Almost all of the outrage about Uruguay's Luis Suarez apparently taking a bite out of Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini during the 1-0 loss, which knocked the Italians out of the World Cup, has focused on what Suarez did.
Here's an opposing point of view: A former newspaper sports reporter in Worthington, Minn., Daniel Kerwin writes that he "was born in the sports-crazed land of Australia and endured the ups and downs of sports fandom while being raised on four different continents before most recently settling in Tokyo, Japan, where he teaches English." He is a graduate of Macalester College.
Here's what Kerwin posted on his Facebook page after the game:
The issue here isn't IF Suarez bit Chiellini during Uruguay's game vs. Italy, regardless if it was through malicious intent or not. I'm more interested in looking at this through an anthropologist's perspective of how people are reacting to it.
A world-class soccer player, in a sport that isn't completely lacking in physical contact, gets some teeth marks (not breaking the skin, no blood) in his shoulder late in a closely contested game. His reaction: Immediately fall to the floor and start complaining to anyone who will listen, proudly showing off to anyone who is within range "Look! He really bit me! It ACTUALLY happened! I have little bite marks in my shoulder!!!"
Whether related or not, his team immediately gives up a goal, which seals its elimination from the tournament.
This is what really gets me about professional athletes sometimes: The whole "Referee! Referee! Kiss my boo-boo and make it better! That bad, bad person over there caused me irreparable harm!" reaction, while the energy expended in this reaction proves that the player is actually perfectly fit and healthy, and sometimes is showing greater energy protesting than they have shown actually playing the sport itself during the game.
I'd MUCH rather see the player say "OK, so I got some bite marks - I'm a professional athlete playing in a close game, I'm gonna shake it off, go out there and do everything I can to win, then show off the bite marks after the game to prove that it didn't faze me... If the referee sees the incident and decides to do something, cool - my team just benefited. If not, let's go win this game by ACTUALLY playing the game."