These lines in the sand,
they keep hurting my hand,
because I redraw them all the time
And covering my tracks
shows me what lacks
’cause life is more than just a climb…
Perspective and introspection are a funny thing.
It’s easy to admit when you are right, and often times hard to accept that you’re wrong. Somewhere between those two places lies our own rationalization, a vague area where we’ve justified our thoughts, our reactions and our perspectives. It’s here, in this place, where we identify what we stand for.
What do I stand for? I’d like to think I know, but truthfully, I’m all over the place. Frankly, we all are.
Last night, following the Baltimore Ravens 28-13 victory over the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship, I commented on Twitter how much I was not looking forward to the next two weeks of The Ray Lewis Farewell Tour. It makes my skin crawl every time we hear another gushing commentary about what a warrior, what a competitor and what an inspiration Ray Lewis is.
And as I wrote a few weeks ago, my visceral reaction is in large part due to the fact I’m uncomfortable with the elephant in the room regarding Lewis’ legacy. I was blown away by a couple of good friends saying 1) they didn’t care as much as I did, and, 2) they’d rather hear about Lewis than Tom Brady and Bill Belichick.
As one of my friends said, we’re not the Moral Police, so whether the story lines revolve around Lewis or Brady, it was a toss up to him. I knew they were partly needling me, as a Patriots fan and someone who loves Brady, over the team’s defeat. Yet another part of me couldn’t comprehend the comparison: Brady is disliked because he wins, because his coach is unlikable and because the Patriots are always good. Ray Lewis’ story is a little more sordid and scandalous, revolving around the night of the Super Bowl in 2001, when two men were stabbed to death after getting into it with Lewis and some of his crew.
How are these things even comparable?
In short, to me, they are not. But I’m not the Moral Police either, so just because I find something gross, distasteful or just plain wrong doesn’t mean others have to. Not everyone thinks the same way I do – and I shouldn’t expect them to. Further, even you could find 49 other people out of 100 to agree with you exactly on something, you’d easily find another 50 who didn’t.
And that’s where we are, really, as sports fans and as a society: split. We justify and rationalize things all the time depending on our own perceptions and values, calling some things wrong and other things right when really, that’s just our own justification for holding some ground on an ever moving target.
Our codes of conduct, our moral lines, are drawn in the sand.
As another friend pointed out, I had no problem with Kobe Bryant’s rape accusations, but I’m getting high and mighty over murder charges? Well, clearly I did have a problem with it – but the point remains, I continued to, and have continued, to root for the Los Angeles Lakers despite Kobe Bryant’s 2004 rape charges.
In my head came the rationalization, where I moved the line in the sand. The Lakers have been my team since childhood. Do you stop rooting for your favorite team because its star franchise player doesn’t seem like a very good dude? Do you allow yourself to call him one of the greats and celebrate the championships he helped guide that team to? In my case, the answers were no and yes.
So I just basically took my hand and made a new line in the sand.
Likewise, the reason I’m a Patriots fan is Tom Brady. New England isn’t my childhood team. And Bill Belichick, despite being decorated with rings and trophies, isn’t the fairest coach around (I get that’s an understatement). Between Spygate and his constant unsportsmanlike behavior, he’s, well, a jerk. But I like Tom Brady, so I neither agree with his actions or defend them; I just ignore and pretend it’s not there.
Many revel in the Patriots losing and often refer to Belichick and “Belicheat” – which is clever, and most likely true. Yet other teams have been accused of pumping in sound to their stadiums. From high school to the pros, coaches will leave the grass longer or shorter to gain a slight advantage. Is there a difference between taping your opponent to gain an advantage and using all the tools in the stadium to slow them down, break their communication and so forth? Probably so, and the former is certainly a more aggressive form of cheating, but it still feels like we’re justifying one over the other, when in reality, they’re all probably some form of wrong.
Is it all or nothing? Does it have to be?
Additionally, I’ve got no problem rooting for Brady, someone who left his pregnant actress girlfriend for a Victoria’s Secret model, but for years I held local rumors of infidelity against Peyton Manning. Rumors which were never confirmed or exposed in the media, just friend of a friend stories and word on the street type stuff. Nevertheless, I drew my line in the sand: I liked Brady better, so naturally, I looked for the flaws in Manning and ignored character traits of Brady that didn’t jive with my own personal Moral Police.
