Monthly Archives: June 2011

Chris Bosh, Dallas Mavericks, Dirk Nowitzki, Dwayne Wade, LeBron James, Miami Heat, Michael Jordan, Michael Wilbon, NBA, NBA Finals

In The Garden of Good and Evil

A guest writer and I tackle the sordid story of the 2011 NBA Finals and LeBron James:
 
Thanks, LeBron
By Wes Carmony
America owes LeBron James a thank you card.
I wouldn’t go as far as sending a gift, but a short, punchy exclamation of appreciation at the very least. We all owe him, probably no one more than Dirk Nowitzki.
Through James’ complete lack of self awareness, his preening, his championship predictions and yes, even his brilliant play, James managed to turn the Miami Heat into the greatest wrestling heels of all time. The only thing missing was LeBron distracting Joey Crawford while Dwayne Wade struck Dirk with a metal folding chair.
The man who has managed to become the most polarizing athlete of our generation turned one of the most beloved NBA superstars in the game (Wade) and an unassuming, soft spoken All-Atar (Chris Bosh) into super-villain running mates.
“The James Gang”, were led (though often times from the back) by the most physically gifted basketball player since Wilt Chamberlain. The Heat transformed the 2011 NBA Finals from a mere sporting event into a referendum on good versus evil, team versus individuals, instant gratification versus the sustained effort.
I am not a Mavericks fan; truth be told I don’t particularly care for anyone on their team.
Jason “Jet” Terry annoys me, JJ Berea reminds me of a Y-Leaguer who plays way too hard and fouls all the time. Dirk is soft, Shawn Marion and Jason Kidd are washed up and possibly decomposing. Their coach, Rick Carlisle, is a retread; their owner, Mark Cuban, a loudmouth. The Mavericks are not particularly fun to watch, and I predicted they’d be ousted in the first round of this year’s playoffs.
Yet I watched every minute of every game of these NBA Finals. Down the stretch of every fourth quarter I sat on the edge of my seat, heart pounding, pleading for the lanky German to toss in another twisting, fall away 18-footer. 
Thanks LeBron. Without you these finals would’ve been an afterthought.
As much as I rooted for you to fail before you got to these Finals, I see now how wrong I was. You wanted to be a global icon, a brand, something bigger than the game. Well, you are all of those things. You are perhaps the single biggest villain in the history of team sports. Well done.
As an avid NBA consumer this past decade, I’ve watched Dirk Nowitzki and thought the same thing everyone else thought: he’s soft, shrinks in big moments, probably a good player, but not an all time great. 
Not anymore. 
Some would say winning an NBA title regardless of the opponent would erase all of those stigmas, I call BS. Dirk presided over two of the larger post season collapses I’ve ever witnessed. Being eliminated in the first round by the 8th seeded Warriors a few years back, just days after receiving what should have been Kobe Bryant’s MVP trophy for one, completely derailing in the 2006 Finals against the Heat for another.
I suspect we won’t be hearing about those failures anytime soon. Dirk’s legacy is forever changed, partially through his own brilliance on the court, but even more so by the man he denied a title.
A Mavs victory over the Chicago Bulls wouldn’t have sparked the same rhetoric, the same reverence, or the same cache Dirk now enjoys.
Dirk owes LeBron the biggest thank you of all.
Without LeBron, Dirk is just another aging superstar capturing an elusive ring on the back nine of his career, a nice story to be sure, but one we’ve seen before.
Without LeBron, the story could just as easily have been about the Los Angeles Lakers collapsing in the second round, Derrick Rose’s growth as a player, or even the Mavs winning their first ever championship.
Instead the story is about one man standing against all that is wrong in the (sports) world, hard work and substance overcoming glamour and preening, good triumphing over evil.
Dirk isn’t just an NBA champion, he’s a hero to all of us who wanted the “good guys” to win one. 
Admittedly it sounds a little clichéd, a little fantastic – after all it’s just a sporting event. But my goose bumps and racing heart would argue otherwise.  I watched a player I never particularly cared for hoist the championship trophy last night and felt tears well up in my eyes. I’m guessing I wasn’t the only one. 
In the aftermath of the collapse, James sat at the podium and responded to a question about the effect of all of America rooting against him. He said (in true heel fashion) that essentially we would all have to go back to our little lives, our same problems tomorrow, but that he’d still be LeBron James. And he’s right, but I have to be honest, my little life is a little brighter today because of his failure.
Thanks LeBron, we all owe you one. 
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The Hypocritical Oath
By Brian Moore
Our own hypocrisy has led to this moment – one where LeBron James is evil incarnate, some combination of The Emperor from “Star Wars”, Mr. Potter from “It’s a Wonderful Life” and Gordon Gekko from “Wall Street”.
Oh, sure, James has blood on his hands for his own wrecked image. The prediction of six or seven titles did not help. The preening and mockery of the “Welcome Party” last summer did not make us all warm and fuzzy. And “taking my talents to South Beach” became an epic punch line within days. As did giving money to the Boys and Girls Club of Greenwich, Connecticut.
He’s not innocent in all this. James wanted to be the man with his words and actions.
We are all witnesses to so many different things. Poor shooting. An ego run amok. Possible shrinkage in tight games in the fourth quarter. But also witnesses to our own hypocrisy.
I certainly can’t defend James on the shooting, the non-aggressive play, the shying away in big moments. I cannot defend the preening, the ego, the narcissism. I can’t and I won’t.
But I can’t defend our sick obsession with James, either. We kill James – and I mean shred him – for doing things others have done and continue to do. The only difference is they get a pass.
