|
|
|
AGONY IN THE SHADOWS OF VICTORY©
Essays and BlogS ON AN ARRAY OF SPORT pathologies
Plus NEWS of SPORTS Books by John Weston Parry, J.D.
John Weston Parry, J.D., elissacl@aol.com ESSAYS FEATURED On This Page BELOW
Tackle Football's Inevitable Toll on the Brain Athletes Implicated in Murder and Other Homicides Tokenism and Other Injustices To Women In Sports Featured Essays On Site's Other Web-Pages The Future of Spectator Sports: Part II (cartels) The Future of Spectator Sports: Part I (cartels) PEDS, The ITA, and Professional Tennis: A Real Mess (blog) Why Willie Mays Deserves to be Known as the Greatest (blog) Mental Health of Athletes: Ignored and Marginalized (health) ohtani Gambling Snafu, MLB, And Other Spectator Sports (cartels) Many NFL Players Gamble With Their Brains (health) Geo-Politics in Pro Golf & Tennis Tarnish Those Sports (behaviors) Mental Health, Sports, and The Legal System (blog) The Monumental Sports Hall of Fame for Owners (cartels) Is Ten Too Young To Fast Track Promising Athletes? (health) Why Did the US Women's Soccer Team Fail to Meet Expectations? (blog) Republican Politics + Sportswashing: PGA Tour, MLB, and NBA (cartels) The National Sports Brain Bank, the NFL and Its Black Players (blog) Sportswashing Brain Damage to Athletes and Sports Gambling (blog) Are Guardian Helmet Caps Another NFL CTE Deflection? (health) South Carolina Transforms Women's College Basketball (diversity) Not Surprising, Sports Gambling Is Out of Control (behaviors) Reassessing MLB's Greatest with Race in Mind (diversity) Plus, many other essays and blogs TACKLE FOOTBALL’S INEVITABLE TOLL On THE BRAIN And CONSEQUENTLY MENTAL HEALTH
“Even the Young Get C.T.E.” Those who insist on encouraging boys—and now girls—to play tackle football have a moral obligation to learn about the brain risks posed by America’s most dangerous popular sport, and to carefully explain them, so that these children and their parents or guardians can make informed decisions whether or not to participate. It is no longer a matter of whether football causes brain damage, but rather which cognitive and other mental health malfunctions are most likely to arise, how long such impairments are likely to last, and will they worsen over time. Simply because we do not yet have the medical means to make reliable prognoses about what will happen to each athlete who plays football does not lessen the overall danger, which many studies have confirmed in a growing variety of ways. That research now includes detailed examinations of the brains of 48 players and former players with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), who all tragically died before they turned 30. As awful as all those deaths may seem, they are just the tip of the iceberg relative to the accumulating mental and emotional damage that children who play tackle football sustain. The more impacts they absorb, the bigger the toll on their brains, not to mention all the other serious physical injuries that they may incur. According to an excellent New York Times expose by John Branch, Kassie Bracken, and Joe Ward entitled “Even the Young Get C.T.E.”—which was based on the results of a recent study by the celebrated brain researchers at Boston University—of the 63 deceased athletes studied, who had played contact sports (football, hockey, soccer, and wrestling) and had CTE, 48 of them played football, a whopping76 percent. Most of these deceased athletes had never played their respective contact sports professionally and many no higher than the high school level. This study examined the brains of 152 deceased athletes who died before turning 30. Sixty-three (over 40 percent) had CTE. An obvious caveat, though, is that all the brains that were studied had to be donated for that particular purpose, which made a random selection process a practical impossibility. Once CTE can be reliably diagnosed in living athletes, however, which may not be that far away, then randomized studies can be structured and conducted to further bolster the evidence for what should already be crystal clear: tackle football presents a clear and present danger to the brains of those athletes who play the sport. What the accumulating evidence from these brain damage studies involving athletes and soldiers in combat have revealed should be alarming to all parents, who are tempted to allow their boys, and increasingly girls, to play these dangerous sports. As is documented in my forthcoming book The Burden of Sports: How and Why Athletes Struggle with Mental Health (Rowman & Littlefield, Feb. 2024), brain damage is one of the leading causes of mental health and behavioral problems—including depression, suicides, and homicides—for the many athletes who play our most popular contact sports, particularly football and hockey, but also soccer when players repeatedly head the ball. In addition, there are a number of other less popular contact sports, including rugby, wrestling, skiing, and sledding, in which there are elevated risks of brain damage as well. Those risks increase the longer the athletes participate, but the mounting danger is present as soon as children begin playing those sports. The risk differences among these contact sports are a matter of degree, which may be more or less in team sports, depending on which position the child plays. Participating in tackle football, though, is the most dangerous popular American sport by a considerable margin. Children and their parents or guardians need to be well-informed about these sports-related mental health risks so they can properly assess the dangers involved and make good decisions about which sports are appropriate for their children to participate in. Yet, many parents continue to be ill-informed or simply ignore or marginalize the risks. Fortunately, there are good sports alternatives to football. Basketball, baseball and softball, the most popular youth sports for boys and girls, for example, are reasonably safe. The brain damage risks associated with those athletic activities, and also soccer when heading the ball is prohibited or greatly restricted, appear to be quite low. The danger to children’s psyches is far more palpable playing tackle football than any possible harm that could come from reading books in school or public libraries. So why do we have such an obvious double standard about the need for parental and governmental involvement regarding these two activities for children? It certainly is not rational. And it certainly is not healthy. The answer, as it is for so many social pathologies in America, can be traced to money and politics. ELITE ATHLETES IMPLICATED In MURDER Or OTHER TYPES Of HOMICIDE: FROM O.J. SIMPSON To DARIUS MILES and BRANDON MILLER
By John Weston Parry, J.D. During March Madness 2023, attention centered on Alabama, which was the favorite to win, and its NBA-ready superstar Brandon Miller, who was implicated in a murder committed by one of his former teammates, but was allowed to play, as if the killing had never happened. Miller is not the first high profile American athlete or former athlete to be linked to murder or other type of homicide, or college star to receive preferential treatment after being charged with a sordid felony. Twenty-one homicidal incidents involving athletes in major American spectator sports have been publicly documented in the past 30 years, not to mention hundreds of allegations of rape and sexual assault. A disproportionate percentage of these homicidal incidents have involved NFL football players and thus, not surprisingly, African American athletes. The most common weapons used in these alleged crimes, by far, were guns and cars. This roster of homicidal incidents begins with former NFL superstar OJ Simpson in 1994 and ends in 2023 with Alabama’s Darius Miles and Brandon Miller. Narratives about athletes alleged or proven homicide involvement are summarized below, chronologically, followed by an analysis of what these incidents indicate or suggest when assessed, collectively. (Because it occurred in 1986, that list excludes former NFL football player, Robert Rozier, who after quitting football to join a black supremacist cult, confessed, as part of a plea deal, to murdering six white people. Nor does it include skateboarder Mark “Gater” Rogowski, who was convicted of raping and murdering a young woman in 1991.) Athletes Implicated in Murder or Other Types of Homicide Former NFL Player OJ Simpson (1994): Found Not Guilty of Two Murders In June 1994, O.J. Simpson, one of the very best college and professional running backs in American sports history, who had become a successful Hollywood actor, shocked the sports world after he was charged with murdering his former second wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman. Simpson’s arrest and trial became a television spectacle, beginning with extended live coverage of an extended, slow-paced police chase in which Simpson was purportedly trying to escape in his now infamous white Ford Bronco SUV. Four of the lawyers in that case became media celebrities, including defense attorneys Johnny Cochrane, Robert Shapiro, Robert Kardashian, and the lead prosecutor, Marcia Clark. Kardashian was the husband to Kris and father to the soon to be even more famous, Kourtney, Kim, and Kloe Kardashian. Two other defense attorneys, F. Lee Bailey and Alan Dershowitz, added this trial to their already high-profile resumes. The legal proceedings inevitably became a circus and a not guilty verdict appeared to be the unexpected result, even though Simpson had a history of domestic violence against Brown and the circumstantial evidence had been overwhelming against him. Much of the same evidence was persuasive enough that later a civil jury, under a less rigorous legal standard, found Simpson liable for wrongful death in the killings of both Brown and Goldman. Later, Simpson even tried to obtain, and benefit from, a book deal for a manuscript he called If I Did It. Confessions of the Killer. Simpson’s extraordinary life has been marred by his criminal associations and behaviors. When he was an adolescent the baseball great, Willie Mays helped to extricate Simpson from gang life in San Francisco, which enabled the then unheralded football player to grow into a super star, University of Southern California athlete. Years after his murder trial in 2007, Simpson also was arrested, convicted, and then imprisoned for nearly 10 years on armed robbery charges, which seemed to have been an over-reaction to his earlier acquittal for the Brown and Goldman murders. NFL Player Leonard Little (1998): Convicted of DUI Involuntary Manslaughter Leonard Little became a first team All-American his senior year at Tennessee, but was only selected in the third round of the 1998 draft by the St. Louis Rams due to the fact that it had become unclear whether he would be able to play defensive end, linebacker, or neither at the professional level. His team used him as a defensive end, where he established himself as a reliable starter, who would make All-Pro in 2003. Off-the-field, though, he had a troubled history. Little’s worst moment came towards the beginning of his rookie year in October 1998 when he crashed into a car driven by a St. Louis mother. At the time of the crash Little’s blood alcohol level exceeded the legal limit by a wide margin. As a result, he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, but in a plea deal only had to serve 90 days in a workhouse, rather