Sports Media Review

Men Behaving Badly

There's been lots of discussion in NFL circles about a new three-strikes policy for off-the-field behavior (non-drug related), following in the wake of the horrendous triple-shooting in Las Vegas a week ago in which Pacman Jones is alleged to have played an important role. An interesting twist on the discussion is that the players association, including union chief Gene Upshaw and many veteran players appear to be on board. Referring to a group of NFL veterans consulted on the new policy domain:

"The one thing that I thought that was surprising to me is the [players] are sort of moving in the direction of having penalties similar to drug policies -- that at some point you're out," said Gene Upshaw, executive director of the NFL Players Assn.

"You can't continue to keep violating policies. You can't be in the wrong place three or four times. One time, two times maybe, but three or four times in the wrong place at the wrong time? They didn't like that."

Commentators throughout the ESPN universe were surprisingly circumspect about the policy yesterday, with folks ranging from Sean Sailisbury, John Clayton, Dan Patrick and Mike and Mike acknowledging that determining what a strike would be is complicated. If someone is arrested, but later acquitted, or the charges are dropped, is that a strike? As I noted above, the Las Vegas shootings, following a season that was great for the NFL on the field but a disaster, really, off of it - have been the culminating event. But, to take that example - would Pacman Jones involvement in those crimes be deemed a strike? Based on what we know so far, the answer would have to be no, I'd think, even if everyone is convinced that Jones is lying about his relationship to the alleged shooter. Until some competent authority can establish a definitive connection between Jones and the crime, we can't say, even though this case might serve as a kind of tipping point for public perceptions of the NFL.

Boumani Jones, of ESPN.com, dislikes the concept of a three strike policy, asking: "can't the NFL police itself?" Jones complains that:

Such a policy would be cute and catchy. So catchy, in fact, that support for the policy has built even though a "strike" hasn't been defined (we'll assume, for the sake of argument, that an arrest is a strike). But this would be little more than a disingenuous, poorly conceived spin job.

Let's not pretend the NFL doesn't know a bad idea in cleats when it sees one. The league performs thorough background checks on each and every player who enters the league -- definitely more in-depth than the background check The Gap runs on its employees -- and it knows who could potentially be a problem. It knows which guys couldn't stay out of bad situations before they got into the league.

The real problem seems to be that the league doesn't pay attention to these things unless the world sees its dirty laundry.

According to Jones (Boumani, that is), the NFL knows everything it needs to know about a player by the time they enter the draft. Thus, implementing a policy that would rely on law enforcement to, in effect, decide for the NFl when someone has become a bad apple, is just nonsense:

Consider the league's three most notorious problem children from the past few months -- Chris Henry, Tank Johnson and Jones.

Henry didn't run afoul of the law in college, but these were the first words under the "negatives" heading of his draft profile on NFL.com: "His maturity level is sorely lacking … has had problems with the coaching staff ever since he arrived at [West Virginia], struggles with his academics and has had more than a fair share of on-field antics … ." Johnson, the product of an unstable upbringing, has long battled questions about his character and judgment. And Jones received a one-year suspended sentence in 2003 for his role in a bar fight in Morgantown while he attended West Virginia.

I don't quite get where Jones is coming from here. My guess is that a decent percentage of NFL players come from what could be described as an "unstable upbringing" and most such players do just fine behaviorally. And, the NFL.com draft report on Jones in 2005 fairly glowed about him, describing how he turned his life around, became the first person in his family to go to college and had nothing negative say about his character. But, more to the point, the idea that we know everything we need to know about how a 21 year old will behave as they get older is just at odds with reality.

Believe it or not, if the policy could be spelled out clearly, and appropriate distinctions made between minor infractions and more serious ones (smoking pot is not as bad as hitting a spouse, for example), I might actually support such a thing. But, we're not going to get very far guessing about people's characters when they're in college. Instead, the issue should be evaluating clear, transgressive behavior, whenever it happens.

But the three strikes question raises other interesting questions - such as to what extent the professional leagues' should make participants off-field or off-court behavior their business? Howard Wasserman, of Sports Law Blog, raises the interesting question of whether the NBA should do anything about the political activities of two Seattle Super Sonics' co-owners, Tom Ward and Aubrey McClendon. Ward and McClendon have, between them, contributed $1.1 million toward Gary Bauer's American United to Preserve Marriage.

As Wasserman points out, the NBA stripped Tim Hardaway of his role as a paid representative for the league after his anti-gay comments. And in doing so, the question is whether the league has opened up a can of worms:

If leagues are going to police what players, owners, and others say, do they need to be consistent? Is what Hardaway said that much worse than what Ward and McClendon are (through their financial support) advocating, such that you can punish Hardaway but not Ward and McClendon? Substantively, there is no difference between saying "I hate gay people" and "I want the law to deny gay people the same basic rights that I (and others like me) have." The former reflects an angrier, more emotional idea than the former. But both are anti-gay-rights points of view. In my view, both are fully protected expression and neither should be the basis for league-imposed punishment. But we too often get caught up in the way things are said, punishing an offensive way of saying something, while ignoring statements that express ideas that are just as troubling when they are stated in a softer way. I am not sure you can justify punishing one and not the other (although again, my preference is that you punish neither).

There's no possibility, of course, that the league is going to punish anybody for their political contributions and I don't personally advocate doing so. But, it is noteworthy that the kinds of things for which players are often criticized amount to crimes of the pettiest sort (marijuana possession, for example which, I have no doubt, most of the people doing the criticizing have been guilty of to one degree or another). And, in the meantime, political activities which, I personally believe, reflect far greater failings of character and with far more destructive consequences for society as a whole, are simply chalked up to differences of opinion.

Let me emphasize a few points, so my position is clear:

1) this discussion is being prompted, most immediately, by a shooting that has left a man paralyzed. There is no difference of opinion about how heinous a crime that is.

2) but, as I've complained before, serious crimes like the shooting often get lumped in with really petty stuff under the same "athletes-behaving-badly" heading, when there are obvious and profound moral differences between different kinds of acts.

3) I understand that, on one level, the distinctions I mentioned above don't matter at all, because all that matters is whether or not something is legal. And, in terms of discipline, that's an easy, and defensible line to draw.

4) but, if you ask me, pouring a million dollars into supporting a bigoted, intolerant movement - based on the absolute ludicrous premise that expanding marriage to include same sex couples somehow undermines it for heterosexual ones - is arguably a more legitimate focus of time and attention than players engaged in misdemeanor transgressions. That is, if we are going to concern ourselves with sports participants' non-sports behavior.

5) but, again, that's just my opinion, not a matter of law.

Paper of Record

Close friend and faithful reader Big House Dawg emailed me this morning to comment on how much he dislikes the New York Times sports columnists. He singled out a really lame portion of a Murray Chass column, about Chass' disdain for the new-fangled baseball statistics (the column is framed around "things I don't want to hear or read about anymore"):

Statistics mongers promoting VORP and other new-age baseball statistics.

I receive a daily e-mail message from Baseball Prospectus, an electronic publication filled with articles and information about statistics, mostly statistics that only stats mongers can love.

To me, VORP epitomized the new-age nonsense. For the longest time, I had no idea what VORP meant and didn’t care enough to go to any great lengths to find out. I asked some colleagues whose work I respect, and they didn’t know what it meant either.

Finally, not long ago, I came across VORP spelled out. It stands for value over replacement player. How thrilling. How absurd. Value over replacement player. Don’t ask what it means. I don’t know.

I suppose that if stats mongers want to sit at their computers and play with these things all day long, that’s their prerogative. But their attempt to introduce these new-age statistics into the game threatens to undermine most fans’ enjoyment of baseball and the human factor therein.

People play baseball. Numbers don’t.

If I have said it once, I've said it 650,000 times - no one who covers baseball, and that includes Chass, whose typical columns are replete with - yes- numbers, is seriously arguing that stats aren't central to our evaluation of baseball players. The only real debate is about which stats best illuminate a player's contribution to his team. In fact, VORP really gets to the heart of what we, intuitively, think is valuable about a baseball player. It answers a simple, crucial question: what would happen to a player's team if that player got hurt and had to be replaced by a typical bench player? The fact that it makes this evaluation not merely by recounting someone's batting average or RBI total is entirely irrelevant to to the false juxtaposition Chass creates here between people on the one hand, and numbers on the other. People put up numbers. What we want to know is which numbers tell us the most about those people.

