My sports world has gone wacko.
That’s right sports, which so many years ago shaped not just my competitive being but heavily influenced the person I have become, has gone bonkers.
Now you can tell me that things haven’t changed since my formative years – after all I am a child of the ‘60s – and that 24-hour news and sports cycles and the prevalence of the Internet have just brought misbehavior, criminal activity and unprofessional and unethical acts to the forefront, but I’m not buying it.
Not only has the way people act changed, but what we now view as routine and acceptable is also out of balance.
As fictional newscaster Howard Beale said in the 1976 movie “Network:” “I’m as mad as Hell and I’m not going to take this any more.”
What’s occurring on the professional and collegiate and, for all I know, the high school level is a sense of entitlement surfacing with athletics that is troubling.
Initially, I saw it as subtle and, for the most part, unrecognized, or maybe just ignored.
In high school, I remember it, and you probably do too, as just “jocks just being jocks.”
And maybe that is where the “beat down” should occur.
You know, that message that you’re not any better than the next person just because you have the ability to showcase your God-given athletic prowess on an athletic field of endeavor.
But it doesn’t happen that way and such bravado is often condoned, albeit encouraged, I think as a leadership quality.
Don’t get me wrong here: Competition in any venue requires ego, but is it ego that causes professional athletes to carry guns in public, then shooting themselves or pointing them at each other in a locker room?
Is it ego or that sense of entitlement that causes the behavior that occurs at seemingly every level that prompts “violation of team rule” suspensions or dismissals?
Or is it coaches, administrators, owners, or, God forbid, school presidents, who instead of displaying leadership themselves have their own innate sense of entitlement ingrained from childhood.
Those are the same people who see failing to live up to a contract as “just the way things work in this business.”
They see pillaging committed coaching staffs or recruits and attracting them to other institutions as “just the way things work in this business.”
They think telling a player to go stand in a darkened room for his health is acceptable. They tell a team physician to let an injured player return to play because “we need him out there.”
These are the same people who don’t carry any money because everything has always been provided or at least they expect it to be “part of the deal,” and it usually is.
They relish being kowtowed to but are quick to point out their humility.
What they do and how they act in most cases is not illegal, and it’s open to discussion as to whether it even is unethical.
But where does it start and where does it stop and who makes the call to say, “that it is unacceptable and we expect, need and better start demanding so much more?”
What has become of the John Woodens and the leadership they so subtly taught to the legions they encountered.
I like my old sports world better. Am I naive to want it back?