than a jail. He also was placed on four years’ probation, and had to do community service. In addition, the NFL suspended him for the first eight games of the 1999-2000 season. In 2003, Little was charged with threatening and harassing his former girlfriend after she ended their relationship, but those charges were dropped. A year later he was arrested once again, this time for drunk driving and speeding. He failed the arresting officer’s roadside sobriety test three times. Nevertheless, while Little was convicted of speeding, a jury acquitted him of DWI, which meant he could not be sentenced in Missouri on a felony charge of being a persistent offender. Instead, he received two years’ probation and was not disciplined by the NFL. Leonard Little retired from the NFL in 2009, a wealthy man. NFL Player Rae Carruth (1999): Convicted of Murder Rae Carruth was a first team All-American at the University of Colorado and a first round pick of the Carolina Panthers in the 1997 draft. Although he was on the NFL’s all-rookie team after his first season, the next year he suffered a broken foot in the team’s first game and did not play again until the following year in 1999. That November Carruth’s career came to a sudden close when he was arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of murder for hire. The victim was a woman he had been dating, who was pregnant with Carruth’s child. According to court documents, as reported upon in the media, including The Washington Post and The New York Times, the football player had driven near the woman’s house where she was driving her car and had stopped in front of her so she too had to stop. Another car drove up beside the woman and shot her with a hand gun. She was able to call 911 to report what had happened, but after she arrived at the hospital she went into a coma and eventually died. Doctors were able to deliver her eight-month-old fetus and the baby survived, but had permanent brain damage. In that interim when his former girlfriend was dying, Carruth had posted a three-million-dollar bail with the understanding he would surrender to law enforcement if either the woman or the fetus died. Carruth fled in his car instead and was arrested somewhere in Tennessee. The next day the Panthers waived him citing the morals clause in his standard NFL contract and the league office suspended him indefinitely. At trial, prosecutors alleged that Carruth had hired the gunman to kill his girlfriend because she had refused to abort the fetus she was carrying as he had demanded. He was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and being instrumental in destroying an unborn child, but not first-degree murder. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison and served the entire sentence. He now lives in Pennsylvania with a friend, but has never visited his brain-damaged son. NFL Player Ray Lewis (2000): Involved in Two Murders Hall of Fame Baltimore Ravens linebacker and former ESPN football analyst, Ray Lewis, in 2000, towards the beginning of his 17-year NFL career, became involved in a violent, late night/early morning fight just outside an Atlanta night club during Super Bowl week in which two male club patrons were murdered. Despite overwhelming circumstantial evidence that he was one of the attackers, Lewis, with the support of the Ravens owner, escaped extended jail time by pleading guilty to a minor offense and testifying against members of his crew. A more complete story of what had happened did not come out until years later, when Maureen Callahan of the New York Post documented Lewis’ involvement in two murders just after the superstar had retired from the NFL. She reported that a day before the murders were committed, two of his close friends, accompanied by Lewis himself, had purchased “folding knives.” The day of the murders Lewis had his “personal driver… chauffeur a stretch Limousine Navigator” to take his crew, including his two friends who had paid for the knives, to the club. He left his pregnant fiancé at home and picked up another woman for the evening, who he had met at Magic Johnson’s pre-Super Bowl party. According to court records as documented by Callahan, the early morning fight was between Lewis’ crew and another group of club patrons. Lewis claimed that while everyone else in his crew were participants in the fight, he just stood by and did nothing. Shortly thereafter the two victims were found “collapsed in the street, covered in blood.” Lewis and his friends “sped away” in the limo “as guns were fired into their tires.” Lewis was then heard instructing everyone inside the limo to “`just shut the f- - k up,’” presumably regarding what had just happened. Forensic evidence revealed that both young men, who had died before they could reach the hospital, were stabbed multiple times and badly beaten. The inside of Lewis’s limo had blood stains, but the clothes Lewis had been wearing, which could have been tested for blood splatter, had mysteriously disappeared. Lewis’ chauffer initially told both the police and prosecutors that Lewis had participated in the fight. Lewis' two friends, who had bought the folding knives, admitted stabbing the two victims. Lewis was arrested, charged with murder, and jailed for fifteen days awaiting bail. Ravens owner Art Modell helped Lewis find a high powered “defense attorneys.” By the time his trial was to begin, however, Lewis’ chauffeur had suddenly recanted the statements he made to law enforcement officials and Lewis’ clothes, which could have been assessed for blood splatter, could never be found. The prosecutors agreed to a lenient plea deal in which Lewis received probation for “obstruction of justice,” rather than being held criminally responsible for participating in two murders. Subsequently, Lewis reached settlements in two civil lawsuits brought by the families of the murdered young men. Each settlement included “confidentiality agreements.” According to The Washington Post, Lewis “paid millions … to settle [those] suits.” By the time Lewis had retired from football, he had been transformed from a double murder suspect into a role model for children and was much sought after by corporate sponsors, including ESPN, which hired him to be a football commentator. When asked about his role in the murders, Lewis said “I wouldn’t change a thing…The end result is who I am now.” NBA Player Jayson Williams (2001): Indicted for Aggravated Manslaughter Jayson Williams was a first round draft choice of the Philadelphia 76ers in the 1990 draft, who would soon become an NBA All-Star. In February 2001, though, Williams’ NBA career came to an end after he negligently killed a limousine driver, who was at his estate; then tried to cover up the shooting. Reportedly, Williams was showing the chauffeur his gun collection and after a night of drinking, took out a 12-gauge shotgun, which discharged when the basketball player closed it shut to put the barrels in place. The buckshot landed in the driver’s stomach presumably killing him, at which point Williams tried to make it look like his victim had committed suicide. In addition, the basketball player changed his clothes and jumped into his pool to clean himself off. Reportedly, he told potential witnesses at his home to lie to police. It took over a year for an indictment to be lodged, the most serious of which were aggravated and reckless manslaughter. Nearly two years later, Williams was tried and a jury acquitted him of the most serious charge of aggravated manslaughter, but was unable to reach a verdict on the reckless manslaughter charge. Prosecutors took several more years to retry Williams, who in 2010 agreed to a deal in which he pled guilty to aggravated assault, for which he was sentenced to five years in prison. In the year leading up to his eventual conviction, Williams: was tasered by New York City police when they were called because he was purportedly trying to commit suicide. He also was charged with, but never tried for, simple assault in North Carolina after punching another man in the face during a bar fight; and convicted of DUI after he crashed his car in Manhattan. A one- year sentence for vehicular DUI was added to the five he had received earlier in the homicide involving the chauffeur. Nevertheless, a little more than two years later, Williams was released from prison. Since then, Williams has dedicated his life to helping himself and others with addiction recovery. In 2022, St John’s his college alma matter announced it would induct him into their sports hall of fame. Baylor University Basketball Player Carlton Dotson (2003): Pled Guilty to Murder Long before Baylor’s football team became embroiled in the worst sexual abuse scandal in college sports history, which involved athletes as perpetrators rather than victims, two members of that University’s basketball team played parts in a murder. One was the victim; the other the killer. The murder would be followed by revelations of widespread illegal drug use on the Baylor basketball team that, unlike the sex abuse scandal that came later, would result in severe NCAA sanctions. Those sanctions were delivered, however, before super conference schools had wrested complete control of the NCAA’s disciplinary apparatus from the other member schools. Neither Carlton Dotson, the murderer, nor Patrick Dennehy, the victim, were star players. Dotson, who was from Maryland, had played at a junior college before transferring to Baylor in the summer of 2002. He was on Baylor’s team in 2002 and 2003. Dennehy, who was from California, had transferred to Baylor from the University of New Mexico in 2001 as a second-year player. He redshirted, meaning he did not play in any sanctioned games, during the 2002-2003 season. During the summer preceding the 2003-2004 season, reportedly both players became concerned about their safety and each bought, and together practiced learning how, to their fire hand gun. In addition, Dennehy reportedly told another friend that Dotson had threatened two of their teammates. Mysteriously, Dennehy disappeared after he and Dotson had failed to show up at a party the two players were supposed to attend. After a missing persons report was filed for Dennehy with the Waco, Texas Police Department, Dennehy’s car was found about 1,500 miles away in a Virginia Beach shopping mall without any license plates. That July, based upon information from an informant, who told police that Dotson had admitted shooting Dennehy in an argument, Dotson was arrested and jailed in Maryland. A few days later Dennehy’s body was discovered near Waco, but it was substantially decomposed and had been attacked by animals, which was the best, but not the only, explanation for why Dennehy’s head had become separated from his body. The descriptive image of the decapitated victim made the media coverage of the murder even more sensational. Complicating matters, though, Dotson had serious mental health issues, which is why the judge in the case had the defendant evaluated by psychiatrists, who found him temporarily incompetent to stand trial. Apparently, Dotson was suffering from psychotic hallucinations, but the examining psychiatrists opined that with medication he would be able to stand trial in the future. Nearly a year after the murder, and five days before his trial was to begin, instead of pleading insanity. based on his psychosis at the time of the crime, Dotson pled guilty to second degree murder. He was