But, not only is Chass affecting a pointless anti-intellectualism in this little rant. He's also displaying the kind of laziness I mentioned the other day in relation to Dan Shaughnessy. The fact is that more and more organizations are using exactly this kind of data in their analysis of talent.In fact, J.P. Ricciardi, the Toronto Blue Jays' GM recently singled out VORP as the best of the new measures for evaluating players. If Chass doesn't know this, or doesn't want to know this, he's just not doing his job.

In my exchange with Big House Dawg, I mentioned that I did usually like Harvey Araton. This was before I read his column today, which nails it about the national reaction to the NBA All-Star weekend in Las Vegas. In a column titled "Stain of Racism Feeds N.B.A's Renegade Image." Araton writes:

You can argue that Las Vegas was not the ideal site for an event that traditionally attracts thrill seekers hoping to attach themselves to celebrities and their posses. But the casting of the weekend as a lawless referendum on the N.B.A. product has become exaggerated to the point of being imbecilic...

Noting the delicate balance Stern has to strike between defending his league's image and not seeming too defensive about it, Araton suggests:

He may yet ask why nobody blamed Nascar for the death of a motorist who was shot in a road-rage encounter during a traffic jam after leaving the Daytona 500.

He may have to point out again that no N.B.A. player was involved in any Las Vegas transgression, compared with a number of N.F.L. players who over the years have turned Super Bowl week into episodes of “Miami Vice.”

He may crunch crime statistics relative to other sports events and large gatherings like New Year’s Eve that, he said, would prove that All-Star weekend was no behavioral aberration.

To his credit here, Stern takes on the race issue squarely:

“The subject is just so delicious that everyone from Imus to Letterman thinks it’s just hilarious to dump on the ‘hip-hoppers,’ ” Stern wrote. “Of course, race plays a part in the perceptions. Do you doubt that there were more African-Americans in Las Vegas last week than at any time in its history, and some people felt threatened by that simply as a matter of culture?”

In what has become an entirely commonplace point of argument, Araton notes the disparity between perceptions of the NFL and NBA, despite the NFL having a very bad year in terms of players' involvement in criminal activity compared with the NBA. While "football pays the bills for sports media in every NFL city," according to Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, Araton notes that the NBA presently lacks comparable economic clout:

Americans respect selling power, benevolent or not, and no athlete wielded more in the 1990s than Sheriff Michael Jordan. But not long after the Bulls’ dynasty crumbled, the N.B.A. was being characterized as too young, too edgy, too scary — code for too black — as it was said to be in the late 1970s, pre-Magic and Bird.

Now it’s also the hip-hop capital of America, Thugs R Us. As if what was possibly the worst N.B.A. disturbance ever, the Pistons-Pacers brawl in November 2004, wasn’t at least half the responsibility of a largely white crowd at the suburban Palace of Auburn Hills.

Talk about drunk, about lawless. And in that case, we do have the video to prove it.

At his best, Araton is one of the most insightful columnists there is. He's at his best today.

Unrelated to the New York Times, I am watching the end of the Florida-Tennessee game, with Florida headed to another loss. A couple of minutes ago, Dick Vitale, noted football expert, asserted that Brady Quinn would be a great player, a "winner" and the "next Tom Brady." Does Vitale know something we don't?

In 2006, Quinn put up huge numbers - except when he played anybody good. The last three ranked teams Notre Dame played in 2006 were: Michigan, USC and LSU. One game was at home, one on the road, and the third was a bowl game. Notre Dame lost each game, by the following scores: 47-21, 44-24, 44-14. In those three games, Quinn managed eight TD passes and five interceptions, but completed fewer than fifty percent of his passes for terrible yardage (under six yards an attempt).

Just out of curiosity, how does this make him a "winner?" And, what evidence is there that he's anything like Tom Brady? There's a somewhat more interesting comparison to be made between Quinn and Peyton Manning, the latter of whom also put up huge numbers in his college career but had a penchant for coming up small against top opponents. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to like to say that people  are "entitled to their opinions, not their facts." Vitale's long on the former, short on the latter. So is Chass, for that matter.

Tid Bits - February 26

I have been under the weather the past couple of days, so just a handful of brief items.

1) On a personal, non-sports note, just thought I'd mention that my original blogging home, the Gadflyer, has shut its metaphorical doors today. Since I started this blog, I've had far less time and energy for political blogging, but I am a little sad, and nostalgic. The site gave me my first access to a non-academic audience, and produced some terrific content by really smart people, like Paul Waldman, Tom Schaller, Joshua Holland and Sarah Posner. I have been offered some opportunities to do some political blogging at a couple of sites that I like a lot and, whenever I do that, I'll update my profile here.

2) I mentioned on Friday that Chris Russo was especially angry about the shooting in Las Vegas which left a security guard, Tom Urbanski, paralyzed from the waist down and fighting for his life. A central figure in the events leading up to the shooting is Pacman Jones, the Tennessee Titans' defensive back. Mike and the Mad Dog have continued to make it a cause on their show. Today they interviewed Urbanski's wife, Kathleen. Urbanski is now in guarded condition, but can't speak or really move at all and it's horrifying to hear the state he's in, and what his family is going through. Mike and Chris really were especially annoyed by the fact that no one from the NFL has called the Urbanski family to offer sympathy. Russo opined:

"i know this doesn;t involve billion dollar contracts, and I know this doesn't involve the Jets or the Giants getting a new stadium, but it's human and you'd think someone would have the guts to pick up the phone and call."

I am not a lawyer, but I am guessing that the league will not call the family because to do so would suggest that Pacman Jones might have been involved, when that has not yet been legally established (there are, apparently, additional eyewitnesses who contradict Jones' assertion that he did not know the man believed responsible for the shootings). And, Russo, in particular, has no patience for legalistic explanations of what seem to him to be cut and dry, black and white situations.

I am curious to see how this incident might affect the pair's coverage of the NFL. They're both huge NFL fans and really know the sport. Francesa is buddy-buddy with Bill Parcells. I don't know how they reacted after the Ray Lewis-related shootings in Atlanta a few years ago, but as I mentioned Friday, I have never heard Russo that upset and bitter. It's only been a few days, and people have short memories, but this has the feel of a really disillusioning moment, especially for Russo.

3) This blog has had a pretty small, but growing readership. On a typical day, about 150 people read it. A couple of posts, if they've made their way over to Deadspin, will get more traffic. My Shaughnessy post, which mostly reproduced the little media war going on between Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy and Curt Schilling, found its way to a couple of high traffic boston sites, notably Boston Dirt Dogs. The result: well over 6,000 people have stopped by this site today. So, thanks to all you Red Sox fans for stopping by.

4) Finally - one, two, three, four, I declare a media war: or at least the beginnings of one. Dave Zirin, of Edge of Sports and The Nation (and a kindred spirit in some ways), has gone on the offensive against AOL's Jason Whitlock, aka The Big Sexy, whose arguably Janus-faced approach to the NBA all-star weekend in Vegas I mentioned last week.

Here's Zirin:

But your recent work on the NBA's All Star weekend in Vegas is just beyond the pale. When you have the unholy arrogance to compare your crusade against "ghetto acting" black people to the actions of Rosa Parks, when you call young African American kids "the Black KKK", and when you liken walking the Vegas strip to being in "the yard at a maximum security prison", it's simply time to say, "enough."

 

In your own words, "Instead of wearing white robes and white hoods, the new KKK has now taken to wearing white Ts and calling themselves gangsta rappers, gangbangers and posse members. Just like the White KKK of the 1940s and '50s, we fear them, keep our eyes lowered, shut our mouths and pray they don't bother us."

 

Please, please, please take a moment to listen to yourself. The Klan at its peak had 4.5 million members. They organized campaigns of lynching and terror to keep people of color from voting, holding jobs, or even existing in peace. To compare an NBA player's entourage with this bloody nightmare makes you sound scared, small, and simple.

 

But we're all aware you are anything but simple. You know there are far more fights in hockey and football than basketball with nowhere near the hysteria.  You know there are more brawls at NASCAR events than at Madison Square Garden. You must realize that there is zero proof the friends and family of NBA players are any more violent than anyone else. But you bleat redundantly for "a new civil rights movement" to drive them out.

And, Zirin delivers a real boo-yah to Whitlock, complete with apt reference to Martin Luther King:

Jason: it's time for you and your sports writing brethren, all hot and bothered over All Star Weekend, to take a long overdue reality check. You rail against the violence of NBA "posses" yet turn your back to the fact that this is one of the most violent nations on earth. This is a country that imprisons 2 million of its citizens. This is a nation that spends 1.7 billion dollars a day on the military. This is the country that started an unnecessary war in Iraq that's killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and more than 3,000 troops. Surely a fan of Rosa Parks like yourself is familiar with the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who said, "I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government."

