Sadly, far too often, teams are willing to accommodate all
kinds of bad behavior in turn for positive results on the field. How many times have we seen college teams
recruit/coddle/shield kids who are thugs off the field because of their
athletic prowess on the field? How many
times have we seen pro sports teams draft players with a checkered past because
they can run like the wind, hit a baseball a mile or shoot the lights out with
a basketball in their hands? This sort
of thing happens far too frequently. And
far too frequently, the offenses those athletes have committed involve violence
against women. How many times have we
heard stories of athletes assaulting or raping or otherwise injuring their wife
or girlfriend? Whether it’s Lawrence
Phillips at Nebraska, Dorial Green-Beckham at Mizzou, Ray Rice with the
Baltimore Ravens, or the latest allegations that are coming out at Baylor, it’s
a story that happens far too often. In
spite of their transgressions, many of these athletes escape harsh punishment
because of their athletic prowess; because someone at the top of the food chain
sees dollar signs and cares more about the money than about the lives of these
women.
The frustrating thing is that, often, these athletes come
with a checkered past. Some of them have
already shown a propensity for bad behavior before they ever set foot on campus
or before they are ever drafted. I’m
sure that sometimes these coaches believe that those prior instances were
anomalies, that people shouldn’t be punished forever for mistakes that they
made when they were 18 or 19 years old.
Unfortunately, I believe they more often are willing to overlook those
transgressions because they know the athletic talent these young men have and
they realize that they can help them win football or basketball games. With more wins comes more money – for the
coach, for the athlete, for the university, for the pro sports team.
While I believe in second chances as much as the next
person, the issue is that the schools/teams too often don’t appropriately
punish/discipline the offending players even when they continue with their
prior behavior of raping/assaulting women.
These players aren’t just given a second chance; they are given a second
chance and a third chance and, sometimes, even more chances than that. Their offenses and conduct are overlooked or
downplayed not for altruistic reasons, but for selfish reasons. Someone – the coach, athletic director, team
owner, university president – has done a cost-benefit analysis and has somehow
deemed that the benefit of that player’s athletic abilities outweigh the cost
of protecting or employing a sex offender.
Someone has decided that the benefits of winning games outweigh the
costs of battered women and ruined lives.
What message does that send to the women? It tells them that their lives and their well-being,
don’t matter. Or, if they do matter, they
matter less than their abuser’s ability to be a cash cow for a menagerie of
power brokers.
What message does that send to the athletes? It empowers them to think they are
indestructible, that they can do whatever they want off the field or off the
court as long as they keep producing on it.
Young men see that and think they can get away with it because so many
others before them have done so. It sets
a dangerous precedent.
We need our coaches, our universities, our sports teams and
our athletes to say enough is enough. We
need those power brokers to say “not on my watch,” that “the buck stops here.” We need to them to say that it’s not okay,
that it will not be tolerated. However,
we need them to do more than just say it.
It’s not enough to say “It’s on us.”
They need to prove that with their actions. They need to stop recruiting, drafting, protecting
and coddling these thugs and sex offenders.
Instead, they need to consider the character of the people they pick to
represent their sports programs. They
need to kick these thugs off the team, kick them out of school, terminate their
contracts and turn them over to the authorities. If the powers that be can’t handle that, then
they themselves should be fired. Because
that is the only way this is ever going to stop. Because the old cliché is correct: talk is
cheap and actions speak louder than words.
Because the lives and well-being of people are more important than the
score on the scoreboard and the amount of money in the bank account.
Thanks for reading.
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