Is There a Difference Between How Football Players and Fighting Dogs Are Treated?
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Is there a difference between how football players and fighting dogs are treated?
Is there much difference between how sports players are treated versus how, lets say fighting dogs are treated? I believe that they are very similar in many ways. Recently there have been many studies that have been conducted to examine the punishment that football players and dogs take throughout their careers and fight lives. I would like to look more closely at injuries like concussions that should keep players on the bench, but dont. On the other side of the coin, recently a star football player (Michael Vick) was arrested and convicted of running a dog fighting arena which is a felony offence; punishable by jail time and enormous fines. How are these two things similar or what do they have in common? I will explore this in more detail.
According to a magazine article “Offensive Play” (Malcolm Gladwell) (pg. 50-59) it explains the violence of dog fighting and gives you a rare look into the illegal arena of the so called sport. I read a quote in the article that really sums up the entire sport in a few very clear sentences. (Rhonda Evens and Craig Forsyth) in “The Social Milieu of Dogmen and Dogfights” (pg. 52) “The handlers released their dogs and Snow and Black lunge at one another. Snow rears up and overpowers Black, but black manages to come back with a quick locking of the jaws on Snows neck. The crowd is cheering wildly and yelling out bets. Once a dog gets a lock on the other, they will hold on with all their might. The dogs frail back and forth and all the while Black maintains her hold.” It goes on to say that the dogs will continue to fight until one becomes submissive. However, sometimes that means to their death. According to the same article and its well known outside the article; dog fighting is illegal and a person can be fined and even serve jail time for the offense. Coincidently, Michael Vick (Quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons) is a football player who treats his dogs the same way he is treated on the football field and they both (the dogs and Mr. Vick) respond in a similar fashion.
Football players since the conception of the game have played with many serious injuries to include concussions and many other ailments. But yet they keep going back into the game for many reasons. First, they want to please their coaches and their fans. Then they have an internal competitive drive that makes them want to win, so they never give up. There have been some players that suffer a concussion in the first quarter of the game and go back into the game one or two quarters later when they should have stay out of the game for at least a week. This is partly done because the coaches will tell them to suck it up and get in there and fight and lets win this game. If they refuse, it will make them look weak and the coach will put them on the bench and not let them play later. Then at the end of their careers when they cant perform their duties anymore they are kicked out of the NFL or fired from their jobs because they can no longer fight. Does this sound familiar? To me this sounds like the same situation where dogs are forced to fight under. In the dog ring; the dogs are treated the same way. They are forced to continue to fight even if they are hurt because their master will lose money if their dog quits or loses the fight. The dogs are eager to please their master and want to make them proud and happy. The dogs see their masters cheering them on and the masters intentionally try to stay in the dogs vision so the dog is reminded of their presence so they wont quit. Once the dog is to beat up