New Newsworks column: Is it time to reevaluate the preeminence of high school sports?

It starts here:

Last week seven high school football players from Sayreville War Memorial High School were charged with aggravated criminal sexual contact through a series of brutal hazing rituals. This wrenching news made headlines in the New York Times, CNN, London's Daily Mail, and Australia's International Business Times. If you google "Sayreville War Memorial High School + hazing" you'll get over one million hits. 

The plethora of news reports describes the details of the Sayreville assaults that occur every year in the beginning of the football season. First a senior player howls and turns out the lights in the locker room. Then, according to a parent of a player who requested anonymity, "in the darkness, a freshman football player would be pinned to the locker-room floor, his arms and feet held down by multiple upperclassmen." After that, the victim would be hauled to his feet and one of the perpetrators would force his finger into the victim's rectum and then stick that finger in the victim's mouth. 

In the aftermath, some New Jersey legislators, parents, teachers, and administrators are wondering if our cult of Friday Night Lights has gone too far.

Read the rest here.