Seek, and Ye Shall Find - but why seek?

It was less than a month ago - albeit not much less - that I sat in this same seat, supposedly doing administrative work for the American Liver Foundation (shhhh... don't tell) and wrote my last post. In the first paragraph, I chastised myself for not visiting with my K-bors nearly enough, suggested I'd appear more often moving forward [quote: "as I bring back the once-a-week post minimum (which I am trying to do)..."], apologized to my lady-readers for overdoing the sports thing and then proceeded to write about sports. Well, in the interest of saving space, consider that paragraph applicable to this post as well.

However, I once again encourage women everywhere (or the lone woman reading this, anyway) to bear with me, as I think the following will say as much about the world we live in as it does about sports in particular. Last time, my sports-based-yet-interesting-to-non-sports-fans piece was a brief foray into comedy - I drew your attention to a minor-league team that was calling out the Kansas City Royals (who are really just a minor-league team in major-league uniforms). Today I'm angry, not amused.

Two sports stories caught my eye today - two stories that really should not have had to be published. The first addresses a recently-completed report about Lance Armstrong's potential use of performance-enhancing drugs. For years, ever since his dominance of the sport of cycling began, angry, jealous, and usually French rivals of America's favorite (only?) famous bike-rider have questioned how it is physically possible for someone to go straight from the chemotherapy table to the top of their sport. Especially a guy from a country that couldn't care less about cycling.

The jealousy (and presumably the French-ness) of Lance's detractors led to countless backhanded steroids accusations over his 7-year run of dominance. None were thought to hold any water, until last year's report that Lance's 1999 samples tested positive for a banned substance (EPO) when they were brought out of a freezer in 2004. When the report came out, Lance vehemently denied it (as he has every one of the myriad accusations over the years) and once again pointed out that he has been tested with absurd frequency for 7 or 8 years and never had a positive test. The International Cycling Union hired some impartial Dutch lawyers to conduct an investigation.

Well, that investigation has ended, and it not only exonerated Lance, but also questioned the integrity and practices of both L'Equipe (the paper which first reported the allegations) and the World Anti-Doping Agency. My favorite exerpt says the tests were so questionable that "it was 'completely irresponsible' to suggest they 'constitute evidence of anything.'" Oops.

The second story was about Gilbert Arenas. On Wednesday (yesterday) I read a report that Arenas was arrested - nobody really knew exactly why - and tried to wiggle out of it by saying "You can't arrest me, I'm a basketball player. I play for the Washington Wizards..." Turns out the whole sports world read that report, and every outlet from ESPNRadio to Reuters was blasting the NBA's most underrated player for disorderly behavior, hubris and stupidity. I heard the statement "this is the problem with athletes today" more times than I'd care to remember.

Oops again. Apparently nobody got Arenas' side of the story; at least until Michael Wilbon decided to pursue that outmoded journalistic convention - due diligence. It turns out maybe some overzealous cops just made a mistake during what was a tremendously busy weekend on South Beach - and then they lied on the police report so they didn't look bad. If you've ever been arrested before (and I'm not in a position to confirm or deny whether that's ever happened to me) you probably know this: policeman will lie their curly-tailed asses off to avoid people realizing they've made a mistake.

Reading Wilbon's article, I'm as sure as he is that Arenas did very little - if anything - wrong. The cops arrested him because he was a tattooed black man who got out of his car in traffic; and the national media is so ready to crucify athletes for stupid behavior that thousands of news outlets published the story - including details of a likely-false police report that probably should not have been released in the first place - without so much as contacting Arenas for his account.

These stories depress me deeply. They're not the only examples of a sports world that prefers a pariah to a hero. Another that came to my mind was last year's unfounded steroid accusations against Todd Helton. I won't get into details, but basically an announcer said - during a broadcast, on the air - that he had inside knowledge of Helton using steroids; it turned out to be creatine, a completely legal supplement. Basically, people (particularly in this country) love to tear down sports stars - we want nothing more than to find out that these men who outperform us by such a ridiculous margin only do so because they cheat; or else that they may be famous and ultra-talented, but they're also big jerks.

I've got news - yeah, tons of these guys are jerks. You know what? Jerks are everywhere. I see them on a daily basis. As a semi-permanent temp employee, I've found at least 50% of the people I end up working for or with are jerks (not the people here at ALF, of course). I'm a fucking jerk. You're probably a jerk too. Athletes are the same; maybe slightly more likely to be jerks given the self-confidence required to be a successful professional.

Of course, the most successful people in other professions are more likely to be jerks as well. How many Fortune 500 CEO's did something sleazy to get to the top? Probably right around 500. For every Randy Moss (pot-smoking, pushing-cops-with-his-car football player) there's a Kenneth Lay (cheating, conspiring, embezzling Enron player). But Lay's mistakes don't inspire us go after Steve Jobs, so why the excitement over arresting Arenas? Simply because our athletes are celebrities, and our CEO's are not - at least, not until they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

My intent is not to blame the media for reporting on the transgressions of our role models. I just feel as though the climate surrounding sports is very negative these days. There are tons of positive and excitingthings happening - one of the best overall NBA postseasons ever is in progress, World Cup 2006 starts in 8 days - but people focus on the controversy surrounding Barry Bonds, or the arrest of Gilbert Arenas, whose team was eliminated from the NBA Playoffs weeks ago.

Hey, ESPNRadio - save the gossip news for People Magazine; or MSNBC.com (where my good friend Paige Ferrari does a terrific job of writing about celebrities and gossip.) Instead of searching for the stories about stupid, selfish athletes off the field, let's talk about the on-field exploits that lead their teams to ignore everything from drug problems (Darryl Strawberry, Ricky Williams, etc.) to legal troubles (Kobe Bryant, Randy Moss, etc.) to just general jerkiness (Karl Malone, Bill Romanowski, etc.)

Sports are supposed to be an escape from "real life" - so why can't we allow athletes some escape from the public eye for their "real lives"?

That's the fundamental question, and also the end of today's rant. I'm afraid I got a bit overzealous and am only now realizing the length of this post. If you managed to wade through the above, I welcome your thoughts on the subject. Otherwise, I fully intend to resume frequent posting in the immediate future.

Won't you be my K-bor?

1 Comments:

Blogger p_is_for_payj said...

Aw, thanks Kolsky. I don't know anything about sports, but I do like to see my name in print.

3:43 PM  

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