James got killed for walking off the court a few years ago and not shaking hands with the opponents following the end of a playoff series. Um, didn’t Dirk bolt off the floor with seconds remaining last night? He ran off the floor so fast, I thought he was heading to the restroom due to something he ate. Oh, that’s different because Dirk has been cast as the hero and the hero can’t do something in poor sportsmanship when he just won the title. Give him a pass.
Right this way, Dirk. Sorry LeBron, your hairline is receding at 26. You’ll be blasted for that in a column tomorrow. Plus, I didn’t like your tie.
That is not meant to be a defense for James’ actions – just pointing out the double standard.
These NBA Finals were a referendum on good versus evil? Please – it was a referendum on basketball.
I can poke holes in James’ game – the lack of aggressiveness in Games 4 and 5, the disappearing act in Game 3. But anyone notice Dallas shot something like 98.2 percent from the 3-point line? Anyone notice scrubs like Brian Cardinal and Ian Mahinmi contributing jumpers, charges and threes? JJ Barea playing out of his mind?
This all factors into the equation – or at least it should.
But we choose to only see LeBron James vs. Dirk Nowitzki. Or James vs. the Mavericks. Or James vs. the fourth quarter. Or James vs. Wade. If it’s truly a referendum on team vs. individuals, why are we doing this?
I’ve been saying this repeatedly: James is not in the same category as the greatest players of all-time. He’s a special hybrid of Scottie Pippen and Magic Johnson, perhaps the most talented athlete we’ve ever had in the NBA. He does not have the mental make-up of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant or Larry Bird.
If you move past the emotional, which is difficult for most, just realize what he is: Scottie Pippen upgraded with a dash of Magic. Now, take out the part of the driven, motivated, blood thirsty reputation. He doesn’t have it. He is what he is.
If he was like Jordan, and punched teammates in the face – well, we’d rip him for that, too. At 26, James has his legacy discussed and valued like a piece of stock on Wall Street.
Granted, he doesn’t help himself often, by you know, speaking. But this isn’t just a LeBron problem – it’s a we problem.
The media picked up on the reaction to “The Decision” and spun it the best way possible to reach the crowd. We’re a blood thirsty bunch, real sharks in the water – always looking for an enemy. If we smell something foul, we make it putrid and vomit inducing.
Our collective hatred of the Heat and dislike for James has made us sound like the people shouting for Barabbas. Dirk Nowitzki should thank James. Dirk’s career, however spotty in the past, is now made because he slayed the dragon. But was it really a dragon?
We’re forgetting why James went to Miami. By joining the Heat, he openly admitted he was not good enough to do it on his own. James wanted and needed help. He waved the white flag and joined another star’s team.
We should acknowledge every team needs multiple stars, we just didn’t like the way LeBron did it. That’s what this is all about: we don’t like how LeBron James handled himself, now and in the past. That’s totally fine. We are allowed to dislike how people handle themselves.
James and the Heat are hated – but they’ve sold the most the most jerseys in the NBA this season.
People say, “I can’t root for a team that came together like that – a bunch of superstars playing on the same team!” Weird, we all were pretty big fans of the 1992 U.S. Olympic team, aka, “The Dream Team”. Oh, that’s different though, because we’re the United States and it was to beat all those dirty foreigners, right?
I hear Jordan would have never left the Bulls to play with another superstar. He didn’t need to – the team drafted a top 50 player (Pippen, who who was an MVP candidate and led the Bulls to 55 wins in 1994, during Jordan’s first retirement). Charles Barkley practically burned down the city of Philadelphia trying to escape the 76ers in the early 90s, until he was traded to Phoenix, where a much better team awaited him. Then, in the late 90s, he joined Hakeem Olajuwon, Pippen and Clyde Drexler in Houston. Magic Johnson came to a team with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then they drafted James Worthy. Bird had McHale and Parrish, as well as Dennis Johnson and Danny Ainge.
When you are desperate to win multiple championships – which is what you have to do now in the post-Jordan era – all bets are off the table. I hope we go after Carmelo Anthony, once the New York Knicks add Chris Paul in a couple years. And we’ve never really had a problem with Boston putting three stars together.
So it has to be about the whole marketing of “The Decision.”
By my friend’s own admission, if the Mavericks would have beaten the Chicago Bulls, it would not have meant as much. Doesn’t that tell us something?
Aren’t we a little too wrapped up in this? We should see ourselves for who we are, too.
Dante Stallworth ran over someone with his car and killed the man a few years back. He served about 30 days in jail and is playing football.
And this is where our outcry, venom and moral outrage lies? With LeBron James and the Miami Heat? You know what will be funny? When time passes and everything comes full circle.
People will stop paying attention and it will die down. Comedians like Jon Stewart will start cracking jokes about how ironic it was we took this whole thing so personally and seriously. “60 Minutes” will do some piece called “The Lonely Life of LeBron James” or he’ll save some cat from a tree and James and the Heat will become sympathetic figures at some point. James will have some good games, remind people of a better version of Scottie Pippen, Wade will led them and the Heat will win a title or three.
And the media will shower LeBron and the Heat with praise, call him unselfish and one of the top 10 players all-time.
We’re all witnesses, all right.
To the biggest hypocrisy I’ve ever seen. 