Whitlock's always struck me as a very bright guy with a more sophisticated perspective on sports-related issues than many of his peers. But, I've noticed the change Zirin describes, too, and wonder whether Whitlock's spent too long inside the sports media bubble to think outside of it.

Shaughnessy

Thanks to Jfromta for the link to Sons of Sam Horn (SOSH). One of the noteworthy media related phenomena of Curt Schilling's tenure in Boston has been Schilling's active participation in various Boston media, including as a caller to WEEI, the New England region's most popular sports talk radio station, and as a poster at the aformentioned SOSH, a VERY popular Red Sox website.

There's been much discussion in recent days of Schilling's stated intention to test free agency after the 2007 season. And, on Friday, here's what Shaughnessy wrote about that situation:

At 7:30 a.m., Curt Schilling went on his user-friendly radio program to announce that contract extension talks had broken off and he'll be a free agent after the season. Two-and-a-half hours later, owner John W. Henry said Schilling's announcement was news to him, but at lunchtime general manager Theo Epstein confirmed the breach and demonstrated the bloodlessness of a young Bill Belichick.

Shaughnessy and Schilling don't like each other, which is clear from Shaughnessy's references to Schilling as "the Big Blowhard," as in the following:

But the Big Blowhard roared back into the headline-hogging lead early yesterday with another bombshell on his paid radio gig. This marked the second time in a month that Schill took to the airwaves to shock Sox Nation (wonder if he'll go on WEEI to declare his candidacy for the Senate?). On Jan. 29, he announced plans to pitch in 2008. This contradicted what he'd been saying for the last year, but fans were happy to hear that the big lug was going to keep pitching. Then he declared that if the Sox didn't sign him by the end of spring training, he would test the free agent waters.

The Sox front office was shocked when Schilling went on the radio with this announcement and his gun-to-the-temple timetable was not well received by Messrs. Henry, Lucchino, and Epstein.

As I've written before, we're in a new era of accountability for media, including sports media. It's somewhat novel that the player in question would, himself, exact that accountability, but such is the nature of the age in which we live. Schilling responded Friday on SOSH (CHB is how posters on SOSH refer to Shaughnessy. If you want to know why, go here):

Can you guys imagine if we were actually pissed at each other? This could get ugly fast? Now we'll just have to let hacks and idiots like CHB stir up something that does not exist.

John Henry and I had a very comfortable discussion walking across the field yesterday. I have nothing but the utmost respect for him, and think he feels the same way about me.

Theo and I had a very comfortable discussion the last two days as well.

The Red Sox knew I was doing the morning radio show on WEEI and contrary to what Hemingway wrote in the Globe it's not a 'paid appearance' and never has been. THe money raised on EEI is for ALS and always has been.

The Red Sox knew, and we spoke at length prior to, this going public in January. We both knew that someone in the media had found out from someone other than Theo or I about the discussions and that person was going to write about it, with what would have been incorrect facts. No one was blindsided and no one really cared about the perception of it going public other than to want the facts to get reported.

I know CHB finds it hard to believe, which is understandable, but the 'gun to the head' approach was never a factor here, both sides knew this.

I'd love to tell you I look like Gabe Kapler with my shirt off, I don't. However I weigh 243 pounds right now, which is exactly 2 pounds under what I weighed in at at seasons end last year. The clothes make me look fat.......

Am I disappointed? Yep. Am I surprised? Nope. Is everyone but the parties involved making way too much out of this? Yep.

I've forever needed baseball a whole hell of a lot more than it needs me, I've always known that. I have also always known that it is a business, even when you don't want it to be.

Please trust me when I say, and have said, this will have zero bearing on my preperation or performance this season. I don't pitch for contracts, never have. My three best years were in the first year of new contracts. I pitch to win, just like most of the other guys in this game do.

One of the lines CHB failed to put into the article he wrote a few weeks back was me, on the phone, calling him an asshole. He knows as sure as he's reading this right now that I think he's a giant sphincter.

At some point soon he'll realize that the dislike for him here is not because he's the guy always taking the 'other side' while trying to illicit opinions and responses from readers, but rather he's disliked because he treats people like shit.

Writers like him, and there are others I can assure you, are the reason athletes come to despise members of the media. They aren't all like that but it's just hard to figure out who's who sometimes.

I'm a father of 4 incredible kids, the husband to a woman who turned her bout with cancer into a life saving organization, the boss of a man who drives an hour each day to work, both ways, in my company, that is dying from ALS, and the Lord has blessed me with the ability to spend 21 years playing professional baseball.

I guess what I am saying is that the sun came up today, life is good. If it's meant to be that I come back here then it will happen. If not then I sure as hell will relish in the fact that I got to be here and experience something I couldn't have dreamed up.

Now move along people, talk about something like my career OPS, or can Papi hit 60 this year? Don't let the media make you waste time on issues that just aren't issues to anyone but them.

They can hate the fact that I talk on EEI, or write in these forums, hell he's done it for 4 years, but it's still going to happen and at the end of the day he's still going to be the most misinformed guy in this group when it comes to the Sox and their fans.

While futzing around in the course of writing this post, I came across a website devoted exclusively to ripping on Shaughnessy. Like many other websites dedicated to deconstructing a particular writer or media source, this one assumes the form of "We read (fill-in-the-blank) so you don't have to. And, boy, do they have it in for Shaughnessy.

In a particularly apt post about a Shaughnessy column concerning a recent act of heroism by Boston-area firefighters, DBVADER writes:

Dan uses this opportunity to remind us dimwitted readers that sports stars are not heroes, that heroes are people like firefighter Andrew Lee. Thanks Dan. This statement must be one of the biggest cliches in sportswriting. Weren't we reminded of this by Dan's colleagues after 9/11? And doesn't some local columnist always trot out this angle after every example of heroism by police or firefighter?

Its not that these heroes shouldn't be praised, but we don't need to be reminded that the real heroes are not on the field. We get it. And most well adjusted, semi-bright 16-year olds have figured it out. At some point in our lives we realize that there are more important things than sports and we are disabused of any notion that sports stars are infallible or worthy of any special respect. It doesn't mean we can't still enjoy following our favorite teams and players.

But Dan thinks that a passion for sports is evidence of a warped personality and a lack of perspective; or in Dan's lexicon, you are a "fanboy."

A fan's passion for sports does not preclude other interests or a full and rich life. Indeed, it adds to it. It is what we have in common. But in Dan's world, if you don't have a detached, cynical take on things, you are a childlike idiot.

If you've ever seen or heard Shaughnessy, you know he comes across as one of the most dour power people on the planet, taking the I'm-so-tired-from-having-to-cover-all-these-awful-characters affectation to a whole new level. A few weeks back, I mentioned a blurb for a book I'd ordered, by George Castle, titled Baseball and the Media: How Fans Lose in Today's Coverage of the Game. I just got the book the other day and am working my way through it, but one of Castle's concerns is that columnists (who now have the prized, and more remunerative jobs at newspapers), away from a regular beat, don't take the time to cultivate relationships with players the way beat writers do, resulting in detached and, Castle believes, less well-informed analysis of the game. Castle has a larger critique of the entire industry of baseball coverage, which I'll get to in a future post, and his discussion of the columnist/beat writer split is only a small part of it. And, Shaughnessy's been around a long time and obviously does have plenty of contacts, including access to ownership. But, this particular Shaughnessy-Schilling episode is another reminder of the extent to which celebrity journalism necessarily entails the celebrity-journalists injecting themselves into their stories. Some do it in more obvious and direct ways than others, but when you make a good living by merely stating your opinions, and grinding your own axes, it would appear to be particularly tempting to get lazy about your job, in some respects. It's easier to write about back-and-forths in the media, to speculate about contract squabbles than it is to double-check quotes, substantiate facts, and learn anew how the state of the art may have changed concerning analysis of the games you've long followed. And, since the culture of sports opinion is so off-the-cuff anyway, why bother with all the heavy lifting when there's always something easy about which to opine.

I have no doubt that Shaughnessy would have a response to every one of Schilling's claims above, and I don't presume to know whether everything Schilling says accurately represents the situation under discussion. But, Schilling and the Shaughnessy Watch guys have it right here: if you're going to write about sports, either talk about the games on the field, or (as Dave Zirin does) talk about how sports relates to matters of real significance off of it. The incessant, trivial tempests in a teapot to which fans are subject is not where the conversation needs to be.

