Massachusetts, if you can’t play nicely, we’re taking the football and going home

Given I’m about to, for the third time in 10 days, write about criminal activity surrounding football in Massachusetts, I’m calling for a ban on the game in the state, up to and including the New England Patriots.

Anyone still remember Spygate?

The latest case involving the Massachusetts constabulary comes from the suburbs of Boston, where authorities Oct. 30 charged a 17-year-old Arlington Catholic linebacker with misdemeanor assault and battery for allegedly head-butting a rival from Abington after a play was over — and after the Abington player’s helmet had already popped off.

The linebacker in question, James LaShoto, was suspended from his team for two games after the Sept. 19 incident (the minimum under state athletic association rules for unsportsmanlike conduct, though no penalty flag was thrown during the game). The Boston Globe quotes his lawyer describing him as an honors student and captain of the team. The attorney called the hit “an unfortunate play” and that charges were a “misuse of the criminal process.”

The charges were pressed by the parents of the player who was the head-buttee — Daniel Curtin, 17, who suffered a deep cut to his forehead that had to be glued shut, and has been told he’ll have a scar there the rest of his life. “We’re hoping that by doing this, this doesn’t happen again to anybody,” Daniel’s mother, Paula, told the Globe.

There’s only one way this won’t happen to anyone again — a ban on football in Massachusetts. With this, the East Lynn Pop Warner team with homeless beaters on it, and the coach charged after popping a parent, maybe the game is more responsibility than the state can handle.

Plus, it’ll stop ridiculous TV reports like one turned in by Jorge Quiroga of WCVB in Boston. I don’t care how many awards he’s won — what made Quiroga think  it was a good idea to have a fake POV shot through a facemask of his helmetless, hairless head, followed by a blurred shot of the field? If he was trying to let viewers know what being head-butted was like for Daniel Curtin, why didn’t he go all the way and have the camera head-butt him?