sentenced to 35-years in prison where he remains today. NHL Hockey Player Dany Heatley (2003): Convicted of Vehicular Homicide Dany Heatley, the NHL’s rookie of the year and an All-Star for the Atlanta Thrashers during the 2002-2003 season, was charged with first degree vehicular homicide that following September, due to a car crash, which took the life of his close friend and teammate Dan Snyder. According to CBC Sports, Snyder suffered massive injuries to his brain. Although he was alive enough to undergo surgery, he never regained consciousness. Heatley had an assortment of non-life-threatening injuries, including a broken jaw and several torn ligaments in his right leg. Reportedly, Heatley had been traveling way too fast in a residential area and thus was driving recklessly when he lost control of his vehicle. The maximum sentence he could have faced was 20 years in prison. Although Snyder had died in early October of 2003, Heatley was not indicted until July of 2004. With the cooperation of the Atlanta Thrashers public relations staff, the Snyder family issued a press release about the accident, which stated in part that: Our feelings have never changed and we continue to support Dany and the entire Heatley family… Despite our personal feelings in this matter, we respect the responsibility of the district attorney’s office and the legal process. A little more than six months later, in a plea deal, the most serious charge against Heatley was reduced to second degree vehicular homicide and the charge of reckless driving was dropped. As a result of that plea, Heatley received three years of probation and had to do community service, rather than face a lengthy prison sentence. He also avoided deportation from the U.S. back to Canada, in which case his NHL career probably would have ended. As it was, he did not regain his all-star hockey form until he was traded to the Ottawa Senators to begin the 2005-2006 season, but that delay was due to the injuries sustained in the crash. Otherwise, his hockey career did not suffer. NFL Player Dwayne Goodrich (2003): Convicted of Negligent Criminal Homicide Dwayne Goodrich was an All-American college cornerback, who the Dallas Cowboys drafted in round two of the 2000 NFL draft. He never lived up to expectations on or off the field. In January 2014, after a night out, which reportedly included a string of topless bars, Goodrich was driving his BMW on an interstate in Dallas around 2:00 a.m. and plowed into three men who were trying to save a man from a burning car. Goodrich’s car killed two of the men and injured the third. Instead of stopping and rendering aid, Goodrich continued driving away from the scene of the accident. At trial, Goodrich testified that he was going about 75 miles an hour and did not see the accident because he was blocked by an SUV. Goodrich claimed he believed he had hit debris, not human beings. The jury found him guilty of criminally negligent homicide, however, but recommended that he receive community supervision rather than prison time. The trial court disagreed with that recommendation and sentenced him to 7.5 years in prison. An appeals court affirmed Goodrich’s conviction. In addition, at the behest of the prosecutors and relatives of the two deceased men, five more years were added to Goodrich’s sentence a year after his appeal had been denied. Eight year later in October 2011, when Goodrich was released on parole, he said he was a new man who wanted to mentor athletes of all ages. In June 2012, he began that journey by addressing rookies trying to make the Cowboys team. Subsequently, he established the Dwayne Goodrich Foundation, which, according to the Texas Speaker’s bureau, mentors “at-risk children… “athletes of all ages through football camps and community service.” The proceeds from his “speaking engagements go toward the victims of the accident, supporting education, and creating scholarships for children with incarcerated parents.” How much Goodrich keeps for himself is unclear. Professional Boxer James Butler (2004): Convicted of Voluntary Manslaughter Professional boxer James Butler was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for killing sportswriter Sam Kellerman in October 2004. The victim was the brother of ESPN TV and radio boxing analyst Max Kellerman. The relationships between each of the Kellerman brothers and Butler are part of this story. Butler, who was born in Harlem in 1972, was named “The Harlem Hammer,” and at one time was a U.S. Boxing Association super middleweight champion. In November 2001, after a fight that he lost was over, but both boxers were still in the ring, Butler, who had taken his gloves off, suddenly hit his opponent in the face with a right hook. The fight had been to honor families victimized by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Butler had pledged to donate part of his purse to those families. Max Kellerman, who was watching the nationally televised fight, wrote that Butler had “committed a violent crime,” but urged the New York State Athletic Commission to impose a year’s suspension “plus a substantial fine,” rather than prohibiting Butler from fighting in New York state ever again. After serving four months at Rikers Island for criminal assault, Butler’s career was a mess. During his attempted comeback, he was befriended by 29-year-old sportswriter Sam Kellerman in Hollywood, California. A few months earlier Kellerman had written a story about the now 31-year-old boxer’s struggles with bipolar disorder and how it caused him to lose control. In that story, Butler was quoted as saying that this type of mental illness resulted in “hurting people you love.” Kellerman also described how Butler had turned his life around since the incident in New York for which he had been imprisoned. While Sam Kellerman was visiting Butler’s apartment, the boxer apparently lost control once again. He smashed in Kellerman’s head with multiple blows using a hammer, rather than his fists, and then set the apartment ablaze. Five days later the boxer known as the “Harlem Hammer’ was arrested for murder at UCLA Medical Center where he was seeking treatment for his bipolar disorder. Butler subsequently pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter and arson and was sentenced to nearly 30-years in prison. Prosecutors appeared to have no motive for the killing, at least none that was made public. Former NFL Player Anthony Smith (2008): Convicted of Multiple Murders Anthony Smith was the eleventh player selected in the 1990 draft as a defensive end by the then Oakland Raiders. In 1997, Smith was convicted of domestic violence and sentenced to attend an anger management program. Before the start of the 1998-1999 NFL-season, Smith opted out of his contract and retired. Since then, his life has been dominated by crimes and imprisonment. Smith was charged with firebombing a furniture store in Santa Monica, California in 2003 in a dispute with its owner. That charge had to be dismissed after two consecutive juries were unable to reach a verdict. Eight years later Smith and two of his associates were all charged with beating and shooting a man to death in 2008. In April 2011, once again a jury could not reach a verdict against Smith and he had to be retried. During the interim, Smith was charged with an additional three murders and three related kidnappings that had occurred in 1999 and 2011, respectively. Two of those victims were also tortured. A jury convicted Smith of three of the murders, but was deadlocked regarding the original murder, when three of the nine California jurors voted to acquit the former Oakland player. Smith received three consecutive life sentences with no opportunity of parole for the other three murders NFL Player Dante Stallworth (2009): Convicted of DUI Manslaughter Dante Stallworth was the 13th pick in the 2002 NFL draft by the New Orleans Saints. He had a solid ten-year career as a wide receiver, playing for half a dozen different teams. Early in the morning of March 2009, during the NFL’s off-season, Stallworth struck and killed a pedestrian in Miami Beach. Stallworth’s blood alcohol level reportedly was well over the legal limit. That April, the NFL player was charged with DUI manslaughter. Just before his trial was to begin, Stallworth reached a financial settlement, the amount of which was never disclosed, with the victim’s family. Thus, Stallworth was able to negotiate a favorable plea deal with prosecutors in which he only had to serve two weeks in jail, was placed on probation, and had to do community service. Today, Stallworth manages the many millions of dollars he made playing football and speaks and writes about how he has turned his life around, after killing the pedestrian. Former NFL Player Eric Naposki (2011): Murder Conviction Eric Naposki was a journeymen football player in both the NFL and World League of American football, who never distinguished himself as a linebacker in the pros. He played from 1988 until 1992 and 1996 until 1997. In 1994, while he was unemployed as a football player, he was involved in the murder of a multi-millionaire in Newport Beach California. In court proceedings, it was revealed that he had allegedly committed the murder with the victim’s much, much younger live-in girlfriend in order to collect an estimated 2.5 million from the multi-millionaire’s life insurance and savings upon his death. For fifteen years, the murder could not be solved by law enforcement. In 2009, however, Naposki and the girl friend, who had also been Naposki’s secret lover, were arrested and charged in the killing. A California jury determined that Naposki was guilty of murder in the first degree and that he was eligible for the death penalty, which the prosecution declined to recommend. Instead, Naposki received a sentence of life imprisonment with no possibility of parole. Naposki appealed his conviction and sentence in 2014, contending he was innocent, a claim he has maintained throughout. That appeal was denied, but he has continued to appeal, citing the absence of eyewitnesses, surveillance tape, fingerprints, or DNA at the crime scene and the long delay in charging him with the murder, which allegedly compromised potential exculpatory evidence. As a result, in 2020, the Orange County Innocence Project began reviewing his case. Currently, he remains in prison. NFL Player Josh Brent (2012): Convicted of Intoxication Manslaughter Josh Brent, a defensive tackle, was taken in the seventh round of the 2010 NFL supplemental draft by the Dallas Cowboys. He had left college after his junior year following a relatively brief jail sentence for driving under the influence and having been ruled academically ineligible to play for his college team. Once he arrived in the NFL, he exceeded expectations as a player, first by making the team; second by becoming a starter on the Dallas defense in 2012 after Jay Ratliff had been injured. hat December, however, his career imploded. While driving with Dallas practice squad linebacker Jerry Brown as a passenger, Brent hit a curb, which caused his car to roll over on a highway access road. Brown died in the crash. It turned out Brent not only had been driving while intoxicated, but was traveling at least 110 miles per hour in a 45-mile hour zone. Although he initially received the support of the Cowboys, his teammates, and Brown’s mother, Brent was charged with intoxication murder and put on the NFL’s non-football illness