Got feedback? E-mail bri_moore@hotmail.com to share.

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Kentucky Wildcats, Larry Bird, LeBron James, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, NBA, Rick Pitino, Scottie Pippen, Walter McCarty

The "It" Factor and LeBron James

“They are who we want to be, but can’t be because they can do things, or at least have the ability to do things, we couldn’t. We idolize them, though we shouldn’t, because it’s what we want.”
This was a statement made by a friend at the conclusion of a nearly four hour conversation around sports, athletes, our reality, their reality and what it all means. Some alcohol may have been involved.
It all centered around LeBron James and his play, not just in the NBA Finals, but the nonsensical idea of debating a 26-year-old’s legacy when he is not even halfway through his career.
My stance is and remains simple: I’ve accepted James for who he is. He is a hybrid version of Scottie Pippen and Magic Johnson, two of the greatest basketball players I have ever seen. Noticed I said two of the greatest, not the greatest. James is not in the same league or category as Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. And not just because of the rings. It is because he is a completely different kind of player.
My friend’s stance is and remains just as simple: As a former athlete, like myself, he can never understand why James has all the physical tools, but none of the mental makeup of the all time greats. To him – and even a James defender like me – we cannot understand how he has shied away from the leadership, the hunger and desire required to be in the realm of Jordan, Bird, Magic, Kobe and Bill Russell.
“We had that desire and 10 percent of the talent,” my friend says, voice raised and fists clutched. “I can’t root for a guy like that – it’s wrong against every notion of what sports are supposed to be about.”
And then he dropped the quote on me that led this blog.
Is that why we watch sports? Move beyond the entertainment and escape from our everyday lives, and ask yourself why you watch sports. We have a vested interest in teams and players we know nothing about. We loathe them and love them at the same time. We bemoan their salaries and then turn around and buy their jerseys.
For me, I do it because I am a history guy. I majored in it in college and love the stories. That’s really all history is, somebody’s story or interpretation of what happened. Their reality becomes ours.
So for someone like me, sports are a big part of my life so that one day I can tell people, we were there when “it” happened. I do not often recall games from 10 years ago, but I can tell you who won and the interactions I had with the people in the room. I know where I was for the 2004 American League Championship Series, when the Boston Red Sox became the first team in baseball history to come back from a three game hole and win a seven game series.
I can tell you where I was when the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons had their brawl. I can tell you about being in Yankee Stadium, as a Red Sox fan, with my dad, a Yankee fan, on September 11, 2008 – when the emotion of the seventh anniversary of 9/11 and the eighth-to-last game ever to be played in the “House That Ruth Built” had grown men in the Brox bleachers in uncontrollable, sobbing tears.
Basically, whatever “it” is, it was great and you should have been there.
But do we really want to be the people we watch? Do we wish we had their talents and their reality?
The only way I can explain it is this: our reverence fades and we try to replace it, but never can. I have a personal example with this.
In 1996, the University of Kentucky won the NCAA men’s basketball championship. I watched the game with my family as a high school sophomore on Spring Break in Sanibel Island, Florida.
The team was loaded with NBA talent: Tony Delk hit seven threes in the game, Walter McCarty was an athletic freak who ran, dunked, slashed and defended. Antoine Walker was too big a star to be in college. Jeff Sheppard was a pogo stick with deadly range. Ron Mercer was a sensational freshman destined to led the team the following year. Not to be listed as footnotes: Derek Anderson, Nazr Mohammed, Wayne Turner and coach Rick Pitino.
They were called “The Untouchables” because they were so good, no one could hang with them. Nine players ended up in the NBA from that team.
Two months after they won the title, I found myself in a Lexington dorm room at Rick Pitino’s basketball camp. One of my good friends was a huge Kentucky fan and had talked me into going with him for a couple of years. It was always enjoyable and you picked up some good drills, plus, every now and then, some of the players would be around and you could watch them play pickup ball in the evenings after dinner.
