College Sports Way Out of Bounds

The first thing I ever read on my own was the sports page -- like a lot of young zealots. But if I had a 6-year-old son, I’d have taken one look at Thursday’s sports section and hid it from him. Can the television V-chip be adapted for newspapers?

This is how bad the sports news was: The gambling probe at Boston College was arguably the least scandalous item. And 1983 Heisman Trophy winner Mike Rozier being shot multiple times couldn’t even make the front page.

There was so much sleazy stuff going on, it’s difficult to know where to start. Five University of Rhode Island football players were charged with misdemeanor assault for attacking some frat boys and as a result face a year in jail plus a $1,000 fine.

The most odious news came out of Blacksburg, Va., where eight Virginia Tech football players and one former player were indicted by a grand jury on charges ranging from assault and battery to attempted malicious wounding and abduction.

Abduction?

We’re not talking about beer-induced, boys-will-be-boys behavior at a party where things got a little out of control. Police say eight players were involved in a brawl in which a Tech track star said he was beaten, kicked and hit with a cane, suffering a broken collarbone. A second-string wide receiver named Angelo Harrison was charged with a felony (attempted malicious wounding) that carries a prison sentence of two to 10 years.

In a separate case, Brad Baylor, a defensive tackle, was indicted on a charge of felony abduction and suspended for the season. The victim of the charged abduction was a student who was found unconscious on a campus sidewalk with an alcohol level that was high enough to kill a moose.

Coach Frank Beamer’s reaction to this: “I face the very difficult task of preparing a football team for a crucial game. That task would have been hard enough without this distraction. It now is doubly difficult.”

Here’s what I would say to the coach if I was the president or chancellor of Virginia Tech: “Frank, you can win six games with decent human beings and keep your job, or nine games with a team laced with thugs and you’re out of here. You’ve got one year from today to clean up the mess you call a football program.”

It’s amazing what coaches will call a distraction. To me, a distraction is if the music is too loud when I’m trying to make a phone call.

I don’t want to hear about “wrong place at the wrong time.” And I know that due process may find some or all of these kids not guilty. But if a coach reduces involvement in such assaults to “distraction,” it just reinforces the notion athletes already hold that they’re above the law.

In that vein, UCLA did the absolute right thing by firing basketball coach Jim Harrick, basically for being unethical, untrustworthy and a liar. Just the kind of guy you’d want to hold the most high-profile position at the state university. Harrick said the punishment is way out of line. But don’t think for a minute that UCLA, given the status of its program and the chance to win another NCAA title, would fire Harrick if this one episode is all the school is worried about.

Harrick’s behavior is worse than that of the kids at Boston College for one primary reason: They’re college students and he’s an adult, charged with the responsibility of taking care of students. Kids see Coach skirting the rules, lying, scheming, they’re much more likely to think, “What the heck, Coach did it, why can’t I?” Remember that we’re talking about kids, in many cases, who don’t have an ounce of adult supervision outside of “Coach.”

It’s not as if kids can’t find trouble on their own, especially as it relates to gambling. A whole lot of college kids have a closer relationship with their bookies than with their books. BC certainly did the right thing by suspending 13 players. The two who reportedly bet against BC, thereby bringing the suspicion of fixing or point-shaving, deserve to have been suspended for good as they were. Given the point-shaving scandal at Boston College 10 years ago, there’s no way a kid on athletic scholarship there couldn’t have been formally told of the history, the dangers of a repeat and the possible consequences.

There’s one thing that could make a BC kid gamble despite the warnings, one thing that could make a coach at an elite school jeopardize his lucrative position, and one thing that could prompt a bunch of football players to assault someone: a sense of entitlement.

Every time there’s a rash of criminal behavior in sports, athletic departments or pro teams trot out some social scientist who tells us lawlessness is no bigger a problem in athletics than in society at large.

I don’t believe a word of it.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t routinely run into people who’ve been charged with assault and battery or abduction. And I also don’t know work-a-day people who would consider such behavior a “distraction” to their daily routine. But being told you’re above the law from the time you’re 12, that somebody can “get you off” if you slap a coed or break a student’s collarbone, is what too many of these thugs have come to accept.

And as long as the culture values sports and the people who play them more than it values common decency, then last-second baskets and game-winning touchdowns will unfortunately have to share space on the page with violence and scandal.