Playing Outside the Lines

Playing Outside the Lines

I am close to giving up. Really, I am. 

I played CYO ball, high school ball, AAU ball, and a little college ball, and I never, ever called anybody the N-word. Ever. Nor did I ever hear the word thrown around.

I played CYO ball, high school ball, AAU ball, and a little college ball, and I never, ever called anybody a f-----. Nor did I ever hear the word thrown around.

I played CYO ball, high school ball, AAU ball, and a little college ball, and I knew from groupies, such as they were, and never, ever, did I think about molesting, much less raping, a woman.

I played CYO ball, high school ball, AAU ball, and a little college ball, and I competed with and against mean-tempered and mean-spirited teammates and opponents from across the country, but never, ever, did I think about intentionally hurting one. (I do recall paying, out of my pocket, for new front teeth for a guy whose two upper incisors I recklessly knocked out swinging an elbow after a rebound; I feel terribly guilty to this day.)

More to the point, I can say the same about every teammate--every one--I ever had. Some may have thought such things, perhaps. None--none--ever followed through.

And now I despair. I love sports. But am I really such an old fart?

In truth, I know the answer. But just to be certain, I rang up an old acquaintance at home. Former NFL starting quarterback. Super Bowl winner. Now a network announcer. We were ostensibly talking about the NFL Network's Darren Sharper, the former Pro Bowl safety with the Packers, Vikings, and Saints, who this week was arrested and charged with drugging and raping seven women in California, with additional ongoing investigations reported in Las Vegas, New Orleans, and Temple, Arizona. Sharper's alleged modus operandi was meeting women, inviting them back to his hotel room, and dosing them with the sleeping medication Ambien before raping them.

But, sadly, the old quarterback and I were really not just talking about Sharper. By inference we were talking about a woeful and shameful pattern pervading professional and big-time college sports. By inference we were talking about Donte Stallworth and Bountygate, and Aaron Hernandez, and Richie Incognito. By inference we were talking about how it is well past the time for the people who run these sports--the commissioners and owners and college presidents--to address the ir workplaces' problems with sexual assault and homophobia and the pervasive spiral toward the gutter. (Guns? Another column.)

We were also talking about how that was never going to happen. There is simply too much money at stake.

"This kid Sam is not gonna know what hit him," the old quarterback said, referring to the NFL greeting awaiting the Missouri defensive end Michael Sam, who came out as gay last week. "You think there's only one Richie Incognito in our league? Hah!"

Old news, I know, particularly to groups like the National Coalition Against Violent Athletes, which keeps a sad and sorry database pointing out, among other heinous statistics, that:

• while male student-athletes comprise 3.3% of the population, they represent 19% of sexual assault perpetrators and 35% of domestic violence perpetrators;

• one in three college sexual assaults are committed by athletes;

• not including sexual crimes unreported by the media, a new incident of athlete crime emerges once every two days;

• the general population has a sexual-assault conviction rate of 80 percent. The conviction rate of an athlete is 38 percent;

• 20 percent of college athletic recruits for the Top 25 Division I teams have criminal records.

That last one depressed me even more. "Recruits." High school kids.

Coincidentally, moments after signing off with the NFL announcer I received an e-mail from another pal, an AAU coach whom I once played ball with. He was visiting New Orleans with his son for the NBA All-Star weekend.

"I am ashamed and embarrassed what has become of our beloved sport," he wrote. "Forget the pro ballers, I am talking about the spoiled ‘kids' I coach against who are treated as ‘special' from the time they are 8 or 9 years old. Most of them have little, if any, stable parental models. As such, they are "raised' by adults whose only aim is to exploit their talent. The culture tells them that acting like fools, that guns and violence, that beating women, that the language they use, doesn't matter. That these norms of society do not apply to them.

"The only thing that matters to them is the money, and what the money will bring in terms of respect and ‘street cred.' Hip-hop culture has made millionaires out of a select few and duped all the others. And the white underclass is alarmingly similar, living in a cocoon that is all noise and no responsibility.

"Listen, at this point I think our bones creak, our bodies break down, and maybe the years left aren't many … but we had it better. The future for our own children isn't pretty. And I don't know what to do."

Oy, just what I needed to cheer me up. Even money Darren Sharper walks and Richie Incognito plays again.

And I am the old fart.

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