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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