reserve list. A few days later a grand jury indicted him for intoxication manslaughter. He was released on bail before trial, but he broke the conditions of his release twice and was returned to jail in late June 2013 for less than two weeks before being released once again. In late January 2014, to the outrage of many in the media, Brent, a two-time convicted drunk driver, was sentenced to only six months in jail and 10 years’ probation. After he returned to the Cowboys that November, the NFL suspended him for 10 games. After the suspension, he became a seldomly used reserve. Dallas then placed him on the reserve-retired list in May 2015, announcing that Brent needed to focus on his off-the-field issues. A few months later, the Cowboys hired him to be an intern in their scouting department. Brown’s family sued both Brent and the nightclub where Brent had become intoxicated. In December, 2018 a jury awarded the plaintiffs $25 million, with Brent and the nightclub each paying half. Six months later, Brent was arrested for public intoxication and was tased by a police officer when the Cowboys’ employee resisted being taken into custody. NFL Player Aaron Hernandez (2012-2013): Convicted of Murder, Charged with Two other Murders, and Committed Suicide Except for O.J. Simpson, the most notorious homicides involving a current or former NFL player were the Aaron Hernandez alleged murders. At the time, he was a highly valued New England Patriots’ player who had just signed what was being described as the second most lucrative contract for a tight end in NFL history. Hernandez’s non-football life, though, was filled with troubling warning signs, which apparently were marginalized or overlooked throughout his football career. As detailed in Sports Illustrated, the University of Florida, because of Hernandez’s extraordinary football prowess, was willing to look past the gang friendships and associations he had cultivated in high school when they signed him as a high-profile recruit. Hernandez would soon become a star player on a team coached by Urban Meyer and quarterbacked by Tim Tebow. As a freshman, Hernandez’s criminal associations became a problem. He was at the scene of fatal shootings of two men outside a Gainesville nightclub and initially was identified as the shooter. However, Hernandez was never charged with that crime. Reportedly, because of off-the-field concerns that NFL scouts had expressed, including Hernandez’s gang associations and marijuana use, his stock plummeted in the 2010 draft from a likely first round selection, which would have reflected his prodigious football skills, to the end of the fourth round. In 2011, things began going awfully wrong off the field. Reportedly, Hernandez joined a close Connecticut friend, who was an ex-con, at a strip club during the off-season. His friend lost an eye after someone shot him in the head. Initially, the friend did not implicate Hernandez, but later filed a civil suit against Hernandez to recover damages for his injury. After his daughter was born in the late fall of 2012, Hernandez acknowledged publicly that: “I can’t be young and reckless… no more.” Unfortunately, by that time it already was too late. In July 2012, accompanied by his Connecticut friend, who now had one eye, Hernandez committed the first two of three alleged murders. His friend testified that Hernandez had become enraged when one of the two murder victims had bumped into him in a nightclub, causing the player to spill his drink. When there was no apology, Hernandez allegedly exploded and had to be escorted out of the club. Hernandez allegedly waited in his friend’s car for the two men to exit. When they came outside and got into a BMW, Hernandez allegedly instructed his friend to drive next to them. Hernandez purportedly emptied his revolver into the other car killing both men, wiped off the gun, and threw it away. A year later, Hernandez also was charged with killing another acquaintance, Odin Lloyd, who had been dating the sister of Hernandez’s fiancee. Allegedly, the two friends had exchanged heated words at a Boston-area nightclub a couple of nights earlier because Lloyd had been talking out of school about the double homicide that Hernandez appeared to have committed. On the night Lloyd was shot and killed, prosecutors revealed that surveillance tapes showed Hernandez leaving his home with a gun accompanied by two other men. Hernandez reportedly had summoned two of his boyhood friends from Connecticut to come to Boston immediately. When they arrived, Hernandez drove them to pick up Lloyd to supposedly discuss what Lloyd had said at the nightclub. A little after 3:00 a.m. Lloyd texted his sister that he was with the “NFL…Just so you know.” Shortly thereafter Hernandez’s car was seen on surveillance video going into a remote industrial area where Lloyd’s body would later be discovered. After learning about Hernandez’s murder indictment, the Patriots severed ties with their star tight end, canceled the remainder of his contract, and tried to recover whatever was left of the bonus money they had paid him. Despite his gang associations, neither his team nor the NFL had ever placed him under heightened scrutiny. In fact, with their assistance, Hernandez had been able to establish a persona in which he supposedly was well-liked by friends and teammates, loving to his family, and almost always smiling. This persona was so well-received that, despite his troubled past, in early 2013 Hernandez had received the Pop Warner Inspiration to Youth Award. In April 2014, Hernandez and his two Connecticut friends were indicted for the third murder. A year later Hernandez was found guilty of that murder and received a life sentence without parole, but he and his counsel appealed the verdict. In April 2017, defying most legal expectations, Hernandez was acquitted of both murders in the drive by shootings. Apparently, his friend’s involvement in those shootings, along with his criminal background, had made him an unreliable witness. Five days later, though, Hernandez was found hanging in his cell with a bed sheet tied around his neck. The official cause of death was suicide. Less than a month after his death, Hernandez’s conviction was overturned. In Massachusetts, if someone dies while they are appealing a crime, the conviction may be overturned on equity grounds because the deceased no longer has an opportunity to appeal. After his death, Hernandez’s family had the former football player’s brain examined. Neuro-scientists at Boston University found that Hernandez, like most other NFL players whose brain has been tested, showed substantial signs of CTE. The surprise was the extent of damage to the brain of a 27-year-old recently active player. According to those neuroscientists it was “the most severe case they had ever seen in someone of Aaron’s age.” Former NFL Player Jovan Belcher (2013): Killed His Girlfriend and Himself Sandwiched in between Hernandez’s shooting sprees was Jovan Belcher’s murder-suicide. That tragedy did not garner nearly as much attention as it should have because Belcher’s team, the Kansas City Chiefs, and the NFL were largely successful in muzzling the story. The first line of a New York Times article captured what had happened: “With his coach looking on, a Kansas City Chief’s linebacker shot and killed himself outside the team’s practice facility …less than an hour after he killed his girlfriend…,” who also was the mother of his baby daughter. A lawsuit that Belcher’s mother filed many months later against the league and the Chiefs focused renewed attention on the backstory of the murder-suicide and Belcher’s CTE. Belcher’s mother had been at his son’s side as he lay bleeding from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She had great difficulty reconciling the socially aware son she knew, who at the University of Maine had been a member of Male Athletes Against Violence, with the person who had shot his girlfriend multiple times. Her lawyers used the legal term negligence to describe what the Chiefs had done “in exposing Belcher to frequent head trauma and failing to offer him adequate care.” Once they became “aware of Belcher's symptoms and signs of cognitive and neuropsychiatric impairment,” they still did nothing to intervene. Those failures, plaintiffs argued, “caused or contributed to cause irresistible and/or insane impulses,” which led to the murder-suicide. After Belcher’s mother had her son's brain autopsied, it turned out that Belcher had CTE. Plaintiffs contended that the NFL’s “culture of harassment and bullying” had made her son’s mental impairments much worse. Former NBA Player Mookie Blaylock (2013): Convicted of First-Degree Vehicular Homicide Mookie Blaylock was selected 12th in the 1989 NBA draft based mostly on his defensive prowess at the University of Oklahoma. He would play 13 seasons in the NBA with three different teams. In 1994, when he was with the Atlanta Hawks, he became an NBA All-Star for the only time in his career, but thereafter excelled as a defensive stalwart and three-point shooter. Throughout his career, and thereafter, he struggled with alcoholism. According to Sports Illustrated, in 2013, that addiction led to his being convicted of first-degree vehicular homicide when he crashed the Escalade he was driving head on into a minivan, which caused the death of a mother of five, who was in the passenger seat driving with her husband. Blaylock reportedly was placed on life-support, but managed to survive, as did the husband. Although Blaylock had been arrested and jailed, for driving under the influence seven or more times in the past, law enforcement’s investigation indicated that he was sober during this crash. Reportedly, Blaylock was in recovery trying to stop drinking and had experienced a seizure as a result, which is not that uncommon. Thus, it appeared that the worst charge against him would be misdemeanor vehicular homicide, even though he had a history of drunk driving. Unfortunately for Blaylock, he had experienced a seizure while eating at an Atlanta restaurant and had been hospitalized weeks before the fatal crash. A police officer who had been at the restaurant realized that because of his history of seizures, Blaylock was not supposed to be driving. In fact, Blaylock had signed a document to that effect at the hospital After the officer communicated this information to prosecutors, they charged Blaylock with first degree felony vehicular manslaughter and he was facing at least seven years in prison if he went to trial. Instead, in October 2014, Blaylock was offered a plea deal in which he was to serve three years in prison and be placed on probation for eight years. NFL Player Henry James Ruggs (2021): Awaiting Trial for DUI Vehicular Homicide Henry James Ruggs was a former high school track standout in the 100-yard dash, who also excelled at football. He went to Alabama to play for the Crimson Tide as a wide receiver and kick off specialist. Ruggs left college for the NFL and the Las Vegas Raiders following his junior year and became the twelfth player selected in the 2020 draft. A year and half later in November 2021, Ruggs slammed into the back of another car at a reported 120 miles an hour. The woman he drove into and her dog were burned to death when her car caught fire. Ruggs and his girlfriend, who was a passenger in his car, received non-life-threatening injuries. Once Ruggs was released from the hospital, he was charged