Various

1) There was a triple-shooting at a Las Vegas strip club during the all-star weekend, and according to some accounts, Tennessee Titans' defensive back Adam "Pacman" Jones was at the center of it. The Associated Press has reported that, according to the Las Vegas police, Jones is not a person of interest in the case. However, a co-owner of the club in question, Robert Susnar, has a different account:

The co-owner of the strip club where three people were shot over the NBA All-Star weekend says pro football player Adam "Pacman" Jones came and left with the shooter, an account that differs from that of Jones' lawyer.

"He denied any knowledge of the shooter, but he was sitting right next to him," club co-owner Robert Susnar told the Las Vegas Review-Journal for Wednesday's edition. "Those guys came in together and left together."

Jones' lawyer, Worrick Robinson, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Jones did not know anyone involved in the shooting and was interviewed by local authorities as a witness, not as a suspect. Police have not said Jones is a person of interest in the case.

Susnar said his recollection of the events was based upon his interviews with employees and club surveillance video.

He said the trouble started after 4 a.m., when Jones and his entourage of a half-dozen people returned to the club for the second time that evening.

Jones tossed hundreds of $1 bills on the stripper stage, Susnar said, adding that when a dancer started grabbing the money without Jones' permission, he got angry, grabbed her hair and slammed her head against the stage.

Security guard Aaron Cudworth, a mixed-martial artist with professional fighting experience, intervened and scuffled with Jones and members of his entourage, he said.

Jones then threatened to kill the guard, Susnar said.

Order was eventually restored and everyone moved outside before the gunman opened fire toward the front door of the club, hitting Cudworth, security guard Tom Urbanski and a female customer, he said.

"He goes out, retrieves a gun, then shoots two security guards, pretty much making good on the threat made by Pacman Jones," Susnar said.

Tragically, Urbanski's spine was shattered by one of the bullets, and though he will survive, he is now paralyzed for life. The above information is from an AP report that appeared in USA Today. The Tennessee Tennessean adds one potentially important piece of information:

Titans cornerback Pacman Jones set off a melee that led to a triple shooting outside a Las Vegas strip club early Monday morning, the club's co-owner said Wednesday, based on accounts he said he had from eyewitnesses.(my emphasis)

In other words, contrary to the implication in the AP report, that Susnar was basing his account on what he himself witnessed, it appears that his information is at one remove from that. I only mention that to clarify where things stand, not to make a judgment about who Jones knew there or what his responsibility for the incident might have been. At this point, there is not yet enough information to say how centrally Pacman was involved. But, the circumstances of the shootings, and the linking of Jones' name to them set off Chris Russo on a tirade tonight the likes of which I have never before heard. And, remember this is a guy whose nickname is "Mad Dog."

I won't be able to do justice to Russo's anger, because he was shouting about as loudly as you can shout and still be understood, but here are some of his comments:

"you try to follow sports, you try to get your kids in the mix, to show them the beauty of sports, and you get this...I can't take it anymore...I can't take it...it makes me sick..."

"who the hell is Pacman Jones...some thug with a gun who's going to take the law into his own hands...and the NFL does nothing...the NFL should say to Jones, finito! Tank Johnson. Finito! Let them go fight in the courts and lose millions of dollars...can't take it anymore...can't take it...how is it possible five days after a kid that he shot is paralyzed for life that the NFL has said nothing. Show some guts, Goodell...Gene, show some guts...you make us sick! You let Lewis walk!"

"Somebody's got a take a stand here...someone's gotta take them to the mat..."

"I am tired of hearing people say 'it's difficult'...'we need to let the court system runs its course...'" "No, we don't!" "Kick him the hell out! Now!"

"That house man freaking Upshaw!"

A few months ago, I wrote a post on Terrell Owens, the day after his overdose incident. At that time, I criticized the tendency of sports media, in its generally resentful view of contemporary athletes, for failing to make distinctions between transgressions that really matter, like knee-capping somebody, or shooting them, and behaviors that, while annoying and obnoxious, amount to nothing, like essentially everything Owens has done. But, I don't want to go down that road tonight. Instead, I just want to note what seems to be a bubbling resentment directed at professional team sport athletes, particularly those in football and the NBA. Earlier today, a caller to Russo started off by saying the NBA was just terrible, and that the league was just full of thugs. Russo, like his partner Francesa, has now taken up the mantle of the double standard by which the NFL gets a pass for stuff that the NBA doesn't. So, Russo pointed out to the caller that NFL players have gotten involved in many more off-field incidents than NBA players and that, therefore, you can't say the NBA is worse than the NFL. To which the caller responded, "yeah, but I think the NBA is worse."

But, the Jones incident obliterates those distinctions. There have been many conflicting accounts of what went on in Las Vegas during the NBA's all-star weekend - about the level of crime, about how people would rather wait 75 minutes for a cab rather than walk 15 minutes, about how the police all but deserted the downtown area, leaving folks to their fate against "gangs" 'posses" etc. And, to cap it all off, at the end of a basketball weekend that has provided all sorts of fodder to reinforce some of the worst of what people believe about the NBA and the "element" that accompanies it, a football player with a troubled past is tied to a horrific crime at a strip club.

Where this is headed, I don't know. But, there's no doubt that a significant subset of the white fan base - and sports media machinery - that is the backbone of the financial backbone of the major professional sports leagues is getting angrier by the day at a world that seems more alien, more out of control and more unaccountable than ever before. And, it doesn't matter that the vast majority of players in the two leagues most closely scrutinized for such behavior - the NBA and the NFL - aren't personally associated with any trouble at all. Because, every time there's a report of an arrest, whether its for drunk driving, or whatever, it conjures a set of images that we can't get out of our minds - a set of images that indicts the Black Athlete. This is why it misses the mark for people to say that race is too often and unfairly interjected into our discussions of how sports are covered. Because the dominant sports media culture in this country - the columnists, radio hosts, etc., are never going to be able to separate completely the actions of individual Black athletes from a larger set of images about The Black Athlete, the way that culture can separate the actions of individual white athletes from some larger stereotype about whites. Just last night there was an outrageous melee between the Ottawa Senators and the Buffalo Sabres, involving at least eight players and including six ejections. And, as Deadspin put it: "we'll say it again: If this had happened in the NBA, the league would be disbanded."

So that nobody misunderstands me, it makes me sick that a man was paralyzed for life and, if Jones really was involved, it'll make me sick if he gets to live his life as if nothing happened. I have never personally believed that Ray Lewis was uninvolved in the double-murder to which his associates were tied in Atlanta a few years ago, and I don't have a scintilla of doubt about OJ's guilt. And, I am not here to bash Russo for his anger tonight about the shootings. Because, not everything is all about race. It's possible to be sickened by what Ray Lewis may have done, and what OJ surely did, and what Pacman may have been involved in on a basic, human level. But, in trying to think about how American sports are covered today, with the focus on off-the-field behavior, and police blotters and all that, it seems inescapably true that the problem of race, the way it's embedded in our psyches and the way it affects how we make our most deeply felt judgments is only becoming a more serious one in the world of American team sports.

2) Speaking of Vegas, Dwil, over at Sports on My Mind, does good work going after Jason Whitlock for having written two diametrically opposed accounts of the all-star weekend. One, for the KC Star, seemed to revel in some of the excesses of the weekend, while the second one, written from Whitlock's bigger perch at AOL sports a couple of days later, condemned the festivities of the weekend. It's a long post. But, it's a good example of how, at their best, bloggers are holding media accountable in ways that mainstream media have simply not had to deal with in the past. Whether in politics, or sports, many media types are taking poorly to this new scrutiny. And, as reporters often like to say about their own work, if the bloggers are pissing people off like this, they must be doing something right.

3) Scoop Jackson has a compelling interview with his childhood friend Tim Hardaway. Scoop does a good job of asking his friend real questions and, clearly enough, doesn't share Hardaway's views on the issue for which Hardaway is now famous. Hardaway seems most apologetic for having used the word "hate" which he says he doesn't feel for anybody.

Here's that part of their exchange:

Scoop: You used the word "hate" …

Tim: I know. And I don't hate anybody. I don't have a hate bone in my body.

Then how did that come out of you?

Scoop, it was just the wrong choice of words. It came out of my mouth real crude and real bad and real ugly. And people think that that's the way I feel. That I hate [gay people], and I don't. I don't condone what they do, but I don't hate them. But that's how it came out.

They call them hate crimes for a reason.

And that's what it was, a hate crime on my part. But I was never brought up to hate anybody, you know that. But that's just the word and that's how we used it. You know when we got a whopping we'd be like, "I hate my moms" or "I hate my dad," and at the time you really didn't hate them, but that was the word you used. You know I can go into a restaurant and say, "I hate this food, I hate the chef, I don't even know why I came back to this restaurant." But I know I can't use the word like that, or let's say I'm not supposed to. People have come up to me and told me, "Tim, you can't say that you hate gay people because it's not the same term." But that's how I talk. That's the way I am.

