What the fuck? NFL Player's Injury blamed on video games

[Zimbacca]

while checking game politics I came across this article.  Needless to say my reaction was "what the fuck?"

When Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett suffered paralysis on Sunday following a big hit, it was a personal and professional tragedy.

But football injuries are common - that's why the NFL maintains an Injured Reserve List - and even crippling ones such as Everett's are not unheard of (see: Darryl Stingley, Dennis Byrd and others). In fact, in the early part of the 20th Century, President Theodore Roosevelt threatened to outlaw the sport due to the number of deaths among college players. Ultimately, helmets, other equipment and rule changes helped make football less deadly.

So GP was surprised to see Virginia Pilot columnist Bob Molinaro drag video games into a discussion of Everett's injury under the headline Video-game generation may be desensitized to NFL injuries:

    I imagine there's a large segment of NFL fans that envisions pro football to be the embodiment of the video games they love to play.

    …I've got a feeling that a certain percentage of males, those whose senses have been bombarded by video violence all their lives, are attracted to pro football by the slickly edited TV images that are a variation of their virtual-reality experiences.

    This makes me wonder if the catastrophic injury to Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett will make any real impression on the desensitized adolescents and adults raised with the cartoon violence of “Madden ‘08″ or “NFL Blitz,” or the absurd blood-and-guts scenarios associated with other Xbox games.

    …I wonder if any of this hits home with the very large and growing demographic that comes to football through the make-believe violence of video games. In that world, jacked-up players always bounce back, returning as good as new when the game is switched on.

GP: The invention of American football preceded that of video games by roughly 100 years, and it's always been a dangerous sport. Participants opt in knowing that they risk injury. Relating what happened to Kevin Everett to folks playing Madden is simply ludicrous. Molinaro comes off looking like just another guy who doesn't get gamers.

Meanwhile, the latest reports we've seen indicate that Kevin Everett is doing much better and we wish him all the best.

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http://gamepolitics.com/2...t-the-blame-huh/#comments

[Tynstar]

He is right do to the fact that I have played video games so much I can't tell the difference from video game violence and real violence. What a stupid jack off.

[The Metamorphosing Leon]

Well really the fatalities in the Madden '08 were a bit uncalled for.

[shaggy]

WTF?  This is the first time I saw this post.  That is just ludicrious.  What's next?  Choking on food is linked to playing video games?!

[Mars]

  Just as well the writer never played Mutant League Football

[Mike Leon]

Dear Kevin Everett,

Dance now, you over-paid clown!

When I first saw this post I thought it was about the Madden curse. Even that is more believable than this hack writer's bullshit no-story.

[cyberfluxor]

The internet is worst than video games. We have access to unedited videos of death and extreme violence, though it's at your choice to watch it. There's also some brutal porn but lets not quite go into that right now.

[Gentlegamer]

I think he has a valid general point about the desensitizing nature of modern culture. Maybe he's venturing into tool territory by seeming to jump to a quick generalization about modern video gamers, but otherwise I think he's right.