That year was different. We’d be watching the players of the current reigning National Champions. That week was different, too. Every player was there – and they were acting as camp instructors and coaches.
As luck would have it, I ended up on Walter McCarty’s team.
The week was a blur. McCarty was on cloud nine after winning the title and, as a senior, he was headed to the NBA Draft, so he was in a great mood and fun loving. The seven of us chosen to play on his team felt like his buddies, members of a special posse for the man they called “Ice”.
We had a pregame chant (we played twice a day in between drills and stations and McCarty was with us at least 12 hours a day):
McCarty: “Who you with?”
Us “”Ice!”
McCarty: “Who you with?”
Us: “ICE!”
McCarty: “What time is it?”
Us: “Game time!”
McCarty: “What time is it?”
Us: “GAME TIME!”
It’s been 15 years and I still have that etched in my brain. McCarty laid down a nickname for me – “Flyin’ Brian” – for the way I hustled and flew all over the court. He nicknamed everyone on the team. We had pizza and video game parties in his room several times and he’d point at us during the player scrimmages when we did something. We’d all yell out “Ice!!!” in unison.
We were hooked. It was surreal. At 16, I spent a week hanging out with a future NBA player who was riding a wave of good reviews following the NCAA Tournament. In two weeks, he’d be picked 19th overall in the first round by the New York Knicks.
Throughout the week, I felt terrible for my friend. He was the Kentucky fan, but not as lucky with his assigned coach. Each night, I’d relay to him in graphic detail the events of the day, from what shoes McCarty had on to how funny his jokes were. It was a simultaneous feeling of guilt and joy. I could not contain the joy of having hung out with McCarty all day, but telling him made me feel like he was dying a little on the inside.
I left that camp the biggest Walter McCarty fan on the planet. For his first year in the NBA, I followed his box score every day, hoping to see how well he did. It was personal. I had shared experiences with him and we were buds.
Except we really were not. I suppose it’s the same feeling someone gets from a fantasy camp, those guys that spend $50,000 to go and play with Michael Jordan at his camp for a day. You want to share that floor, that moment, with them.
Over the years, I lost track of McCarty’s career and certainly didn’t follow him as closely as I did as an impressionable teenager. And like many fans, you follow a player you like and then you move on – always looking for the next one, the next superstar, the next thrilling moment, the next time you’ll be sharing real time and hard reality with them.
And so it is with LeBron. He’s dealing with an entire generation of media and fans that grew up with Jordan, Magic and Bird, Pippen and Kobe. We’ve seen greatness and we want it again. We just want it to be better than it was before, we want LeBron to be better than anything we’ve ever seen, mainly just so we can say we saw it and we were there.
But it can’t be better, because nothing can ever be replicated. Take my week hanging out with Walter McCarty. I will absolutely not have another experience with an athlete as cool as that. Too many mitigating factors at play: my age, my peak interest in basketball, McCarty’s rise to mid-level celebrity, Kentucky on the heels of a title, Pitino the hottest coach in basketball, possibly playing some of my best ball and growing into my own as a shooter that summer and the hype of “The Untouchables.”
It was unexpected and could not be compared. Jordan wasn’t expected to win six rings. At 28, when we won his first one, we just hoped he’d win a couple and be in the conversation. James is 26. Every game his legacy is dissected, every game our opinion of him moves.
And yes, some of it is deserved. When you preen and dance and take the mantle of King or Chosen One and join up with two of the top 10 players in the league, you’re going to be despised. That’s a whole other discussion, frankly.
Just for now, we have to stop doing a disservice by comparing James to Jordan and the other greats. Not for James’ sake – but for our own. Because no matter how good or how bad, he’s never going to be good enough for us.
Remember, we can’t make them be what we want as people or athletes. And even if we could, we wouldn’t really want it that way because it wouldn’t feel real. But it does not stop us from wanting that of athletes and of sports. 