As for Hardaway's beliefs, it's clear that those are intact:

But still you have issues with gays?

I still don't accept their lifestyle. No.

And you stand on that?

Yes. You know, we were brought up to not even condone or associate yourself with a gay person. If you knew of a gay person, disassociate yourself with them.

But Tim, you've been in Miami for years now and there is a strong and public gay community there. How have you still held on to that same mentality while living in Miami all of these years?

I just get away from it. I just walk away. I see it, I just go the other way, cross the street.

So at no point did you ever try to understand their lifestyle or way of life?

No. Never did. Never wanted to.

Do you want to now?

No. I don't want to … try to find some type of understanding of why they live the way they live or why they are the way they are. Maybe I could go to therapy, maybe someone can help me out with understanding [them], the sensitivity of the issue. But as a person, my beliefs are my beliefs. I don't have to condone it and I don't have to be around it. But I don't have to hate it either.

Notably, later in the interview Hardaway insists that his biggest issue with a gay teammate would be a trust one - that if a teammate were gay, but didn't tell anyone until after he retired, Hardaway would feel betrayed. His preference, in other words, would be to know up front:

Because at least then I'd know. I'd know what I'm dealing with from the beginning. But if a guy, like they say, is in the closet and decides to come out of the closet years down the line, you feel that your friendship, him being a teammate, being a part of a team, which in a lot of ways is like being part of a family or fraternity, has been betrayed. You feel like you've been double-crossed. We were in battles together, we were in the trenches together, how could you not tell me? I have a friend who was on a team with a gay person and that person was his roommate and his teammate came out of the closet after they had been roommates. And my friend told me that he's the one who felt violated. He told me that he hates him now. He said if the dude had come to him before and told him this, maybe it could have been worked out, easier to accept. It's a trust issue.

Maybe Hardaway means it when he says he doesn't hate. It''s often hard to know what's in a person's heart. But, this trust stuff is 100% bullshit. Hardaway's spent the entire interview up to this point saying he wants nothing to do with gays, has no desire to understand where they're coming from, was taught and prefers to run in the opposite direction from them, and now he's blaming a potential gay teammate for not being honest with him about his sexuality. What, because teammates have to be in the trenches with one another and trust one another, so Hardaway wants to know if a teammate is gay so he can high tail it out of that trench as soon as he finds out? Maybe Hardaway doesn't understand how utterly incoherent he sounds on this point. Or, maybe, and this is part of what makes the interview so good, Hardaway is really conflicted, and is trying to work through what he thinks as the interview wears on:

So in your mind do you want forgiveness or are you just going to try to get yourself straight?

I want both. I want forgiveness and I want to get my s--- together.

And that entails …

Right now, learning. Learning that gay people are really no different than a lot of other people. Learning that they work hard, they do things in the community, they are responsible for building parks, rec centers, providing safe environments for kids, just things I had never associated with them before. [This last week] has opened up my eyes to the gay population and what they do. I'm getting a lot of knowledge about them that I didn't have. Which is going to make me a better person. And if it doesn't, then I'm a damn fool.

Our world is becoming more complex, more diverse, more confusing. Sports are, in many ways, all about order, simplicity, clear rules and uniformity. There's an escalating friction between the latter and the former and it's creating an intense heat. And, in all sorts of ways, it seems to have boiled over the past couple of weeks.

Early Returns

Since I issued the challenge yesterday, that I would try to hold baseball commentators to the James manifesto standard, I wanted to mention a couple of media people in that light. On the plus side, on Tuesday, Francesa and Russo of WFAN were talking baseball with Tom Verducci, who was in Red Sox camp at Fort Myers. The BIG story is, of course, Dice-K, who apparently has 150 Japanese reporters covering his fielding drills. The conversation eventually came out around to Manny, his erratic ways, his potential unhappiness at again not being traded, etc. Francesa essentially said, who cares: he's the second best hitter in baseball over the last decade (to Bonds), he hits 35-40 homers a year, drives in 130 runs and last year, before he essentially quit, he was hitting .320, with 35 homers and a .430 on base percentage. Five years ago, Francesa wasn't talking about OBP and it's not simply a matter of throwing a stat out there for the sake of doing so. Manny has two great talents that help his teams win games: his tremendous home-run power and his exceptional command of the strike zone. His very high on base percentage perfectly captures that central skill in a way that no other statistic, not batting average, or RBIs or whatever, could. This is now routine for Francesa, and what followed was an edifying conversation between Mike and Verducci about how well Manny stays back on the ball and how late he is able to react and still swing with balance and generate power which, among other things, means that curveballs rarely fool him.

Russo is less far along on this curve, but Francesa's invocation of Manny's OBP yesterday took me back to the late 1990s. In 1997, John Olerud came to the Mets to play first base, and Rico Brogna, who had been with the Mets ended up at first for the Phillies. Russo used to argue on the air that he'd rather have Brogna at first because he was more like a typical first baseman, a 30 homer, 110-RBI guy, whereas Olerud was more a gap hitter. Just to be clear about this: John Olerud was, at that time, roughly a 1,000% better than Brogna in every way.  In the three year period in question, Olerud  actually had more RBI 291-287, and hit one fewer homerun, so even given the premise, Russo was wrong about the differences. But, more to the point: the premise was moronic. Brogna's OBP's in those three years were .293, .319, and .336. Olerud's: .400, .447, .427. Using the OPS+ measure, which takes a player's on base percentage and slugging and scales it relative to the league that season, (so that 100 is always average), Brogna's three year figures were: 88, 97 and 96. In other words, at his best, Brogna was merely slightly below average as opposed to sucky. Olerud's: 136, 163 and 131. In other words, great, when not utterly awesome. In fact, that 163 figure, for 1998, means that the sum of Olerud's key offensive contributions was slightly better than Sosa's in 1998, when Sosa hit five hundred homeruns (OK, 66).

This not just a matter of statistical illiteracy - it's simply not knowing the game. The Mets had a truly great player. They cleared room for him by letting go of a below average one. And Russo's arguing, on the basis of an idiotic image he has of what a first baseman "should" be, that he'd rather have Brogna.

That was meant as kudos to Francesa, not to trash Russo...

In today's Boston Globe, Dan Shaughnessy has a column about J.D. Drew. It's complementary, suggesting that, despite the degree to which Drew has been absolutely viflifed in Boston before having played a game, maybe he's not such a bad guy after all. Shaughnessy concludes his column thusly:

He played in more than 140 games in two of the last three seasons. He's been an MVP candidate. He showed up in great shape. He's an upgrade over Trot. He hasn't said or done anything dumb since the Sox signed him. Sure, he's overpaid, even by today's ridiculous standards.

But why not give the guy a chance?

I happen to like Drew, too, as a ballplayer and, as a Yankee fan, I find the prospect of facing a middle of the order of Papi-Manny-Drew, extremely unpleasant. Lineup protection is, generally, one of the great myths in baseball, and should take its rightful place alongside the Yeti or the Loch Ness monster. But, it was glaringly obvious during Boston Massacre, Part II, last August, that the Yankees were not afraid of anyone in Boston's lineup after Manny, which is why he spent the entire series on base. Manny doesn't need anybody to protect him. But, the Sox do need another potent bat in the lineup, and Drew is that bat.

The legitimate concern about him is whether he can stay healthy. But, what's missing from discussion about him is just how good he is when he is healthy. Shaughnessy only mentioned his stats once in the colum: a recital of Drew's 2006 triple crown stats, 20 homers, 100 RBIs and .283 batting average which has the sound of a decent outfielder. But, this neglects Drew's real skill - command of the strike zone, which both means he gets on base a lot and punishes the ball when he's pitched to. The Epstein regime has been in place for four years now, and it's just very surprising that a columnist who covers the Red Sox as closely as Shaughnessy does, would not note Drew's best stat, given the emphasis on that stat by Red Sox management. If that stat were something esoteric, like a high sac fly total, that would be one thing. But, when it's the single best (non-composite) measure of a player's offensive contribution to his team that we have, omitting it is just misinforming readers. Last year, Drew's OBP was .393. Drew's been over .400 three times in seasons in which he's played 100 or more games, so he's clearly capable of better than .393, especially given the differences between hitting in Fenway and hitting in Dodgers Stadium. But, that .393 mark is also his career OBP, and it's a big reason why his career OPS is 133. In other words, his ability to get on base is a mainstay of an offensive game that has been fully 33% better than the league average during the course of Drew's career.

What Shaughnessy's doing here is a bit like describing how good a cheeseburger is by talking about the bun that it comes in.

