You don't think that kids are rewarded for brutal, violent behaviour when playing such ganteel sports as Hockey and football? I grew up in a "hockey town" and I know for a glaring FACT through EXPERIENCE that many off the kids raised with hockey on the brain were far more violent than the ones that were not.
Somebody has the puck, what's the trained response? Smash 'em into the boards, that's what. Same goes for football; he's got the ball, get him! And then 10 large men commence with the attack.
Let's not forget the origins of hockey: Lacrosse. A brutal game designed to train young men for WAR where the only major objective was to injure your opponent as much as possible.
People don't often bother to study the effects of such things because it would quickly be booed down by a majority of drooling masses. Look what happened when they tried to ban body-checking from kids pee-wee hockey. There was a HUGE stink about bringing it back even though there was a PROVEN risk that these kids would be severely injured. And to top it all off, can you guess what they found out psychologically about these kids in their study? Yep. More prone to using violence as the first solution. As for the academic performance of kids, I'd have to say that it is just as bad if not WORSE. In my high school, where all the hockey players in town went, I was in an OAC english class with some that could barely read. Barely fucking read. Not one of them failed, as would have been right. The hockey jocks all passed because there is a system in place to make sure these punks continue hockey and not get sent back to grade 3 where they quit learning in the first place.
So getting to that point that you missed, my justification for calling that bunk article 'wrong-headed' is based on the fact that these people are simply demonizing something to shift the blame away from their poor parenting skills.
"Rah-rah! Ban violent video games!" Goes over a lot better with the public than, say, "ban american monday night football", don't you think?
