Brandon Spikes suspended for eye gouging
From Flickr. com. And No, gouging isn't cool.
Brandon Spikes, a middle linebacker for the University of Florida Gators football squad, has been suspended for a whole half a game after gouging the eyes of a downed opponent in the Gator’s recent game against the University of Georgia Bulldogs.
Since then, searches for and views of the Brandon Spikes eye gouging video have been popular, and some people would give short term loans for bad credit to see him not take the field again for at least a game or two. Some will doubtless take the minimal sentence as evidence of the ridiculous favoritism showed college athletes, as a half game for an eye gouge is a light sentence.
Well…maybe those critics have something there.
A half game off is a light sentence for such a dangerous action. There is currently no sport in which eye gouging is close to being allowed. Not to mention that the Brandon Spikes eye gouging video shows he gouged the eye of a down player. Not to knock the Gator’s football program, but that is cowardly.
In American Football, people wear helmets, and as a result, there can be no such thing as an accidental eye gouge or fish hook. Even some past infamous enforcers never tried to commit such egregious offenses – people like Jack Lambert, Lawrence Taylor, Jack Tatum, Dick Butkus, or Ray Nitschke never had to resort to gouging – they let the hits do the talking.
If we are going to have some sort of pretense that athletes aren’t given rampant favoritism at the university level, he should get far more than a half game off. If someone were to stand up and chin the nearest student in Anthro 101, they would be expelled, and probably prosecuted.
What? Did he think it was a rugby match?
The glorious sport that gave birth to gridiron football is played without padding, and the occasional eye gouge does happen as well, but since there aren’t any helmets used in the Game Played in Heaven, it’s harder to prevent, but it can be accidental. That said, it isn’t tolerated, at all – two recent instances of eye gouging resulted in long bans. For instance, a test match in July between South Africa and the British and Irish Lions in which South Africa’s Schalk Burger accidentally gouged the eye of an opposition player got him 8 weeks out. For an ACCIDENT – Spikes’ infraction was intentional, and even though it’s claimed he was only retaliating, this is unacceptable.
If we’re going to justify the ridiculous nature of college sports, let’s have some higher standards.
Though many people enjoy college sports, and there isn’t intrinsically wrong with it. That said, a lot of people get to go to college for free because of sports. I’m sorry, but if a potential genius engineer or physicist doesn’t get to go to university because they can’t come up with the requisite cash advance in Compton loans for tuition, but someone else DOES because whatever pitiful thing they can do on a field – something is wrong. The Brandon Spikes eye gouging video makes it obvious that this was no accident – and if I were a Gator student, I would be spitting mad because the athletics program had cheapened the integrity of the academic establishment for the sake of some silly GAME.
