July 14, 1996

Sport Stars Paid To Be Mean Carry It To Private Life

"Say it ain't so, Butch!"

This might be the echo of University of Miami fans to Hurricane football coach Butch Davis who suspended four of his key players last week. They had been arraigned for beating up another athlete and a girl friend.

The crackdown brought the total Miami criminal casualties to 15 since the first of the year.

Sports pages these days read like a police blotter.

Also last week:

• A North Carolina State basketball player was shot in the legs during a street fight.
  
• Two University of Louisville (Ky.) football players were stripped of their athletic scholarships after police seized drugs in their apartment.
  
• A Los Angeles' Clippers center and a group of friends who chartered a plane to the Cayman Islands were "detained" and fined $1,250 for possession of drug paraphernalia.
  
• The trial of a Dallas Cowboy player got under way for alleged felonious drug possession.
  
• Police in Upper Arlington, Ohio, filed charges against New England Patriots' draft pick after his car doing 65 in a 35-MPG zone hit a tree and injured a passenger.
  
• A former line-backer for the Minnesota Vikings plead guilty to forging checks.
  
• A former Utah University football player was found guilty of negligent homicide in the death of his wife and attempting to collect her $300,000 insurance. He was sentenced to one year in jail, to be followed by 36 months probation, fined $1,850, and ordered to undergo counseling for domestic abuse.

I apologize for such a tedious recitation of sordid behavior by athletic heroes, but it all piled up this month.

A partial list singling out some, and omitting others, would be discriminatory.

My point is that many Americans have come to tolerate all manner of boorish behavior -- exemplified most noticeably by athletes and entertainers. When flagrantly displayed, the only penalty often is a wink and a tsk tsk.

Consider Allen Iverson, a felon convicted of mob violence two years ago. He was the number-one pick in the National Basketball Association draft by the Philadelphia 76ers last month. He was given a celebrity parade by his hometown, Hampton, Va., during the Fourth of July weekend. At a reception for the so-called sports hero, the mayor proclaimed the holiday event Allen Iverson Day -- eclipsing George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison et al.

The pros cannot be faulted for zealous exploitation of the sports market. It's a legal business dependent upon customer support. If a fan -- or, most particularly, a TV network catering to fans -- is willing to shell out hard-earned cash for second-hand thrills, so what? It's the American way.

Thus, we can marvel -- without censure -- at the one- year contract for $25 million between Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls basketball club.

We can, however, note the dichotomy of a culture that cheers such reward for frivolity, but condemns $3 million salaries for chief executive officers managing businesses. The latter, of course, provide jobs enabling employees to buy over-priced game tickets.

Royal sufferance cannot be extended to colleges supposedly the guardians of our culture. Major institutions of learning have become pimps for the pros.

Coaches often draw higher salaries than the presidents of their universities. Millions of dollars are spent on stadiums and player salaries -- oops, I mean scholarships.

We laugh at reports of college athletes who can't recite the alphabet. Yet this sad state of affairs is tragic for the vast majority of gladiators who don't make it into the pros. They have a phony degree in "physical education" but can't pump gas for a living.

Big-time college sports is a disgrace for those participating in a thinly-disguised farm system for privately owned football and basketball businesses.

The disgrace comes not so much from commercialism -- the income also subsidizes academic facilities. Fault attends the encouragement of brutality and special privilege not approved for the student body as a whole.

It is no accident that so many star athletes in the "contact" sports are mean and arrogant. That's what is instilled in their character from high school.

One is reminded of football coach Red Sanders' famous dictum: "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."

Unfortunately, this mentality seeps outward from school-related athletics to the departments of letters and science. Aggressive behavior is lionized. Fighting in bars and abusing women is acceptable, even applauded -- a la O.J. Simpson.

The few colleges that have banished athletic contests catering to the public have enjoyed higher academic achievement and more campus civility.

It is too much to expect, but our education system would benefit if sports were strictly intra-mural -- no more "traditional" university-versus-university rivalries.

Let the pros operate and pay for their own farm systems.

PARTING SHOTS

Within the last four months, fifteen University of Miami footballers, and eight Clemson University (S.C.) players have been arrested on charges ranging from mischarging telephone calls to aggravated assault.

The only way those two teams could play each other would be by warden passes.

* * *

The big mystery in Washington, D.C., is who hired Craig Livingstone to snoop in FBI confidential files? Most likely he was discovered by a secretary in the White House living quarters' book room.

* * *

Colin Powell says he will not be Bob Dole's running mate under any circumstance -- and that's absolutely maybe.

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If it doesn't fit, use a bigger hammer.

By Lindsey Williams, columnist for Sun Coast Media Group newspapers