Being Fair

ryan footballI study history. In history there are winners and there are losers. Rarely is there an actual good guy and an actual bad guy. Most of the time it’s more of a shade of gray than black and white. Often the people we want to believe are the good guys, do bad guy things. Is the good guy always the weaker? Is the bad guy always the stronger one? I think not and I will explain why.

When I played football in my late twenties , I was pretty good, not just because I was 6-4 and 300 pounds, but because I was 6-4 300 pounds and worked my ass off. I was gifted genetically, I was naturally athletic, and I had a good work ethic on top of it. This meant that I was much stronger than most people and faster and quicker to boot. So one game when I was giving an opponent a physics lesson and it was like I was playing against a grade schooler, the opponent started playing dirty. It didn’t help him much and it made me angry. I started out by telling the referee “That guy keeps diving into my legs sir, that’s against the rules in this league, and if he does it again, I am going to hurt him.”

The ref said “Look, he’s a hundred pounds lighter than you and a foot shorter, so if he goes low on you, it’s because you are so much bigger that it’s not fair. It’s not slowing you down much anyway so suck it up.”

I smiled at him and said “So when the running back who is a hundred pounds lighter than me, is faster and runs away from me, should he have to wear a backpack filled with weights you know, to make it fair?”

The ref laughed and said “Point taken but unless he really dives at your legs I’m not calling it.”

He did it a few more times and I was doing a slow burn. The next series the guy dove into my legs while I was engaged with someone else. I sprained my knee, and felt it pop, so I jumped up in the air and came down hard, coincidentally on my elbow, and also coincidentally on the guys back. I heard the ribs snap, and he screamed and started writhing around. I got up and hobbled off to the side. The other ref came running over and started yelling at me “I saw what you did, you are out of here!” The ref I had spoken to earlier came over and said “66 was within the rules, but the guy who just dove at his legs while someone else was blocking him is going to be suspended, that was deliberate intent to injure.” He grabbed me and said “Go to the sideline for a series” The ambulance came and hauled the other guy away. We finished the game and afterwards the ref came over and apologized. He said “I should have called it earlier, is your knee ok?” I said it was fine.

I am not telling you this because I’m proud that I had to take matters into my own hands, but because there is a lesson there. When someone starts breaking the rules you have to call them out, because it ALWAYS escalates. That guy went from diving at my knees, to waiting until someone else was blocking me and then diving at my legs, and that’s about as deliberate intent to injure as it gets in football. The ref knew that by not calling it earlier the guy got bolder and did it again. So I finally dealt with it. I guarantee the guy with the busted ribs would have preferred the penalty. If I had not dealt with it, I would have ended up with far more than a sprained knee. I could have ended up with a severe knee injury. But I do blame the ref who knew what was happening but chose to ignore the rules to be “fair”. It ended up with a guy getting some seriously busted ribs and I had a knee sprain that took a month to heal.

So by attempting to be “fair” and ignoring what was really happening, that ref made things worse. The rules are there for a reason. I had a reputation as a guy who never played dirty – it was why people respected me even though I talked a lot of trash and backed it up on the field. The second lesson is that if you do have to take matters into your own hands, do it smart – make sure the message sent is the one that you want sent.

We have to remind people that when there actually is a good and bad guy, we need to make certain we do not lose sight of that fact by trying to be “fair.” I was not automatically the bad guy simply because I am genetically gifted and the other guy wasn’t. In fact, he was definitively the bad guy, the one breaking the rules and playing dirty and even trying to deliberately injure his opponent. I simply retaliated within the rules.

The bottom line is that I believe very strongly in fairness, but it must be real fairness. I believe in justice, but it must be real justice. I refuse to be someone who simply bases my morals and beliefs on a popularity contest. In fact often if everyone is agreeing on something I dig deeper to make damn sure it’s not flawed.

I don’t do this for money or for fame. If I wanted those things I would have taken another path, but I do want my beliefs to become mainstream, and this requires more people not just using the arguments but manifesting the truth behind them. I want people to think critically, to understand that fairness and justice are not just words but important concepts to live your life by.

2 thoughts on “Being Fair”

  1. Had a similar experience as a wrestler in high school. I was on top and behind my opponent with a cross face hold and this guy starts chewing on my forearm. The ref ignored it even though I said to him “Ref make this guy quit biting me”. We went out of bounds the ref looked at my forearm and I had a perfect dental impression on my arm including breaking the skin. He did nothing. So I went back into the match and had his right arm in a bar across his back and he was on his back. I put his hand on top of his head dislocating his shoulder. After declaring me the winner the ambulance took him away and he never wrestled again.

    The Islamofascist colonists are kind of like a bully in a schoolyard. They are smacking a much bigger guy in head with a rock and constantly running to the teacher to whine how we are about to hurt them for no reason.

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