My recent post on the MTV reality show “Two-a-Days” featuring Hoover High School’s football team <\/a>didn’t stir up much trouble when I originally posted it, aside from the interesting discussion that Jon and I had on the pros and cons of allowing cuss words to be heard in one’s house.<\/p>\nBut low and behold, weeks later another discussion breaks out as PIttster, a self-described “educational activist,” happens along and posts his opinion that Hoover High football is a microcosm of all that is bad about the emphasis on sports in the nation’s high schools and representative of the cancer lying at the root of America’s education woes. If you scroll down a bit and watch the repartee unfold, you’ll learn a couple of scandalous tidbits about me: a) I can get a little cussed and sarcastic when someone takes a swipe at my beloved Southland, and b) Unlike most Christians in Alabama, I am not reflexively anti-lottery.<\/p>\n
We went back and forth a little, and while PIttster and I disagree about the significance of MTV’s show and whether it truly represents “reality,” I think at the end of the day we both realized that we’re pretty much on the same team when it comes to valuing education. I appreciated his stopping by and stirring the pot. In fact, as yet another fine Game Day approaches in the Southland, it has stimulated my thoughts on the Church of Football and the role it plays, for better or worse, in Southern culture.<\/p>\n
More on that tomorrow. And I promise that I’ll reveal at least one more scandalous tidbit.\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As most regular readers know, Ocular Fusion 2.0 tends to be a non-controversial blog. Eyegal tells me that I need more “edge,” and that she would like to see me post on more “hot topics.” Well,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,40,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-college-football","category-southern-culture","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9922,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions\/9922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}