When Athletes Don’t Practice What They Preach

Safe to say that wasn’t the kind of “action” the religious group “Athletes in Action” had in mind Super Bowl week when it bestowed the Bart Starr Award to Atlanta Falcon safety Eugene Robinson.

Hours after receiving the honor, presented to the NFL player who exhibits high moral character, Robinson was arrested in Miami on charges of soliciting sex from an undercover police officer.

“I know a lot of people are saying that I’m just another hypocritical Christian,” a contrite Robinson said after the game. “I deserve that.”

Well, does he?

Is Robinson a hypocrite? Or simply human?

What about Evander Holyfield? Two days after his victory over Vaughn Bean last Sept. 23, the heavyweight boxing champion acknowledged fathering two more children out of wedlock, bringing his total to nine.

The admission came less than a week after Holyfield’s second wife gave birth to their first child.

Both athletes say they are men of God, and use their status as sports stars to profess their beliefs to the nation’s media.

Yet, to many, their public and private lives are at serious odds.

“It’s fraught with inconsistencies,” said John Freeman, professor of practical theology at Emory University. “What is the relationship between what you’re saying and how you’re living? If you’re saying one thing and doing something vastly different, that’s problematic.”

What responsibilities do religious athletes, particularly public ones, have to live the lives they preach?

Should anyone take Robinson or Holyfield seriously again when he has seemingly committed flagrant breaches against his faith?

The Robinson and Holyfield cases elicit “Ah-has!” from the many on hypocrisy watch in America, yet many evangelical athletes say too many people confuse professing faith with perfection.

“I’m a lot better than I have been,” Holyfield said in a recent interview with The Times. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t have shortcomings. But I learn not to judge others. I learn that God has to deal with everybody.”

Some think the key to career rehabilitation is for the athlete to act quickly once transgressions become public.

Holyfield has never denied his adultery and said he is working hard to atone for his sins and avoid future lapses.

He says his problem is a “generational curse,” his proclivities rooted in an impoverished, morally twisted and fatherless upbringing.

“My father had 20-something kids,” Holyfield said. “It looked like I was falling right down that line. I got nine. I said, ‘How do I get off this?’ Because, the point is, I always have been a loving person, I always knew what was right. But I always wonder: Why do I struggle to do what’s right when I know what’s right?”

As a youth, Holyfield says promiscuity was all but encouraged by the women in his church.

“One thing they told me, ‘Men always sleep with as many people as they want to sleep with.’ That’s the whole game. . . . You’ve got to try and break that train of thinking.”

Robinson, in turn, apologized publicly for the pain his arrest caused and returned his award to AIA.

Yet, Robinson’s arrest also affected the hard-earned reputation of AIA, a youth-based Christian group founded in the mid-1960s.

“The word we use here is ‘sad,’ ” AIA spokesman Dave Bratton said. “Sad that this happened, sad what happened to a player, his family, someone who received this award. ‘Sad’ is the word, not ‘betrayed.’ We have to be more concerned for the man and his family.”

Bratton said one incident should not discount the 14 years of good work Robinson has done for the Christian community.

“Everyone has something in their lives that causes us to stumble,” Bratton said. “The enemy, and I mean Satan, knows our weaknesses, and he will attack us.”

Friends of Robinson and Holyfield have warned others not to condemn the men.

“If they are continually involved in it, and continue to throw sin in your face, then there’s a problem,” former NFL superstar Reggie White said in a phone interview two days after Robinson’s arrest. “But if you’ve got guys that are really struggling, [the disciple] Paul said, ‘I became strong in my weakness.’ It just shows how fallible we all are when we don’t have God.”

Minnesota Viking quarterback Randall Cunningham said Holyfield was his inspiration for returning to football.

“Evander is a great man of God,” Cunningham said. “He just stumbled, and God forgives him. We have to strive to keep a clear conscience before God and man. It does look bad, and he knows that. But he stood before the United States and the world and said, ‘Look, I made a mistake.’ ”

Robinson and Holyfield may well be forgiven by their friends, family and God, but their credibility as public religious figures has been damaged.

Joseph Price, a professor of religious studies at Whittier College, says Robinson and Holyfield need more than words to regain the public’s trust.

“It needs to be more than just, ‘I’m sorry,’ like the 4-year-old who gets first punch against his sibling,” Price said. “It needs instead to be a genuine attempt to turn around, repent, turn from, and make an effort to reclaim direction.”