We still want to be there when it happens.
Whatever “it” is.
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Dennis Miller, ESPN, Neal Kumar Katyal, President Barack Obama, Reality TV, Stuart Scott, The Kardashians

Enough Already

To borrow heavily from Dennis Miller’s schtick, I don’t mean to get off on a rant here, but…
Enough.
Enough with the political nonsense.
Enough with the cell phone pics of places no one but your spouse or mistress wants to see. What on earth possesses anyone famous or in the public eye to take pictures of themselves naked is beyond me. The interest our society shows in these little sagas and scandals proves how nosy we really are.
Enough with reality shows.
There is literally a reality show for everything.
A husband and a wife with eight kids. Then, just the ex-wife and eight kids.
A show about pre-teen beauty pageant participants and their crazy mothers.
Cooking shows – and genres of cooking have their own shows, let us not forget the subtle and intricate differences between soufflés and crème brulees.
Reality shows about tattoos, motorcycle shops, people who cannot throw anything away (I believe they are called hoarders), athletes wives, desperate housewives (and the apparent multiple cities where desperate rich housewives reside).
Shows about bachelors and bachelorettes, many of whom shocking cannot get a relationship right while being filmed and thus return to said show for another crack at it. There’s also celebrity versions of this same concept with washed up 80s rockers and rappers.
Shows about people with talent and all categories of talent: singing mainly, then off the wall talent. It’s like a seventh grade lunchroom: “Dude, I can totally roll my eyes in a complete 360, then stick a spoon on my nose for 15 hours.” Someone get that kid from my middle school an agent!
There are also shows about people with no talent (eg, the Kardashians) who show us how tiring it is to do nothing all day.
There are shows about what to wear and what not to wear, makeup, hair, how to pimp your ride, how celebrities get punked, swapping wives and getting in shape, undercover bosses, high school football teams and high schools in rich areas of California.
Sadly, we’re only scratching the surface. Yet none of these reality shows is about the reality a majority of us see in our day to day lives. Why not make a reality show about politicians and what they do day-to-day.
Scratch that, it would be just like the Kardashians show, only somehow less entertaining.
Enough with President Obama’s solicitor general telling Americans who disagree with Obamacare to make less money as a way to get out of it. “Someone doesn’t need that much income,” Neal Kumar Katyal said. Americans who cannot afford rising gas prices and general inflation (while salary increases stay around 1-3 percent) might disagree with that notion.
By the way, polls show the majority of the country’s population disagree with Obamacare in its current state. Excellent pandering to constituents on Katyal’s part.
Enough of pretending to care about the national deficit. No one in office seems to actually do anything about it. Everyone running for office says they will.
Enough of the rhetoric. The national debt was $14,352,131,100,710.65 as of June 9, 2011 at 3:00PM. It will be billions more tomorrow.
That’s not a joke – the national debt has risen $3.96 billion a day since September 28, 2007. Your share, as of 3:00PM on June 9, 2011: $46,189.48.
Someone make a reality show about that: a person going to a bank or Washington and asking who to make the check out to for their share of the national debt.
Enough of the NFL lockout and the hypocrisy of it really mattering. It kills my fantasy football league and our message board, but we will all be OK until all the extremely rich and pampered stop fighting over how to split up $9 billion.
Enough of President Obama threatening to hold back funds on states that passed legislation to defund certain programs. Is this not the same as the argument that you cannot defund Obamacare, since elected officials passed it? Elected officials in states are just as important as those at the federal level. Stop making everything government owned and operated. Spend a little less time congratulating yourself on your correct ESPN bracketology picks. We would prefer a President who nails a solution to the national debt and unemployment while boosting the economy, not one who got 97 percent of his first and second round NCAA men’s basketball tournament picks right.
Enough pretending the royals in England matter. Two people got married. Happens all the time. They should have televised my wedding if you wanted entertainment. One of my groomsmen demanded a make-out session from nearly everyone in attendance. And yes, it was an open bar.
By the way, her name is Kate. Not Catherine. People quit changing your names in the middle of the game. You know what, let’s do that. I’d like to go by Vladimir The Impaler for the next five years. You can call me Vlad for short.
Enough of rich celebrities pretending care about fur. Enough of rich celebrities getting naked for magazine ads to promote caring about fur. You can just admit you want to be naked in front of a camera that isn’t a cell phone.
Enough of celebrities begging for middle class and lower class Americans to give to other low and middle class Americans who’ve just gone through a horrific natural disaster. I’d rather hear directly from those affected and have them tell me about their hardship than you.
By the way, let’s institute a celebrity-to-normal person ratio for donations. For every million they give, we’ll give $5.
Enough of Kevin James making not so vaguely similar movies compared to that of Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler.
Enough of cross-promotion. ESPN’s NBA Finals coverage being sponsored by “The Green Lantern” while Stuart Scott sneaks in his third “BOO-YEAH” in 45 seconds of highlights makes both my ears and eyes bleed.
Enough. Enough. Enough.
Of course, that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.
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NCAA, Ohio State, Terrelle Pryor

