about a professional football player who died from gunshot wounds. I don't understand. Please, don't tell me that is the most newsworthy item of the day.
The story suggests that the shots may have been fired during an armed robbery at the football player's house in Miami. Yeah. Right. This was a guy who got in trouble several times for everything from spitting on other players to brandishing a weapon. In other words, he was more thug than athlete. To me, the demise of this guy in Miami was just another in a rapidly growing list of pro football players whose thuggery finally caught up with them.
I wouldn't waste your time and mine writing about this except that I have been bothered for a couple of years now by the decline of professional football from "team sport" to, "Look at me, sucka. I'm Mister Badass!" Take a close look along the sidelines sometime. It looks like a street-gang line up! Long-haired, tattooed thugs with their baseball hats-on-backward, or stocking caps-pulled-down-over-eyebrows look like what you'd expect to find on a street corner in East L.A., not on the playing field of professional sports.
I blame the owners, coaches and officials for replacing sportsmanship with showoffmanship and thuggery. They have allowed team colors to become gang colors and that's inexcusable.
But all is not lost. Take a close look at the first-string offenses of the two best teams in professional football today, the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts. They are the reasons I keep watching.