with DUI vehicular manslaughter and related crimes that could have landed him in prison for twenty years. Although he refused to take a field sobriety test, his blood alcohol level two hours after the crash registered more than twice the legal limit in Nevada. Former NFL Player Kevin Ware (2022): Indicted for Murder Kevin Ware was an undrafted, journeyman tight end in the NFL for two seasons, playing in 2003 and 2004 for Washington and San Francisco, respectively. Even though Ware had a considerable criminal history, including a 2022 indictment for the brutal murder of his girlfriend, his story did not get much coverage, probably because he was never a star. His criminal history can be traced back to to 2002 when he was at the University of Washington. He received a suspended sentence after he pled guilty to misdemeanor assault. In 2010, he was arrested and charged twice, once for theft and then for trying to evade arrest after he allegedly assaulted another man. There was no record of his spending time in jail for either incident. In April 2021, Ware was arrested and charged with possessing illegal drugs with the intent to deliver and unlawful possession of a firearm. He was conditionally released on bail, while awaiting trial. In July 2022, Ware was indicted for brutally murdering his girlfriend and burning her body. His girlfriend had disappeared suspiciously, after she and Ware, according to neighbors, had argued violently. Her burnt body remains had been found in December 2021. Around the same time, while Ware was in jail awaiting trial for that murder, he pled guilty to the drug and gun charges from his previous arrest and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Currently he is imprisoned waiting to be tried for murder and tampering with the victim’s body. University of Georgia football’s Jalen Carter (2023): Alleged Reckless Vehicular Homicide Jalen Carter was a star defensive tackle on the University of Georgia’s 2023 national championship team and a likely top five choice in the upcoming NFL draft. Five days after his team had won that championship, Carter was charged with reckless driving and racing, both misdemeanors, which had contributed to the death of teammate Devin Willock and Chandler LeCroy, a member of Georgia’s recruiting staff, who was driving the car that Carter was racing. Carter, a local football hero could have been charged with vehicular homicide, but the Athens, Georgia district attorney deemed that LeCroy was primarily responsible instead because she not only was driving recklessly like Carter, but had a blood alcohol level well above the legal limit. Reportedly, Carter and LeCroy had been racing in and around traffic at speeds exceeding 100 miles an hour when LeCroy’s vehicle lost control and crashed into multiple power poles and trees. Willock died on the scene and LeCroy died later at a local hospital near Athens, Georgia. Carter left the site of the crash without permission, but returned later to answer additional questions. Apparently, his blood alcohol level was never tested, but Carter’s attorney assured the media that his client had not been drinking, nor was he under the influence of any other substance. While it seems as if this incident will probably damage Carter’s draft stock a little, he still is likely to be a mid-first round selection. If he had been sentenced to years in prison for vehicular homicide, rather than given 12 months of probation, a $1,000 fine, and community service, he undoubtedly would not have been drafted at all and would have faced a lengthy suspension, if he were to be signed to a contract after leaving prison. Alabama Basketball Players (2023): Allegedly Participating in a Murder In January, three University of Alabama basketball players—on a team that would be ranked number 1 in the nation at the end of the regular season—were present at the scene of a murder. One of them, Darius Miles, was indicted for capital murder. First team All-American Brandon Miller allegedly provided the gun that was used in that murder and freshman teammate Jaden Bradley was along for the ride. The alleged shooter, Michael Davis, was not affiliated with the University. Both Davis and Miles are being held without bond. Miller has not yet faced any charges because supposedly knowingly transporting a gun that someone else owned to a homicide that a third party commits with that gun is not against the law in Alabama. How much the fact that Miller is one of the very best players in college basketball and Alabama was competing for a national championship affected the prosecutor’s decision, is difficult to gauge, based on what is known now. According to testimony from a law enforcement officer, on the night of the alleged murder, Miller received a text from Miles to drive his car to a downtown entertainment district in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Once Miller arrived on the scene with Bradley, Davis and the victim exchanged gun fire using Miles’ gun, which Miller had transported to the scene. The prosecutor alleges that Davis fired first, but Davis’ defense attorney claims the victim fired first. Miller’s lawyer contends that his client never actually touched the gun, but did not explain how it ended up in Miller’s car. Miles still faces trial for capital murder, while Miller and Bradley were allowed by law enforcement and the University of Alabama, respectively, to participate in March Madness. Perhaps it was Karma, but Alabama was upset by San Diego State University in the sweet 16 round of the tournament. Conclusion: Summary and Analysis Based on an internet search of American professional, Olympic, and major college athletes who have committed, participated in, or were otherwise involved in various types of homicides, including murder, there have been 21 such incidents over the past 30 years that have been reported nationally in the media, along with two suicides accompanying two of the murders. This list does not include the relatively infrequent instances in which other athletes have died in the boxing ring or on the playing field or the more common occurrence in which athletes themselves are the victims of homicides. The narratives examined in this essay begin with O.J. Simpson’s arrest, but ultimate acquittal, for two murders committed in 1994 and end in 2023 with a murder, which two University of Alabama basketball players, Darius Miles and All-American Brandon Miller, allegedly participated in. Each of these 21 homicides, as described in the media and/or by Wikipedia, was somewhat different, but there appear to be certain commonalities. It should be understood in analyzing these homicides, the United States has one of the highest homicide rates in the world, especially as compared to every other industrialized nation. This, in large part, is due to widespread access to guns in the U.S. In 2020, the U.S. homicide rate was 7.8 for 100,000 people. This is our highest rate since 1995 and represents a 30 percent increase from the year before. Social scientists believe this spike was due to the beginning of the Covid pandemic in early 2020 and police being less aggressive in preventing homicides after being widely criticized for systemic problems that led to the police murders of George Floyd and other Black men and women. While American athletes generally do not seem to have a homicide rate that is disproportionate to the general population in this country and the rate may be even less, two things stand out as disturbing. First, American athletes appear to have a much higher homicide rate than athletes from other industrialized nations. Second, current and former NFL players, compared to American athletes in other sports, do seem to have a homicide rate that exceeds the national average. Of the 23 homicides that were identified and written about in this article, 15 or 65%, involved current or former NFL players. Five or 22% focused on NBA or major college basketball players, and the other three involved an NHL player, a boxer, and a major college football player, respectively. These homicides included eleven murders, two suicides connected with two of those murders, and ten instances of manslaughter or vehicular homicide. In three of the 11 murder convictions, the athlete perpetrators were experiencing severe mental illness or the effects of CTE. The weapons used in these homicides and two suicides were mostly guns (10) and cars (8), followed by four that involved knives, fists, a hammer, and/or a bedsheet, respectively. In one case, the weapon was unknown or at least not reported in the media. Because the two spectator sports in the United States that had the most homicides, football and basketball are played predominantly by African American athletes, it was not surprising that most of the homicides were committed by African Americans. However, the percentage of those 21 homicides that involved African American athletes was startling: 81% (17 out of 21). The remaining 19% involved two athletes who were white, one who was African American and white, and one who was Puerto Rican and white. Collectively, in most of the completed homicide dispositions (10 of 17), the athletes involved received more lenient treatment by law enforcement and the legal system than one might expect, especially in homicides that were not murder. In part, that is because most of these athletes, like other relatively wealthy Americans, had access to experienced private defense attorneys. Furthermore, most, if not all, of these athletes were sports heroes in the local communities where these crimes occurred. By contrast, though, it seems as if, over the years, for public relations reasons, sports organizations like the NFL have ratcheted up their disciplinary dispositions for their athletes who have been involved in these types of homicides, assuming, of course, those athletes were able to resume participating in these lucrative spectator sports. Yet, even those somewhat longer suspensions are more like inconveniences, than stiff penalties. As to the remaining eleven cases, three have not yet been resolved. A fourth, involving Jovan Belcher, never went to trial due to his suicide. In three cases, all involving murder, athletes seem to have received more severe dispositions than normal. In four cases, the athletes appear to have received sentences in the normal range, given the homicides that were proven in court. The case involving Aaron Hernandez was too complicated to categorize, however. Upon his death by suicide, Hernandez’s one murder conviction was overturned on unusual equity grounds, while the other two murder charges against him led to acquittals because the only eyewitness lacked credibility. Lastly, an examination of the timeframes as to when, in five-year segments, these homicides occurred over the past 30 years—admittedly small samples—reveals that there were three from 1994 through 1999, six from 2000 to 2004, only two from 2005-2009, then five from 2010 through 2014. For some reason, which remains unclear, from 2015-2020 there were no such athlete homicides. Beginning in 2021, however, when these elite athletes left their Covid pandemic bubbles, through early 2023, there have been five such homicides in just over two years, which is the highest rate over the past 30 years. This spike seems to correspond with the sharp increase in the homicide rate, nationally. WHAT DOES The U.S. WOMEN’S SOCCER TEAM’S HISTORIC ACHIEVEMENT MEAN For WOMEN’S SPORTS In AMERICA?