Gray’s Anatomy

There was a time I was sympathetic and understanding to different situations that occurred in sports that really had no bearing on my life whatsoever. In my late teens and 20s, I’d see a college athlete get nailed for taking money under the table and think, “I can see why that guy just wants to get some pizza and beer money.”
It was a violation of the rules, but I kind of thought those rules were stupid.
Rules made by university presidents who pocket six figure salaries mostly built around college athletics. How out of touch were they? Bow-ties and banquet halls.
There’s a great line in the 1993 movie, “The Program”, where James Caan (as the head coach of fictional university ESU) explains to the board, “When was the last time you saw 70,000 people come to watch a damn chemistry experiment?” And it was true. Still is.
Perhaps, in a larger sense, our priorities are out-of-whack, but nonetheless, they are established by now.
About six months ago, a diehard Alabama fan called into a sports talk show and made the statement that he had poisoned the legendary Toomer Trees at Auburn. He ended his crazy rant with “Roll Damn Tide!” He claims it wasn’t him, it was a man sitting next to him that did it and he just repeated it on the radio in anger because of all the Auburn fans gloating over winning the national championship. Alabama coach Nick Saban and others donated money to try and save the trees and offer support.
They are trees for crying out loud. We kill millions for paper every year. But they are revered in Auburn like Boston fans worship the Green Monster in Fenway.
One hundred million watch the Super Bowl, but the number of people who voted in the last election does not even come close to that number.
These are our priorities. We are who we are. We like sports a hell of a lot more than we do economics, chemistry and healthcare mandates. The evening news doesn’t interrupt sporting events, it gets pushed back to 11:55.
For further proof, look at the 1994 NBA Finals. The famous O.J. Simpson chase was split-screened with the New York Knicks-Houston Rockets game. Even the news, when worthy enough to interrupt our sports fetish, is about sports in a way. The only reason people cared about a man who’s wife had been murdered going on the lamb was because the man was famed running back O.J. Simpson, an NFL Hall of Famer and former Heisman Trophy winner.
I grew up in the 1990s, so as a 13-year-old, I saw “The Program” in the theaters – with my parents. There was a scene that was cut from the movie – where a bunch of teammates, drunk, lay in the middle of the road as cars go flying by, inches from their bodies. My parents were horried.
I found it crazy – but also, as a budding athlete, saw the subtle point the scene was making. Athletes will do anything to reduce fear.
There were various scenes where the star quarterback, Joe Kane (an alcoholic with zero family support) did crazy things like stand in front of an oncoming train before moving at the last second and race his motorcycle around some sort of quarry at ridiculous speeds. Kane even tells his girlfriend the same thing: he does it to maintain his edge. His teammates look to him as the leader, he was a Heisman candidate for a national title contender, so these stunts help him blow off steam and look fearless.
There’s just a whole different mindset to being an athlete, a former athlete and a passionate fan that others cannot understand.
That said, I’m older now. I’ve got a wife, three children with a fourth on the way and a mortgage. My tolerance level for certain things in sports has dropped.
So when I heard the news last night that Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor was leaving school amid the scandal that cost his coach his job, after new accusations that Pryor made thousands of dollars for signed memorabilia, I just changed the channel. You become numb to it at some point, like you would anything else that seems to happen all the time – you stop reacting.
