Just out of curiosity, how much football do you actually play? I don't condone diving but it is not a black and white issue. The fact is there is a lot of physical play and jostling that goes on and a lot of it is over the line and the fact is, generally speaking, if you don't fall down, the ref doesn't call it. I see it in my son's games, especially when the other team has some older or bigger kids, players will take a lot of physical liberties. Again, I reiterate that as a spectator I also see too much diving in the sport and yell at the screen as much as the next guy, but I also understand that on the field you can only take getting hip-checked off the ball so many times before you let gravity take its course.
When I play with friends we play for fun and we do not play clean and there's no ref and that's just understood as part of the game. There's a couple of guys that take it too far and sometimes we have to call them out on that, but we're all friends and the group works it out. When you are playing professionally against another team though, the situation is radically different and this isn't hockey where you can send your bruiser to go start a fight with someone if he's taking liberties with your stars.