Or something.

Unless Shaughnessy has grounds for arguing that Drew's triple stats tell us more about his contribution to his team than do his on base (or slugging) percentage - and I assure you, he doesn't - he gets the first failing grade of the season.

The rest of the article is good, though.

Getting Ready

I complain alot about sports media, of course. But, with Spring Training under way, there's no denying that there are more good outlets for really good baseball analysis than there have ever been, and there's also no doubt that the sabermetric revolution has had a generally positive impact on the way the game is analyzed. In part, this is a result of the simple fact that more mainstream baseball talking heads than ever now refer to statistics that tell us more about a player's real contribution to his team than has ever been the case. There are older stalwarts in the business, like Peter Gammons, who peppers his columns with references to OBP and slugging, and there are the younger turks, like Tom Verducci of SI, who appear well-steeped in the newer approach. And, significantly, the most widely consumed sports media now employ as commentators sabermetric practitioners. SI features Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus, ESPN.com has had Rob Neyer - a Bill James disciple - for years and, more recently, Keith Law, a Baseball Prospectus alum, and the list goes on. The beat writers around the country also can no longer afford to ignore completely the new wave of baseball data, though some try.

This is good because, as Alan Schwarz says, baseball is a numbers game, and understanding the game means, in part, putting the numbers in their proper context. It's the single greatest contribution of sabermetrics to have insisted on, and practiced, that point.

This is all a preface for pasting in here the ten major conclusions Bill James outlined in the last Baseball Prospectus he wrote, in 1988 (for a cliff's notes version of all of James' abstracts from 1977-1988, go here). The state of research and analysis, including through the use of highly sophisticated computer programming, has advanced immeasurably since 1988 and, contrary to some folks, sabmetrics is not a cult with a single dogma and no dissenting views and many of the smartest analysts have challenged many of James' conclusions. But, for those of you who follow baseball closely, as the season advances and you consume baseball media, it will be worth keeping these ten conclusions in mind when you consider the question: does this talking head know what they're talking about? I will plan to do the same, of course. Without further ado:

Of all the studies I have done over the last twelve years, what have I learned? What is the relevance of sabermetric knowledge to the decision-making process of a team? If I were employed by a major-league team, what are the basic things that I know from the research I have done which would be of use to me in helping that team?

1. Minor-league batting statistics will predict major league batting performance with essentially the same reliability as previous major-league statistics.

2. Talent in baseball is not normally distributed. It is a pyramid. For every player who is 10 percent above than the average player, there are probably 20 players who are 10 pecent below average.

3. What a player hits in one ballpark may be radically different from what he would hit in another.

4. Ballplayers, as a group, reach their peak value much earlier and decline much more rapidly than people believe.

5. Players taken in the June draft coming out of college (or with at least two years of college) perform dramatically better than players drafted out of high school.

6. The chance of getting a good player with a high draft pick is substantial enough that is clearly a disastrous strategy to give up a first-round draft pick to sign a player like Rick Dempsey, Pete Falcone, or Bill Stein.

7. A power pitcher has a dramatically higher expectation for future wins than does a finesse pitcher of the same age and ability.

8. Single-season won-lost records have almost no value as an indicator of a pitcher's contribution to a team.

9. The largest variable determining how many runs a team will score is how many times they get their leadoff man on.

10. Any one of the following:

A great deal of what is perceived as being pitching is in fact defense.

True shortages of talent almost never occur at the left end of the defensive spectrum.

Rightward shifts along the defensive spectrum almost never work.

Our idea of what makes a team good on artificial turf is not supported by any research.

When a team improves sharply one season, they will almost always decline in the next.

The platoon differential is real and virtually universal.

(For clarification, here's a handy explanation of the defensive spectrum).

Play Ball!

Ethics in Sports

Yesterday, Bobby Knight took aim at the new NBA age limit, a policy I've criticized on a number of occasions. Knight's main argument, as quoted at ESPN.com is:

   "Because now you can have a kid come to school for a year and play basketball and he doesn't even have to go to class," Knight said Monday during the Big 12 coaches call. "He certainly doesn't have to go to class the second semester. I'm not exactly positive about the first semester. But he would not have to attend a single class the second semester to play through the whole second semester of basketball.

   "That, I think, has a tremendous effect on the integrity of college sports."

A focus of the ESPN.com story on Knight's views is Kevin Durant, the fabulous Texas freshman who stands a good chance of becoming the first frosh in history to win college basketball's player of the year award. Knight said that he would never recruit a "one-and-done" like Durant, given the disincentives to go to class beyond first semester, especially for a player so obviously ticketed for the very top of the NBA draft lottery. But, the most striking instance of some of the arguably perverse consequences of the new rule is embodied in the OJ Mayo case. Mayo - considered by many the top high school b-baller in the country - chose to go to USC because it's in a major media market and would be a good launching pad for his professional career, especially off the court. As you can see (follow the link), neither him nor his future coach sees his year at USC in anything but purely business terms.

I mention this in part because I am obviously interested in the age-limit issue, but also because Jemele Hill, whom I referenced yesterday, recently wrote a column for Page 2 about ethics in sports.

Hill writes:

Sharon Stoll, a noted sports ethicist, has taken the ethical temperatures of more than 70,000 athletes nationwide. What she has uncovered is what headlines tell us almost every day. Most athletes possess very poor ethics.

Just look at this week alone. Michael Waltrip had his car confiscated and saw his crew chief and competition director suspended indefinitely for using an illegal fuel additive. An angry father upset at his son's loss threw his son's wrestling opponent off the mat at a youth match in Aurora, Ill.

Sports is becoming a haven for cheaters -- and this goes beyond just steroids and baseball. We should have known things were bad last December, when a chess player was banned for 10 years after he was caught using his mobile device to win games.

Everything in Stoll's research suggests morality in competition only will continue to decline. It won't be long before someone figures out how to use text messaging to cheat at Uno.

"In contact sports, it's the lowest we've seen," said Stoll, a University of Idaho professor who runs the Center for Ethical Theory and Honor in Competitive Sports (ETHICS).

Twenty years of research has shown Stoll that athletes need to be taught ethics with the same diligence that they learn their playbooks.

Some of them just don't know right from wrong. If they do, they discover quickly that in sports, the wrong choices are rewarded just as much as the right ones.

It's a telling coincidence that as the smoke cleared from the Waltrip cheating scandal, Barry Bonds signed a one-year deal worth $15.8 million with the San Francisco Giants. If that's the spoils of cheating, why would any athlete dare cease?

The problem is that a hard-line stance toward cheating would mean ridding sports of the competitive advantages that have, for years, been romanticized as traditions. It would mean no more scuffed baseballs, teaching offensive linemen how to hold without getting caught, and ending fighting in hockey -- all those little things that for years have not only helped our favorite athletes and teams win games, but upped the entertainment value of sports.

Perusing the ETHICS website, there are some interesting findings. One is that while female athletes score better on the moral reasoning survey administered by ETHICS than do male athletes, their scores are declining over time. In fact, ETHICS asserts that, within five years, female athletes' ethics will have fallen to the same low level as male athletes. Another is that surveys that follow discreet groups of athletes find that their moral reasoning declines over a four year period - in other words, the longer they participate in sports, the worse their moral reasoning becomes. A third, and one I want to ponder a bit, is that the reason for the convergence of female athletes' ethics scores with those of males is that "it appears that female athletes are being socialized into the current capitalistic, commodified model of moral callousness – less of a concern for others and more of a concern for self."

Hill's account, and this is standard for sports journalism, focuses on individual behaviors, as if moral decision-making always happens in a vacuum. I don't want to overstate this - there is plenty of discussion of how "the culture" - never terribly well specified, is contributing to the moral failings of our athletes. But, there's never any analysis of where that culture comes from, or what shapes it. The sports commentariat just knows that it's different, and worse, than it used to be. And, as a consequence, the athletic participants are of weaker character. But, Hill's missed a big contextual explanation in ETHICS' findings - that a particular form of culture - namely one that rarely questions the right of big institutions and powerful interests to make money at all costs, may contribute directly to, even teach, the poor ethics found in the surveys. The lowest scoring athletes are males in team sports and, more to the point, males in revenue generating team sports. It's easy for sports commentators to focus on the greedy, selfish athlete and, at times, easy enough to criticize owners for their own greed, especially when they continually raise ticket prices. But, there's not much discussion of how institutional decisions might shape individual ethics. I can't say that this is what Knight has in mind when he questions the impact of the new age rules on the integrity of college sports. But, it's transparent that the NBA did not adopt the rule to serve the high school kids affected by it, and it's clear enough that the colleges benefit not because the rule allows them to extend their educational mission to a previously unreachable group of players. If the OJ Mayos of the world are picking colleges based on marketing opportunities, perhaps the best place to start thinking about the ethics of young athletes isn't with the kids themselves, but with the institutions that think more about their bottom line than the principles they profess so piously.