That is, unless you are the NCAA. Rules are rules, no doubt. My wife and I preach integrity to our oldest, who plays three sports. I want him to know and follow the rules. But now those that comply and follow NCAA guidelines are an anomaly, not the norm.
I go back and forth on it all the time. I do not like the idea of paying college athletes, who are already getting paid in the form of a free education. On the other hand, those athletes make more money for the school in one game than the rest of the student body will give back in the form of alumni donations for 10 years after they graduate.
The NCAA markets and sells jerseys with specific numbers on them, like Pryor’s No. 2 Ohio State jersey, but he will see nothing of that revenue. The only reason the jersey sells is because it’s his number.
The NCAA basically violates its own moral code in this regard constantly. Do not take any free food or clothes – but the bowl games you play in can give you $300 sunglasses, an X-Box 360 and a Gucci dufflebag.
The NCAA tries to pretend events do not happen – nearly a decade later. Remember Michigan’s Fab Five and their consecutive Final Four appearances in 1992-93? Well, you can’t remember that; the NCAA says that they didn’t exist after finding that a booster gave cash to players.
How about USC’s national title that was just revoked by the BCS (a hypocrisy itself)? No, you did not watch USC smoke Oklahoma 55-19. It didn’t happen – there was no winner that year. At least, that’s what the BCS determined after the fallout from the Reggie Bush scandal. Since Bush was ruled ineligible by the NCAA, those games don’t count. Bush is being viewed along the same lines as a performance enhancing drug. He cheated.
We’re dealing with varying shades of gray here. Is what Bush did against the rules? Yes, it was. Did it affect his play that his parents got a house? I would guess not, but who’s to say. Did it make him attend USC in the first place? I cannot answer that – I guess it could have.
But you start dabbling in these shades of gray and what’s right and fair and wrong and illegal become so intertwined and blurred, it feels like vertigo. What if Major League Baseball said that since players on winning teams used steroids, there were no World Series champions from roughly 1997-2005?
What? What the hell does that mean? I was there! I saw it happen! If the pitchers were juicing and the hitters were juicing, can we just call it a wash? Are the fans with 2004 Red Sox championship t-shirts or USC fans with championship hats suddenly going to disappear like the newspaper headlines in “Back to the Future”?
As a society, we can’t rewrite history. We can’t undo slavery in America, it’s there. You cannot undo what’s already been done.
This does not excuse Pryor or his greed and stupidity. One of Pryor’s friends told ESPN that Pryor was paid $500-$1,000 each time he signed a mini-football helmet, as well as other gear, for a total of somewhere between $20,000-$40,000. The source also said Pryor received thousands of dollars in free food at local restaurants around Columbus, Ohio, free drinks at bars, free tattoos and free loaner cars from local dealerships.
I’m guessing Pryor did not do all that to be a fearless leader of his team or to blow off steam. And that’s a little more than just money for pizza and beer.
It does not excuse hundreds of similar actions by athletes and coaches over the years in the shady dealings of pay for play. But we can’t just keep pretending it is going to change, that the rules are rules forever and cannot be modified.
And we have to stop pretending like what happens on the field is erased from our minds just because it’s stricken from a record book.
We have priorities, and like it or not, sports are a big part of them. How these situations are handled actually says more about us than we care to admit.
After all, when was the last time 70,000 people showed up to watch someone grade a chemistry experiment?
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