Arresting athletes
Today I went to ESPN.com's front page to get my daily dose of sports news, yet what I found was something that could have been easily been mistaken for a police blotter. Two of the top stories du jour include arrests of a high profile NBA player and a quarterback at a prominent SEC school.
The high profile NBA player was none other than Ron Artest who was arrested Monday and excused indefinitely from the Sacremento Kings after allegedly shoving a woman in his home and preventing her from calling 911.
The SEC player was 19-year-old South Carolina quarterback Stephen Garcia, arrested for the second time in recent weeks for damaging a professor's car with a key. His previous arrest was for drunkenness and failing to stop for a police officer.
So what's my point in writing about this? Two reasons.
First, I want to commend ESPN.com for reporting these arrests. Prior to 1994 athletes were treated differently than normal citizens by the press. No one heard about domestic violence, DUI's, rape allegations. Who wanted to mare the image of a hero? So what happened in 1994 to change all that? O.J. happened. And with him a floodgate was opened that has since been overflowing with misbehaving athletes doing egregious things.
On that note, I'm tired of seeing athletes getting arrested with such frequency and, moreover, getting away with it. An athlete might be charged and even convicted of a crime, but then they're allowed to walk right back on the court or field seemingly without any punishment from their team or league. Talk about egregious.
I mean, how many chances should a guy like Ron Artest get? Sure, he's "indefinitely excused." But I can think of two other words that would be better suited for a situation like this: lifetime ban.
And I'd like to see college coaches take a bit more responsibility for their players' behavior and (warning: watch out for some serious wishful thinking) mold athletes into good citizens. Maybe then there won't be another Duke lacrosse scandal. Yeah, I don't even believe that will happen...
The high profile NBA player was none other than Ron Artest who was arrested Monday and excused indefinitely from the Sacremento Kings after allegedly shoving a woman in his home and preventing her from calling 911.
The SEC player was 19-year-old South Carolina quarterback Stephen Garcia, arrested for the second time in recent weeks for damaging a professor's car with a key. His previous arrest was for drunkenness and failing to stop for a police officer.
So what's my point in writing about this? Two reasons.
First, I want to commend ESPN.com for reporting these arrests. Prior to 1994 athletes were treated differently than normal citizens by the press. No one heard about domestic violence, DUI's, rape allegations. Who wanted to mare the image of a hero? So what happened in 1994 to change all that? O.J. happened. And with him a floodgate was opened that has since been overflowing with misbehaving athletes doing egregious things.
On that note, I'm tired of seeing athletes getting arrested with such frequency and, moreover, getting away with it. An athlete might be charged and even convicted of a crime, but then they're allowed to walk right back on the court or field seemingly without any punishment from their team or league. Talk about egregious.
I mean, how many chances should a guy like Ron Artest get? Sure, he's "indefinitely excused." But I can think of two other words that would be better suited for a situation like this: lifetime ban.
And I'd like to see college coaches take a bit more responsibility for their players' behavior and (warning: watch out for some serious wishful thinking) mold athletes into good citizens. Maybe then there won't be another Duke lacrosse scandal. Yeah, I don't even believe that will happen...
posted by LynnieO at 10:53 AM
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