In fact, the ETHICS findings notwithstanding, there is evidence that the problem of ethics goes well beyond the sports world. According to Dave Callahan, author of The Cheating Culture, there's:

a new moral crisis. This crisis infects nearly every part of American society, from education to sports to business to a myriad of professions. It often plays out in intensely personal ways and it deeply troubles Americans. The crisis is the rise of a "cheating culture" in the United States.

Cheating is up. Cheating is everywhere. By cheating I mean breaking the rules to get ahead academically, professionally or financially. Some of this cheating involves violating the law, some does not. Either way, most of it is by people who, on the whole, view themselves as upstanding members of society.

Cheating is intended to go undetected, and trends in unethical behavior can be hard to document. Still, what evidence is available suggests that cheating increased in the 1980s and '90s, at least in comparison to the middle decades of the twentieth century. Many studies confirm that cheating by high school and college students has increased substantially. In a 2002 survey by the Josephson Institute of Ethics, a Los Angeles-based group, three-quarters of high school students admitted they had cheated in the previous year.

The plague of cheating infects every corner of our culture, Callahan argues, from unethical doctors, lawyers and CEOs of large corporations to plagiarizing academics and journalists. And, Callahan locates a clear culprit:

America's crisis of ethics is no accidental phenomenon. It is organic to the way of life proselytized by the right. As free-market ideology has triumphed both economically and culturally since the late 1970s, such quintessential American values as fair play and honesty have sunk into decline.

Competition is an unquestioned virtue within market ideology and has been a prime mantra of conservatives for thirty years. It is seen as the foundation not just of maximum prosperity but also of individual greatness. Freedom, in the conservative worldview, is a state of pure competition where there are no checks on individual striving. Taken too far, though, competition is poisonous to people's ethics. And lately, America has taken competition too far.

I want to take a step back from this and argue that while it's true that the ethos Callahan describes has been pushed hardest by the values-loving right, such advocacy is by no means confined to them: the prerogatives of the marketplace represent a consensus ideology in America. And, I am wary of arguments that draw a bright line between a degraded present and a pristine past. But, the point is this: most of our conversations about greed and morality in sports focus on individual behavior, especially of the athletes themselves, and rarely is any thought given to the larger framework within which people's (including athletes) values and ethics are shaped. Knight's criticism of the age rule zeroes in on a key problem: the way it will create incentives for individuals to behave in ways which undermine the integrity of the enterprise. Knight specifically said that he didn't blame Longhorn's coach Rick Barnes for recruiting Durant, because the rules allow it and you can hardly tell a coach not to go after such a supremely talented, and available, kid. And, I am sure the experience will work out well for some young athletes beyond their professional development. Having to spend a year in college, instead of going straight to the pros is not the worst thing in the world.

It's just that it would be nice for sports journalists to aim a little bit more of their moralistic fire away from the individual athletes and, instead, point more of it toward the larger sources of ethical (mis)behavior.

 

 

Quick Hits - February 19

1) I can't resist saying something about Norv Turner, hired today by the San Diego Chargers. I picked on Turner a few weeks back, when discussing the Rooney rule and, as far as I know, his 58-82-1 career coaching record hasn't changed since then. I know that Turner installed the current offense that San Diego uses six years ago (according to Michael Smith), but is this a reason to hire a man to be the head coach?

John Clayton likes the hire:

After a number of turbulent years in which general manager A.J. Smith and coach Marty Schottenheimer just couldn't find a way to get along, the Chargers were looking for a nice guy who won't make waves. Turner is the perfect choice. In San Francisco, people in the office refer to him as Uncle Norv. Turner is such a nice guy, office employees and players loved coming by his office just to enjoy his company and conversation.

Say goodbye to dysfunction in San Diego.

If this is the key criterion for head coach, I am seriously disappointed that I wasn't considered. Ask my friends - I am a nice guy, too. I can't believe Clayton is serious about this.  The Chargers passed over some promising younger candidates, like Ravens' defensive coordinator Rex Ryan and Mike Singletary. But, like the aforementioned Michael Smith, Clayton thinks experience rightly won out in this case, and also credits Turner for his work with Alex Smith, the 49ers quarterback. I have never really been sold on experience, particularly when the experience is of losing consistently, as has been true for Turner. Clayton also credits Turner for his work with QB Alex Smith in San Francisco. Smith was improved over his rookie season, but not only did he finish with a below average 74.8 passer rating, but he really stunk the last ten games of the season, with only three games above 70.
For all I know, Turner will turn out to be the next Joe Torre: a nice guy with a previous record of failure at multiple stops, brought in to skipper a team with championship talent but in need of a calm, steadying hand in an organization riven by dysfunction - so, I'll hedge my bets here by saying "you never know." But Turner proves that our vaunted American meritocracy often doesn't extend to the process of hiring NFL head coaches.

2) Phil Mushnick, long-time writer/curmdugeon for the New York Post notes in an article today the unreflective handling of violence and fighting in hockey by sportscasters:

Late in the Flyers' 5-3 victory Saturday at the Garden, ex-Ranger Mike Knuble had an accidental, full-stride collision with Brendan Shanahan. Both hit the ice like out-of-sight airline luggage. And both stayed down. Knuble was out of it, but only half as much as Shanahan, whose head had smacked the ice. He stayed stretched out, motionless, his eyes vacant.

Finally, Knuble rose and was helped off. Rangers fans responded with applause while players on both benches hit their sticks against the boards in caring, respectful salute.

Later, Shanahan, his head immobilized, was lifted onto a gurney and wheeled toward an ambulance. His departure brought applause and a chant from Rangers fans, and more stick-banging of the boards from players on both teams.

Moments after the game was re-started, Rangers tough guy Ryan Hollweg took a violent run at Joni Pitkanen. With Pitkanen exposed along the boards, Hollweg drove both hands into Pitkanen's jaw then dropped his gloves, an invitation to a fistfight.

How Hollweg had the stomach for blood so soon after Knuble and Shanahan had been removed is beyond us. But on MSG Network, that never came up.

And then, because Pitkanen was unwilling to fight, Philly's Alexandre Picard grabbed Hollweg. And then Aaron Ward grabbed Picard. And then Picard and Ward shook free of their gloves and had a fistfight. They tried to punch each other in the head as hard as they could.

And when it was over, the crowd applauded. And both teams, from their benches, again used their sticks to bang out their admiration.

On MSG, Sam Rosen and Joe Micheletti never put the two episodes together, never asked that we even consider this episode had soon followed that one. It was as if that Knuble-Shanahan train wreck, the one that brought a sustained and solemn silence minutes earlier, had never happened.

When I first scanned the article and saw the phrase " On MSG, Sam Rosen and Joe Micheletti never put the two episodes together" i thought Mushnick was referring to another recent brawl in Madison Square Garden, involving the Rangers' co-tenants, the New York Knicks. Despite Chris Russo saying, ridiculously, at the time of the Garden Brawl, that there's no fighting in hockey anymore, there is, of course. And fans applaud, rather than wring their hands about the coming of the Final Days.

3) Jemele Hill,ESPN Page Two columnist, raises some interesting issues in her column today about Matt Leinart and Tom Brady fathering children out of wedlock:

Brady is now the second white NFL quarterback in the last year that has become embroiled in baby-mama drama.

First there was Matt Leinart, whose baby mama -- USC basketball player Brynn Cameron -- gave birth to their child last October. And if you count back the months, Leinart might have been juggling Cameron and Paris Hilton around the same time. Now that's what I call a scramble play. Good work, Matt.

So, what's going on here? Does ESPN The Magazine need to do a Where's (White) Daddy cover story? [In 1998, Sports Illustrated had a cover story about athletes having babies out of wedlock and that feature focused predominantly on black athletes.] Do white NFL quarterbacks now represent the new at-risk baby-daddy population?

She also adds this little sarcastic dig:

For so long, baby mamas and illegitimate children were stereotyped as problems only associated with black athletes. But this proves that ghetto-fabulousness knows no color.

Welcome, Matt and Tom, to the world of outrageous child support payments. Welcome to being labeled contributors to the country's moral decay and growing out-of-wedlock birth rate.

As I recall, Larry Bird's name came up in that 1998 Sports Illustrated piece, but Hill's point is well-taken here.

