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For some reason, our legislature seems bent on
protecting children this session, and thus An act
concerning regulation of sexually explicit representations
that are harmful to minors
has passed the House and now
sits before a Senate committee.
Meanwhile, just about every important person in America has hastened to denounce Janet Jackson's half-time display on national television at the Superbowl last Sunday. Closer to home, there are plausible charges that the University of Colorado at Boulder recruits football players by throwing parties which include sex and alcohol.
Somehow, this all seems to be converging, and we can start with House Bill 1078, introduced by Rep. Ted Harvey, a Republican from Highlands Ranch.
At first glance, it would protect Colorado children from
Janet Jackson, since it would outlaw any electronic
depiction
of the nipple or any portion of the areola
of the human female breast
to any person who is
younger than 18 years of age and who is not married or
legally emancipated.
But upon further examination, this bill probably wouldn't do the job. The law covers only commercial settings, not the home, and that's where kids watched the MTV Superbowl halftime show.
So despite their best efforts, the purification forces can't even come up with a law that covers the most notorious case of exposure, and I hate even to speculate how minors were harmed by this. In fact, I have trouble even imagining how they might have been damaged.
Meanwhile, the football recruitment program at CU has been accused of supplying youngsters, not with provocative images, but with the real thing.
If we start with the premise that it is important for our state's flagship university to have a winning big-time football program so that alumni will donate to the school, then the rest follows logically. College football programs are all about recruiting: attracting 17- and 18-year-old boys who have athletic talent.
It has been 35 years since I was 18, but as best as I can remember, a program that featured booze and sex would certainly have given me a favorable impression of a college.
So I don't find the accusations hard to believe. Nor do I think it matters much who is in charge of the CU football program. As long as CU is supposed to be competitive, then it will have to recruit, and if any schools are offering such inducements, CU will be tempted, lest some agile linebacker or fleet flanker choose a school that is less fastidious.
Now the convergence: In order to accomplish its noble task of protecting Colorado children, and to solve certain other problems, the legislature should outlaw football in Colorado. Make it illegal to play it or watch it at any level, from Pop Warner to the NFL.
It's not as though we don't outlaw other sports, like bull-fighting, dog-fighting and cock-fighting, in the interest of protecting society and the participants. So a ban must be constitutional.
Some argue that at the major-college level, football at least pays for itself. But that certainly isn't true at middle schools and high schools, so eliminating football there would put more education dollars into the classroom.
There's the cliche that sports builds character,
but those recruiting parties don't sound like
character-building exercises, and it's a rare day that the
sports pages don't mention professional athletes charged
with rape, drug abuse, assault, gambling or the like.
Then there's the actual physical health of children. The Journal of the American Medical Association reports that in a typical year, 38,600 high-school football players suffer traumatic brain injury. According to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, there are 448,000 football injuries in children under 15 each year.
When it comes to maiming children, Colorado's share is about 550 cases of brain damage in high-school boys, and 6,400 injuries to younger players, every year. Outlawing football would eliminate those injuries -- which should reduce health-insurance premiums, too.
We wouldn't have to worry about recruiting scandals at CU, real or alleged. Nor would we have to concern ourselves with Janet Jackson's anatomy, since the half-time show was part of a game that would be illegal to watch.
So the legislature really could protect Colorado children from actual physical injuries, while saving money in the process. But for some reason, I don't think that's going to happen.
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