Not too Much, Yet John Weston Parry, J.D. The American media has celebrated the United States Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT) apparently achieving parity with the men, after battling the U.S. Soccer Federation for years, as a monumental victory for American female athletes. As the late George Carlin might rail, that sounds like a load of BS. In a matrix, which includes American female athletes domestically and worldwide, that victory is but one tidal wave in an ocean largely owned and controlled by men. With respect to youth, high school, college, and international soccer, as well as corporate sponsorship and endorsement deals, American female players still lag behind their male counterparts. And, in most other spectator sports where the two genders both participate, the financial gaps between male and female athletes remain huge. The exception that helps to illustrate this widespread inequality is professional tennis. What it took for the USWNT players to get as far as they have—an extraordinary achievement given what they were up against—was a confluence of factors that made their experience unique, rather than readily achievable by other female athletes. First and foremost, the U.S. had to become the very best national team in the last two women’s World Cup campaigns (2015 and 2019), and the best overall team, globally, over a period of thirty years. Second, the USWNT had to be fortunate enough to have one of their own, Cindy Parlow Cone, become President of the U.S. Soccer Federation in March 2020, after the Federation’s male-dominated, sexist leadership screwed up so badly it needed, and hoped it would get, a female figurehead. And third, these elite American women soccer players had to be in a sport where their male counterparts were enlightened enough to be mostly supportive of their efforts, even if it cost them money. Women’s Tennis and The Legacy of Billie Jean King The other American spectator sport in which parity has almost been achieved, but not quite, is women’s professional tennis. Once again, though, there are special circumstances involved that make that experience unique and not easily replicated in other sports for women. First, there are the contributions of Billie Jean King, beginning with her convincing 1973 victory over Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes.” No sport for women, or men for that matter, has had a more effective advocate for their sport as she has been for hers, putting King in the celestial company of Jackie Robinson. Second, through the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), which King was instrumental in establishing, women professional tennis players exert a great deal of influence over their sport, even though at the tournament level, especially the grand slams, the sport still is dominated by men. Third, at almost all the major tournaments, men and women compete in the same places at the same time, thus providing much greater opportunities for parity in media coverage. Fourth, at the four most-watched tournaments by far, the grand slams, women play only two of three, rather than three of five, sets. For many tennis fans and viewers, especially in the post-modern social media era where attention spans are easily diverted, the shorter matches are far preferable to the four- or five -hour plus macho marathons. Finally, American tennis fans, for nearly two decades now, only have had the Williams sisters to cheer on as champions. Andy Roddick was the last American man to win a grand slam and that occurred back in 2003. He also was the last American man to reach a final and that occurred in 2009. For many years now, American tennis, like American soccer, has been highlighted by female athletes. In American tennis, most of those championship-level female athletes have been African Americans led by Serena and Venus. What About Other Spectator Sports for American Female Athletes? Is this type of progress and success for women in soccer and tennis typical of other American sports for female athletes? Not so much or not at all. Do you think Putin and the Russian government would have indefinitely detained Lebron James if he had been in Britney Griner’s shoes? Male chauvinism still reigns throughout the world. But instead of confronting this sexism head on, the sports powers that be, and much of the media, have conveniently manufactured—or sportswashed, if you will—a new scapegoat to deflect from these stark gender inequalities. Supposedly, a tiny group of female transgender and intersex athletes are making it impossible for brave, but obviously outmatched, American female athletes to succeed in sports. Thus, invasive regulations are required to fix this mostly imaginary imbalance. God forbid that elite female athletes might have to compete against female athletes who are deemed by men, too often unscientifically and arbitrarily, as not female enough. Athletes like Megan Rapinoe, Allyson Felix, Katie Ledecky, and Serena Williams in their primes, would not have stood a chance against these purported female transgender Amazons. Or would they? There is only one Castor Semenya in the world and she hardly is a shoe-in every race she runs. In sports, does better competition make athletes better? Of course, it does. That is the whole point. Gender-wise, are elite transgender female athletes far more comparable to Serena Williams than to Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt? Clearly, they are. All female athletes, whether transgender or not, are being marginalized by male dominated institutions. The best justification that these self-serving and self-dealing sports institutions can offer is to claim that the threat of unfair competition, as defined by these men in power, should be viewed as the most pressing disadvantage female athletes face. Even the supposedly liberated U.S Women’s Soccer team has a man, Vlatko Andonovski, as its head coach, based on the presumption that he could do a better job than Jill Ellis, the far more decorated female coach who had led the American women to two World Cups. Perhaps not coincidentally, American women’s soccer dominance is now being called into question as our 2021 Olympic female soccer team only won bronze under its new male head coach. The U.S. team continues to be ranked number one in the world, but that is primarily due to the World Cup championships under Ellis’ direction in 2015 and 2019. “Liberation Feminism” As a Path to Progress As Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post observes, quoting the feminist thinker Germaine Greer, there is a meaningful difference between “equality feminism” and “liberation feminism.” Trying to become equal to the men is “just window dressing.” Because men control American and global sports institutions, they define what equality should be. Liberation means changing those masculine sports institutions, structures, and athletic conditions to help women achieve what benefits them the most, including being able to define who should be considered female and what standards should be used to make that determination. From that liberated feminist perspective, the U.S. Women’s team has, in Jenkins’ words, begun to “reimagin[e] the possibilities.” Whether U.S. Women’s Soccer will be able to continue to build on its historic, but singular, achievement and carry other female athletes with them is a daunting challenge, but one well worth undertaking. Conceivably, this one tidal wave could lead to a series of tsunamis that will remake the American sports world, forever. More likely, though, as has happened to Hillary Clinton, the #Me Too movement, and Amber Heard losing in court to Johnny Depp, female athletes will be opposed by powerful forces trying to perpetuate a male status quo. This will make further feminist progress in sports difficult to achieve and sustain. It probably would be less difficult for the politically attractive Megan Rapinoe to be elected President of the United States, than for most women’s sports to be reorganized, controlled, and presented by women, as they deserve to be. TOKENISM FUELS GENDER INJUSTICES In AMERICAN SPORTS: NFL, USOPC, USA Gymnastics, U.S. Soccer and MLB
John Weston Parry What do the National Football League (NFL), the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC), USA Gymnastics, the US Soccer Federation (US Soccer), and Major League Baseball (MLB) have in common? After engaging in gender injustices for decades, the men in charge of these sports enterprises have finally been pushed—by embarrassing scandals, the sports media, and corporate sponsors—into naming the first women to fill prominent positions within their organizational structures. That sexist deflection has become so popular the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee recently implemented it, internationally, after their former chairman complained about women members of his committee speaking up too much. Too often grudging tokenism—accompanied by feel good stories about women having broken the glass ceiling and the few good men who have helped them—is misleadingly celebrated as substantial progress. As Motoko Rich wrote in The New York Times about the Tokyo Olympic committee’s recent succession plan, many “wondered whether’ appointing a woman as chair was anything “more than a cosmetic decision, made under duress….” Not surprisingly, most of the men directly responsible for these gender injustices manage to squirm off the hook or receive a golden parachute to help them disappear from the spotlight. Moreover, the men who control these sports enterprises from the inside continue to operate pretty much as they have in the past with the help of their lawyers and public relations departments, who by necessity, have become better prepared to oppose and slow further gender progress. That pattern reveals itself each time one of these lucrative, male-dominated spectator sports, one of its teams, or affiliates gets into serious trouble after it is finally revealed that men closely associated with those entities have been engaging in sexism, misogyny, and/or violence, exploitation, and abuse of women and girls, typically for many years. Former Syracuse quarterback Don McPherson, who wrote You Throw Like a Girl: The Blind Spot of Masculinity, explains that boys will be boys because: “We don’t raise boys to be men. We raise them not to be women.” There are very few female role models or influences to help boys and young men break out of this distorted patriarchy. That is why Bianca Smith, the first Black woman to coach in professional baseball—albeit for a minor league team—has observed, “As a Black person, I don’t feel like I face the discrimination in sports that I do as a woman.” Smith needed an Ivy League education and graduate degrees in law and business to be given an opportunity to start at the bottom for the Boston Red Sox. The NFL and Washington’s Football Team The NFL has been ground zero when it comes to media stories about a major American sports enterprise and its male employees being involved in sexual assaults, domestic violence, and sexual harassment. For decades, NFL athletes, coaches, management, and owners have been the perpetrators of a panoply of offenses against women and girls. As with concussions and other serious brain injuries, the NFL has tried to keep a lid on all of this misogynistic violence and sexual harassment by its employees. For decades the league marginalized these gender-based offenses by placing the primary responsibility on law enforcement and the courts to rectify this ongoing travesty of justice within the NFL After the Ray Rice domestic violence fiasco ended in the NFL staging its own much criticized Mueller investigation—which concluded there was no dispositive proof Commissioner Goodell had lied about being unaware of the infamous video when he suspended Rice for only two games—the league was forced to placate corporate sponsors going forward. Goodell, the owners, and the league office decided to go all in by treating these serious offenses as “personal conduct” matters, like popping pain pills or illegally deflating footballs. The NFL has since embraced an administrative investigative, review