The Park Cities, University Park and Highland Park, get Dallas city services, water supply, at no city tax cost to the residents. Super rich neighborhood, one of the richest in America. To add insult to injury, the Dallas Police department routinely patrols the “border” of these neighborhoods, to keep out the riffraff from the surrounding townships of Dallas, Oak Cliff, DeSoto and South Oak Cliff. Some of the most dirt poor areas of Dallas County. But the people and businesses in these townships, even though they also have the distinction of being separate municipalities, DO pay Dallas municipal taxes.
In Texas, Football is worshipped. It is their lower case g god. They sold the design to the State Legislature, which has to approve taxpayer subsidized business deals such as the New Improved cowboys stadium in Arlington, with a sliding roof over the hole , so God could still look down and watch His team play. One democratic legislator said quote “Well, if God approves of it, who are we to say different?” and voted yes to the proposition.
So now the Cowboys are no longer not in Dallas, they aren’t even in Dallas County, they are across the county line in Arlington, Tarrant Co. Texas. Just south of the Ballpark which his royal dumbness forced the City of Arlington to buy. For his team.
And the College football teams, and the high school teams, and even the Middle School teams, are considered a farm where the NFL gets to hand raise its candidates for the pro teams. Where one high school team star in a thousand gets a chance to even try out for a professional slot.
They worship the oblong ball. There was one Governor, Mark White. He was Attorney General under Republican Bill Clements, until Bush the most active death penalty freak governor in Texas, (mark white helped him along) then lost the next election to Bill Clements. One of the few powers the Governor of Texas actually has is in deciding the school curriculum. What lost Mark White the Job wasn’t his Zero Tolerance, wiretapping, warrantless searches, death death kill them all bwaaahaaahaaahaaa attitude, and laws, no sir. It was football. Specifically the No Pass, No Play law. Which is as simple as it sounds, failing grades, no extracurricular activities.
Whut do you-all mean Bubba cain’t play no more football jes cause he’s dumb as a sack of dirt? That’s downright on-American!
One thing they used to protest the law was suspending the star player of the Chess Club for failing PE at one middle school. That’ll larn them sissy-boy eggheads not to fuck with our football.
But there is one and only one good thing about the way the laws are set up.
You know the difference between an Air Force recruiter and a NCAA recruiter? The NCAA recruiter isn’t allowed on high school campuses.
The good thing is I get to use that as an example for arguing with people like our good friend Ray. Whoever he is.
Yeah, football dominated life while I was a boy growing up in Texas. My world of football was divided between sand lot games with neighboring kids, and watching the ‘grownups’ play it at the stadiums, on the radio, and on TV.
In Junior High, my passion for the game I played with my friends led me to try out, even though I despised the coach. He was the absolutely worst history teacher in the world, but he quickly taught me that the football of ‘grownups’ had more to do with military indoctrination, than the fun I had previously associated it with.
Today, as football has become even more militarized, sotted with corporate logos, and turned into a dangerous pursuit for adolescent boys commandeered by sadist coaches, I long for the
sight of kids playing tag football in the neighborhoods. They’re not out there any more. American football is now enitrely full of rot.
Hey! It’s a great game for both boys, and also would be for girls, too. That is, kids playing tag games at the park. But that has to do with children enjoying life, and not the militarized version ‘tackle’/ cripple war game, where Home Town cheers the home boys on in uniform. Where did all the children go playing football? What we got is Dick Cheney and Lockheed instead. It’s very sad.