This outstanding trick play video made its way around the Internet and back earlier this month, but I’m bringing it back up for a reason. In case you haven’t seen it, let’s back up for a moment:
VIDEO: Trick Plays Are Ruining America’s Children
Amazing, right? It’s a bold, inventive, and funny variant of dead-ball trickery that I think we all really enjoyed. Except for NPR’s Frank Deford, who describes this as child abuse. Yes, he really said that:
No, it was only the other team’s kids who were embarrassed and belittled by a children’s coach being a wise guy, a bully of sorts. It wasn’t genius at all; rather, it was a form of child abuse. Sure, it was legal, but it wasn’t fair.
The headline of this piece (Trickery On The Football Field: Like Child Abuse?) suggests to me that the editor on duty reviewed this bizarre evisceration and did the best he could to not endorse it. The first objection that comes to mind is that this statement trivializes child abuse, which is not a good thing, and the second, of course, is this: the idea that being involved in a trick play will turn America’s children into tax-evading insider-trading jaywalking mattress-tag-removing graffiti artist murderers.
Frank Deford is lamenting a brazen act of deception committed in a game of football, which is itself a game of deception. Remarkable!
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