and enforcement process that has been most notable for its subjectivity, lack of due process, and protection of the financial and other interests of team owners, the league, and the Commissioner. The NFL then hired a female former prosecutor and a female former D.C. police chief to give credence to the narrative that this administrative hocus pocus is sincerely trying to dispense justice Unfortunately, justice for the alleged victims and perpetrators has been mostly a coincidence or an orchestrated diversion from having to hold the owners or Commissioner directly responsible in any way shape, or form for the misogynistic culture that the league has enabled. The most disturbing current gender injustice scandal has involved a series of exposes focusing on Daniel Snyder the principal owner of Washington’s Football Team, the management of his franchise, and the efforts of the NFL and the Commissioner to delay and redirect attention elsewhere following a series of reported outrages that date back to at least 2006. Some of the most disturbing instances of sexism and misogyny in the NFL in recent years have involved the exploitation of team cheerleaders. The very worst example occurred with Washington’s Football Team. Juliet Macur of the New York Times broke the story in 2018 that five years earlier franchise management had arranged for its cheerleaders to visit Costa Rica “for a calendar photo shoot” that required them “to be topless” or wear “nothing but body paint.” While none of the topless pictures were published publicly, various male sponsors and purchasers of FedExField suites were allowed to gawk at the women during the photo shoot “up-close.” The women also were expected, if asked, to be these male sponsors’ “personal escorts at a night club” for the evening. A team spokesperson did not deny the allegations, offering a non sequitur instead: “The work our cheerleaders do… is something the… organization and our fans take great pride in.” The NFL defended itself by asserting that the league “has no role in how the clubs which have cheerleaders utilize them.” A couple of days later, The Washington Post reported that for years the NFL team had been using its cheerleaders “to peddle the most expensive seats at FedExField.” The women were described as a “sales inducement.” This was all part of a marketing approach, which had included valued ticket holders going to Costa Rica for that photo shoot. While Dan Snyder was not directly implicated in any of those inducements, the marketing executives that he had hired to improve ticket sales were. Furthermore, Snyder had benefited personally from the cheer-leading squad, which Forbes calculated in 2003 alone had earned him “roughly $1 million in annual team revenues… that’s not subject to the league’s revenue-sharing rules.” Subsequently in July 2020, 15 former female employees and two women sports reporters alleged in a Washington Post expose that male executives repeatedly commented about “[their] looks…, sent inappropriate texts and pressed them for dates.” In addition, those female employees were “told to wear revealing clothes and flirt with clients to close deals.” Reportedly, a number of those employees had been “sexually harassed and subjected to verbal abuse in incidents from 2006 to 2019” by male employees. Shortly after Snyder was informed that such an article would be published, three men in his “inner circle” suddenly resigned. This included Larry Michael the team’s radio broadcast voice, as well as pro personnel director Alex Santos. The NFL issued a press release asserting that these allegations were “serious, disturbing and contrary to the NFL’s values.” At the time, based on the opinions of league insiders, the Post speculated that while the NFL might “consider disciplinary measures” against the team’s owner, ultimately Snyder would be able to retain ownership of his team. This impression was buttressed by the fact that, as has become typical in these matters involving NFL owners, Snyder was allowed to hire the outside law firm to conduct the league’s investigation. Making matters worse, the female former employees making the accusations had been compelled to sign nondisclosure agreements when they were hired and the league, even after it took over the inquiry, was not insisting that Snyder allow them to speak freely to investigators. While this so-called independent investigation was getting underway, Snyder hired the first woman to fill a high-profile executive position in his organization. Julia Donaldson became the new broadcast voice of the team and vice-president of media. Donaldson also appears to be the first and only female to become a regular member of a radio broadcast team for an NFL franchise. A few months later just before the Christmas holidays, an addendum to the Post’s original expose put the whole matter in a new and even more disturbing light. A team of reporters documented that in 2009, Washington’s NFL franchise had paid “a former female employee $1.6 million as part of a confidential settlement” after she had “accused Daniel Snyder of sexual misconduct.” Although as is typical in such agreements, Snyder did not admit wrongdoing, Post columnist Barry Svrluga succinctly summarized the import of this new revelation. The team’s owner was “not just … the head creep who oversaw and allowed a corporate culture that degraded and devalued women, but an active participant who paid off an accuser to make his problems go away.” More than seven months after the inquiry was launched, the NFL has been hiding behind an investigative process that has been flawed from the start and may not even be made public. Instead, the public relations arm of the league has tried to sell the misleading narrative that females are making meaningful progress in securing positions throughout the NFL. The league designated Sarah Thomas to become the first women to officiate in a Super Bowl. What makes her accomplishment far less impressive is that Thomas participated in the secondary role of down judge and was only one of five female officials, compared to more than two-hundred males, that officiate in the league. None of those women were crew chiefs or umpires, who make the most important calls on the field. In addition, the NFL showcased two Tampa Bay employees who became the first female assistant coaches to participate in a Super Bowl. Of the nearly 500 coaches in the NFL last season, only eight of them were women. There are no female offensive or defensive coordinators, much less, head coaches. In March, the league announced that it had hired Maia Chaka, who would become the first African-American woman to be a full-time NFL official. In the meantime, Washington’s Football Team has tried to erase any memory of its cheerleaders by canceling its cheer-leading program. Despite claiming that the organization and its fans took great pride in the cheerleaders, the franchise disbanded the squad and is replacing it with a co-ed dance team. Julia Camacho, a former cheerleader, observed, “It’s like it’s easier for the team to cut ties with the word `cheerleader’ than to change the culture of the organization.” The franchise claimed it wanted to present “more modern” entertainment, but the result looks like retaliation against the cheerleaders who had the audacity to complain about being exploited and sexually harassed. USOPC and USA Gymnastics The USOPC and USA Gymnastics were responsible for arguably the most egregious failure to protect their athletes’ health and safety in Olympic history. For decades, male-dominated, American Olympic gymnastics programs allowed young female athletes to be abused by trusted men affiliated with USA Gymnastics. Since the turn of this century, the Unites States Olympic Committee (USOC) as it was called then, knew, or should have known, that sexual abuse was prevalent in Olympic sports. Former USA Gymnastics CEO Bob Colarossi warned in 1999 that “Olympic sport governing bodies lacked basic sex abuse prevention measures.” He told key American Olympic officials, including future USOC CEO Scott Blackman: “USOC can either position itself as a leader in the protection of young athletes or it can wait until it is forced to deal with the problem under much more difficult circumstances.” For decades, the USOC and its Olympic affiliates did very little to address this widespread problem. According to the New York Times, gymnastics officials decided to cover-up reports of sexual abuse complaints against their coaches that numbered at least “54… from 1996 to 2006…. [Those coaches] were accused of misconduct, including sexually assaulting their athletes.” Furthermore, USA Gymnastics failed to investigate serious sexual abuse allegations dating back to 2011. This meant most of the accused coaches remained in their positions, or moved elsewhere to coach other gymnasts. After USA Gymnastics was notified in 2015 that Olympic team physician Larry Nassar had been accused of molesting a shockingly large number of female gymnasts, the organization decided not to report that information to law enforcement authorities and to keep Nassar in his position. USA Gymnastics, through its president and CEO Steve Penny, initiated an internal investigation that was not completed for nearly two more years. While that investigation lay dormant, Olympic medalist McKayla Maroney went to the media to publicize details about her 2016 financial settlement with USA Gymnastics after she had accused Nassar of abusing her. Much like what other powerful men were doing elsewhere, USA Gymnastics officials had insisted that Maroney agree not to disclose that she had been abused, nor identify her abuser as team physician Larry Nassar. The USOC claimed that their officials knew nothing about this confidential agreement, which begged the question: Why that was so? In March 2017 stories in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other media outlets uncovered additional damning information about the USA Gymnastics cover-up. Nonetheless, the organization’s executive board Chair, Paul Parilla, defended Penny as one of the “strongest advocates for our athletes.” A few days later, Penny resigned with a big pay day. Subsequently, when he was asked in a court deposition why he had failed to take steps to protect female gymnasts that he knew or should have known were in jeopardy, Penny asserted: “To the best of my knowledge, there’s no [legal] duty to report… if you are a third party to some allegation.” Despite the accumulating revelations, the USOC still took no actions against USA Gymnastics and its officials. A couple of months after Penny’s resignation, Parilla announced the results of a so-called independent investigation that USA Gymnastics had commissioned under the direction of a female former prosecutor. She and her investigators confirmed, omitting any names, that USA Gymnastics officials had intentionally withheld information from law enforcement about the allegations made against so many of their coaches. In response, the organization held none of its officials responsible. They decided instead to circulate non-binding recommendations to all its affiliated gymnastics clubs suggesting how they should document and report sexual abuse complaints. Penny’s position remained vacant for months. In December 2017, USA Gymnastics hired its first woman CEO, Kerry Perry. A few weeks later, it was reported that team physician Larry Nassar also had sexually abused numerous female gymnasts at the national training center that the legendary coaches Martha and Bela Karolyi owned and operated. While the USOC still was not ready to sanction USA Gymnastics, Parilla and the organization’s vice-Chair and its treasurer all resigned. Public outrage then focused on USOC CEO Scott Blackmun for failing to properly oversee USA Gymnastics and the other American Olympic federations that had covered-up or otherwise mishandled sexual abuse cases for so long. A number of former Olympic athletes and two U.S. Senators led a group of critics who demanded Blackman resign. A few days later he complied after agreeing to a $2.4 million buyout. Sarah Highland, a former marketing executive with the United States Golf