 

Attack of the Pod People

I am catching up on some ESPN podcasts this evening from the past few days. There's tons of Amaechi/Hardaway stuff, so I wanted to offer a smattering. 

On Friday, Mike Greenberg had Jeremy Schaap on the Mike and Mike show. Greenberg raised the question of whether we press professional athletes too hard on their political views. Greenie noted that this is an issue that came up alot of Michael Jordan who, for example, was asked to make comments in the aftermath of the LA riots in 1992, following the acquittal of the four officers accused of beating Rodney King. From Greenberg's website:

What this does remind me of is that oftentimes, I think we are quick to criticize public figures in general and, in this case, athletes, who will not take stands on an issue from time to time.  The example I will always use is going all the way back to the L.A. riots in the early 90’s.  I remember there was a lot of pressure on Michael Jordan, who I was covering on a day-to-day basis at that time, and who, at that time, was maybe the most famous person in the world, there was a lot of pressure being put on Jordan to make some sort of statement about that, basically, to ask for calm, to ask for people to calm down.  Jordan wouldn’t do it, and a lot of people criticized him for it.  But I always respected him for it, because I always felt he was actually saying, “I don’t know anything about what’s going on here.  I would be talking about something I don’t know anything about.”

Schaap had a good response, noting first of all that Jordan wasn't just criticized for saying "I don't know anything, but also for commenting that 'Republicans wear sneakers, too.' Schaap, though, himself, left out the context for Jordan's sneaker comment. It's not that Jordan was being asked, in general, to endorse Democratic party positions. What he was asked to do was to endorse Harvey Gantt, an African American who challenged Jesse Helms' for the latter's North Carolina Senate seat in 1990. That election was historic for many reasons, including the famous eleventh hour commercials Helms ran, using inflammatory racialized commercials about affirmative action to beat back a fierce challenge from Gantt. That Jordan might want to avoid politics, in general, is one kind of issue. That his specific response to whether he supported Gantt against Helms, given the ugly racial history that Helms represented in a state in which Jordan had, obviously, close ties and in which his mentor, Dean Smith, took exceedingly courageous positions on race when it was unpopular and dangerous to do so, is arguably a disgrace.

Schaap continued, challenging the implication in Greenie's comments that athletes like Hardaway are in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't position:

"I don't think you can give Tim Hardaway a pass. It sounds like he was prepared to answer that question and he's certain;y equipped to answer a question about what it's like in an NBA locker-room. He's spent a lot of time in NBA lockerrooms...And, it sounds like he spent a lot of time thinking about this issue, and homosexuals in lockerrooms." In other words, Le Batard's question was fair, Hardaway answered by expressing strong feelings on the matter without having been forced into an awkward situation outside his comfort zone, and voila.

I should stop here and observe that I am having trouble remembering an issue, at least in recent memory, which has provoked such a sustained discussion throughout sports media on an issue that transcends the sports world. There is always a lurking conversation about race, gender, class, and other bigger issues in sports media, especially on sports talk radio. But, it's usually implicit, except for brief bursts, rather than an explicit focus of conversation. The Amaechi and now Amaechi/Hardaway discussion has provoked more direct conversation about one of those larger issues than any I can remember.

One issue that has come up in relation to the Amaechi disclosures is whether athletes should come out while they're still playing, rather than wait until after they retire and can make a buck, as Jim Leyritz (more about him below), suggested to Michael Kay on ESPN radio 1050 in New York.

Josh Elliott, subbing for Dan Patrick on the Big Show, rejected the suggestion:

"For those of you who say - if you want to make a difference, come out while you're still playing, I say 'are you kidding me?"... I still think that the views of NBA lockerrooms are accurately summed up by the spirit of Tim Hardaway's comments, if not the letter. Because, say what you will, but the gay community is the most persecuted, least sympathized with minority in America.  Look no further than the 2008 presidential elections...Look at the Democrats...One's a woman...one's a man of racially mixed heritage, but with Black skin, and his name is Barack Obama... and either one could easily be the next president of the United States. Do you think there could ever be an openly gay person [who was a serious] presidential candidate? If you said yes, you're kidding yourself...so then you take that reality and move it to the hyper-masculinized world of professional sports...a bunch of guys naked...sitting around like they're having a midday steam and their exposure to real life is any degree of non-existence...[and there's no way they would accept that.] So, if you're telling John Amaechi to come out, to "man up" to be courageous...free speech fine, you can believe what you want...but...how could you look John Amaechi in the eye and tell him he made the wrong call...(in the light of Tim Hardaway's comments)."

Perhaps in the category of inadvertent support for Elliott's claim, Michael Kay, Yankees play by play announcer for YES and afternoon host on the aforementioned 1050, had Jim Leyritz on to talk about whether a guy could come nowadays. Kay's own view is that only a major star could - a marginal player, Kay believes, would end up losing his career. Leyritz agreed to a point, but also contended that someone like Amaechi should come out while they were playing, own up to their sexuality, and let the chips fall where they may.

Leyritz also described himself as not homophobic and then offered this interesting musing on whether he "suspected" that he had gay teammates:

"when I see children brought up in divorce, when they don't have a father and just have a mother those kids are a little more feminite (sic)...and they may not be gay, so you have to be careful..."

And, when Kay asked Leyritz whether he would treat a teammate differently, if he did think he was gay, Leyritz said no, but:

"you kind of took a shower after he did...I wasn't homophobic...as long as they're not hitting on me..."

With friends like these...

Kay himself, perhaps looking for a way to signal that he's not too soft , too liberal and too gay friendly (since he did condemn Hardaway as an idiot, a neanderthal, and not too bright...")rattled off the following diatribe (in snippet form):

"this country is built on the bedrock of free speech. He has every right to say it, every right...I hate thought police...do you have the right to be a racist...of course, you have that right...he's not hurting anybody by saying he hates gay people...too much in this country we try to control people's thoughts and feelings...we can't brainwash people...'Tim Hardaway does not have the right to hate gay people...' well you know what, he does have the right..."

"this country is moving too quickly, inexorably toward thought police...George Orwell was absolutely right in 1984...thought police..."

Kay clearly needs a primer on what Orwell was concerned about in 1984: criticizing someone for spewing hateful speech was not Orwell's pre-occupation. What did concern him was the way in which language could be manipulated by government to stamp out the possibility of disagreement, democratic exchange and independent thought. If Kay is suggesting that the forces of homophobia in this country are being marginalized, persecuted, denied access to an open, contentious dialogue due to government institutions that deny those forces such access then I have no idea what country he's been living in.

In any event, this free speech card is just a straw man. I have heard plenty of people condemn Hardaway's comments. I have not heard a single person say he doesn't have the right to say what he said.

Finally, I thought I'd check in on Stephen A, also a radio host on 1050. Stephen A. criticized Hardaway for his comments, describing them as "heinous" and having clearly crossed a line. He also had an interesting riff on what would have happened had Hardaway couched his objections in religious terms: "It would have been embraced differently...if he had dressed those statements in the cloak of religion...if it had been in the guise of religion...people wouldn't have had a problem with it..."

But, like Kay, Smith saved his angry diatribe not for homophobia in general, or Hardaway's comments in particular but for the "other side:" in this case, 'homosexuals' who equate their suffering with that  of African Americans in America.

To those people, Smith said: "do me a favor and shut the hell up..." and repeatedly noted that homosexuality was a life-style choice, a behavior, "something you do between the sheets." This Smith said, could not possibly be compared to the persecution, the lynching, the 400 years of mistreatment suffered by Blacks in this country, because "there's nobody in this nation who's been persecuted like the Black folk in this country." Smith did defend other minority groups, including gays and especially Jews, about whom he said, after noting the persecution of millions in the holocaust "that's why I love Jewish folk...because they will not let people forget what they've been through..."

This isn't quite the same kind of straw man that Kay's free speech rant represents, because I have heard the comparison myself, though I think it's usually couched in the context in which Josh Elliott, above, puts it - as a commentary over what is acceptable and unacceptable prejudice today. It should be noted both that gays do suffer violent persecution, including murder and that gays were sent to concentration camps for being so during the Holocaust. More generally, the scientific consensus now is that being gay is not really a choice, and I find it hard to believe that Stephen A. would describe his own love for women merely as a lifestyle choice, a set of behaviors, rather than a fundamental part of who he is.

I don't disagree with Smith about the larger historical point, though it's comparing apples to oranges, but again, I am not sure what's in it for him to zero on that issue, when it's really not what's at stake on the question of how hospitable or not professional sports is for gay male athletes in particular.

In any event, as I said above, the sports world is having what is, in many ways, a unique conversation (unique for the sports world, that is), and that's a good thing.