And really, that’s what we all do. It makes it easier to root for the laundry, since, as I’ve said many times, we don’t know these athletes at all.
We look up to them, but we shouldn’t. We should always be our kids role models. And even when we are, athletes provide some sort of third party credibility to the narrative when you’re coaching your child through a tough defeat or a loss, to say, hey, look at Player X on our favorite team – he fought through that, so good things can happen. Meanwhile, Player X fought through it by taking PEDs, and hasn’t paid child support in six years.
Time to redraw the line in the sand, again.
As I am sure my friend would remark at this point, who cares? Stop with the morality play and just be entertained. What does it matter, anyway? But I can’t.
At the height of the Manti Te’o story last week, Chuck Klosterman wrote on Grantland, in a piece with Malcolm Gladwell, that in essence, our reaction to Te’o shouldn’t necessarily change all that much because some of the story was omitted or embellished or a hoax. He compared it to a best friend of telling you that 10 years ago, he had murdered someone and never been caught. He was sorry now and a changed person. Would you still be his friend?
Klosterman argued that you’d put aside your own moral code and disdain for this action because you knew your friend as someone completely different than the person he was describing and you would remain his friend – unless you were a self-righteous individual. A self-righteous person would say they could never be friends with a murderer because actions have to have consequences.
Basically, you’d move your line in the sand to accommodate your friend.
I guess you can call me a hypocrite for all of my rationalizing on which teams and athletes I root for, and I will be the first to do so, frankly. Because it is hypocritical to blast Ray Lewis, but not turn my moral guns on Kobe Bryant. And I guess according to Chuck Klosterman, I’m self-righteous, because I don’t think I could be friends with someone who committed a murder and got away with it.
We do this justification and line drawing all the time, in normal life, too. The clerk forgot to scan a 24-pack of water bottles, did we go back and tell them? No, because they charged me more for hamburger than the store down the street. Your co-worker comes in an hour late every day and it makes you mad that the boss never says anything, but you’ll take that extra 15 minutes at lunch for a few days a week for six straight months and justify it as a wash.
Let’s say I finally got the break I was looking for in writing, that all my dreams could come true, but all I had to do to get there was write a scathing lie that everyone would believe about an athlete or coach. I’d never be exposed and it would propel me to the top of the sports writing genre.
Would I do it?
I say no. I couldn’t allow myself. Just like I would not have taken a pill to get to the pros. My best friend thinks I’m saying that in retrospect, that I’m standing on a moral high ground by proclaiming that. And there’s really no way for me to confirm that I would have turned it down. And there’s only one way for me to confirm I wouldn’t write the column to break my career open (that’s a hint for someone out there to field me an offer).
But I have to believe that I wouldn’t, otherwise, what do I stand for?
I presuppose that many others are like me, but perhaps there are not, who want to know that you can reach your goals without lying and cheating, and that when you do, you won’t become an insufferable jerk.
It seems more logical to stay true to what I say I believe, based on my own personal Moral Police than to continue to stay loyal to a team or an athlete. When the information we have changes, so too does our opinion or allegiance, right? It’s been confirmed the world is round, so just because, let’s say, I was a World is Flat guy for 20 years doesn’t mean I keep my head in the sand, right?
I suppose what’s left is this: perhaps it is time for a break from the morality writing I’ve been doing for the past month or so, because I’m no more qualified than anyone else to tell you what’s right or wrong for all of us. It’s quite possible that I am self-righteous and a hypocrite. In fact, I think I’ve learned that I’m as human and guilty as the next person when it comes to who I root for and what I justify in my head.
But can I change it – and should I – now that I realize it? Should I put away the Lakers gear? Stop rooting so hard for Touchdown Tom? Maybe it’s time to start living out what I believe, instead of just writing it – maybe I should watch sports with a sort of distant attachment, because it’s getting more difficult the older I get.
As I heard someone say recently, life is not the way it’s supposed to be, it’s the way it is. The way you deal with it makes all the difference.
We can’t make these athletes and coaches do what we want, behave like we want or do what we expect. We can only barely do that with ourselves most days. We’re all just human, prone to fall short and incapable of perfection. Yet in between, we have to decide, what will we stand for.
Or at least I will. So until Kobe retires, I’m renouncing my Lakers fandom.
And next time, I’m going back in the store to pay for the water bottles.
worldbetweenlines.com 