Association replaced Blackman, becoming the first woman to hold that position. Eventually USOC Chairman Larry Probst resigned as well. Susanne Lyons, one of the few female board members, became the first woman chair of the organization. In addition, the USOC changed its sullied name.to the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee. Soon USA Gymnasts filed for bankruptcy, which meant that its future assets could not be used to compensate the numerous female gymnasts who were suing the organization after being allegedly abused. Months later in November 2018 the USOPC finally initiated a lengthy process for potentially decertifying USA Gymnastics, belatedly noting that female gymnasts “deserve better.” First, though, there had to be a hearing before a three-person USOPC panel, the results of which do not have to be made public. That would be followed by a vote and maybe an appeal. New USOPC CEO Sarah Highland observed that the process has no “predetermined outcome,” nor apparently any predetermined deadlines. Three months later, Highland was praising USA Gymnastics after it had hired its fourth female CEO in the two-year period since Penny had resigned. Highland gushed that Li Li Lueng, the former NBA mid-level marketing executive and American Ninja Warrior contestant, “is an accomplished professional, a former gymnast herself, and committed to transforming the culture of the sport.” Highland opined that this hire was “one of the most important aspects of USA Gymnastics’ way forward.” America’s female gymnasts did not share Highland’s enthusiasm. As Simone Biles complained in August 2019, it was difficult to represent USA Gymnastics because they “fail[ed] us so many times.” A bipartisan Senate Commerce Committee found that USA Gymnastics had “enabled the abuse” of many female gymnasts. Both USA Gymnastics and the USOPC had “`failed to act aggressively to report wrongdoing’ and officials in positions of power `prioritized their own reputations or the reputation of [a sport’s national governing body] over the health and safety of the athletes.” Twenty-eight months after it was initiated, there has not even been a preliminary decertification decision that has been made public. Meanwhile, USA Gymnastics continues to function as usual. The longer this process is delayed, the more likely USA Gymnastics, as Highland strongly hinted, is going to avoid decertification. If that happens, female gymnasts will continue to lack representation and input into the decisions being made that directly affect them and their sport. The main difference, though, is that these male-dominated Olympic organizations will have women in place to take the heat for delivering the bad news. U.S. Soccer Federation and U.S. Women’s Soccer Undoubtedly the most publicized example of women athletes in America fighting for equitable pay and benefits has involved the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team. Yet, even their success has been limited. Although the U.S. Soccer Federation recently appointed the first woman to be its President after the organization made misogynistic comments about its female athletes, the women’s national team has been losing its legal battle to obtain pay equity with the men. The original dispute erupted after the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team won the 2015 World Cup. Team members insisted that U.S. Soccer address substantial disparities in pay and other benefits that they received as compared to the men’s team. The women were not demanding equal pay, but rather pay equity and better bonuses and playing conditions. That demand so outraged U.S. Soccer, in February 2016 the organization sued the union representing the American women’s soccer team players. The suit alleged the union members, by demanding better wages and benefits, were about to violate the terms of the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the Federation and the women’ s team, which the union argued had expired back in 2012. Subsequently, five players on that American squad, including Abby Wambach, filed a discrimination claim with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging their team members were only receiving a fraction of the salary and benefits the men’s national team received. This disparity existed even though, according to the New York Times, the women had generated $6.6 million in net income, while the men had lost $1 million. Instead of readjusting the compensation and bonuses to reflect the women’s success and popularity, U.S. Soccer insisted on retaining the existing payment formula. At the time, 13 of the 15 Federation board members, including its president, were men. The dispute was addressed indirectly in April 2017. A new CBA between U.S. Soccer and the women’s team reportedly provided for a 30 percent increase in the base salary and improved bonuses. Still, it was well short of what the considerably less successful men were receiving. Thus, in advance of the 2019 Women’s World Cup, 28 members of the U.S. women’s soccer team filed a lawsuit in federal court against U.S. Soccer seeking $67 million in damages. They alleged widespread gender discrimination, encompassing not only disparities in salaries and bonuses, but playing conditions, medical care, and coaching. Then President of U.S. Soccer Carlos Cardeiro expressed “surprise.” He blithely dismissed the suit, noting that the Federation and the aggrieved “players remain partners with shared goals and aspirations.” After the U.S. women won a second straight World Cup and Megan Rapinoe became Sports Illustrated sportsperson of the year, interest and support for the women’s team and their cause skyrocketed. Furthermore, the federal judge hearing the U.S. women’s lawsuit granted the plaintiffs class action status, which seemed to strengthen their legal position. Nevertheless, the men who controlled U.S. Soccer continued to make the key decisions affecting the American women’s team. That included replacing Jill Ellis, the team’s highly successful World Cup coach with Vlatko Andonovski. He is a former Macedonian soccer player with no experience coaching either women or men, internationally. He became the sixth male coach of the women’s team since 1985. Only three have been female. While Ellis received a substantially higher salary and bonus for guiding the women’s team to a second world championship in 2019 than she had received previously as head coach, The Washington Post reported that it was much less than what each of the unsuccessful American men’s soccer coaches had made during her tenure. Ellis received $746,623 in 2019, $390,000 in 2018 and less than that in her prior years as coach beginning in 2014. By comparison, Jurgen Klinsmann received more than $3.0 million a year from 2014-2016, Bruce Arena made about $1.6 million in 2017, and Gregg Berhalter’s overall compensation in 2019 was $1.33 million. By this point, it was clear that the pay and benefits disparities were going to be difficult for the Federation to justify. Thus, U.S. Soccer officials resorted to an obviously sexist legal argument to defend their position. In March 2020 their lawyers contended “indisputable science’ proved that … the women’s national team were inferior to the men.” It takes “more `skill’ and `responsibility’ to play for the men’s team than the women’s equivalent.” This was the same argument Billie Jean King had demolished in tennis decades ago. When that position became public, the U.S. Women’s team joined by many corporate sponsors condemned U.S. Soccer for its “blatant misogyny.” Federation President Cordeiro apologized, but by then it was too late. U.S. Soccer took the now very familiar step of trying to mitigate the damage by forcing Cordeiro to resign with a big buy out and replacing him with the organization’s first female President, former U.S. Women’s Soccer Team member Parlow Cone. While the litigation had turned out to be a public relations disaster for the men who control U.S. Soccer, another man would come to their rescue in court. Judge Gary Klausner made an important ruling in their favor by creating a legal fiction. He reasoned that simply because Federation officials had admitted that their female soccer players were being paid less than the men, “d[id] not make it true.” The women had received certain benefits like “maternity leave” that were unavailable to the men. As Sally Jenkins wrote in the Washington Post, Klausner’s legal opinion was just another example of “male entitlement.” That alleged bias may have been inflated because Klausner is a judge prone to, as the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals put it, “illogical rulings.” According to Bloomberg Law, between 2002 and 2018 in “employment, labor, and benefits cases,” Klausner was reversed “100 percent of the time.” Since then, U.S. Soccer and the women’s team agreed to a court-approved settlement equalizing the working conditions for the women players as compared to the men. This made it simpler for the plaintiffs to appeal Klausner’s unfavorable ruling on equal pay. Federation President and former women’s team member Cone has been conspicuously silent about the equal pay issue, which may not be surprising since her male-dominated board (10 men and 4 women including Cone) just extended her term in office by two more years. Major League Baseball Throughout professional baseball women are commonly referred to as “beef.” Barry Svrluga of The Washington Post explains that in this “neanderthal thinking…” they “are not to respected. They are to be consumed.” Domestic violence committed by players—and even an owner—has been an ongoing problem in MLB. In addition, two elite baseball players, one a top major league prospect, the other an established player, were charged with sexually assaulting young girls. Most recently, three different franchises and MLB apparently ignored or were conveniently unaware of multiple complaints against a pitching coach for gross sexual misconduct. A major reason for all these gender-based injustices is the poor record MLB and its teams have had with regard to hiring women. How far baseball still needs to go was underscored in 2020 when it became national news that two teams had finally hired the first women in MLB history to become a full-time assistant coach and general manager, respectively. Domestic Violence It took MLB until August 2015 to approve a specific policy that addresses domestic violence and sexual assaults. Remarkably, such glacial progress put MLB ahead of the NCAA and NHL, which still have no comprehensive rules in place, while the NBA waited until 2017. MLB’s policy only covers players, though. In most instances, managers, coaches, front office personnel, and MLB owners continue to be disciplined by their teams, if at all, when they commit offenses against women. Under this MLB policy, which both the league and the players union agreed upon, the Commissioner is authorized, but not required, to suspend any player accused of such offenses for up to a week with pay, while an investigation is being conducted. Once the initial inquiry is completed, the Commissioner has three options: (1) defer making a ruling until after the criminal proceedings are concluded; (2) reinstate the player; or (3) suspend him. This leaves a great deal of discretion with the Commissioner, who is hired by the owners. This includes apparently weighing the impact on the affected team. Furthermore, any time a suspended player spends on paid administrative leave may be counted as part of the final penalty, even though the player was being paid during that period. In 2016 ace relief pitcher Aroldis Chapman of the New York Yankees became the first player to be disciplined under the new policy. He was suspended 30 days. A year earlier, he had been accused of choking his girlfriend, who was the mother of his child, and also threatening her by discharging a gun several times in her presence. As often happens in such incidents when sports stars are accused, Chapman was never charged with a crime. The player later claimed he was only accepting MLB’s administrative punishment to get the episode behind him before he became a free agent. Dusty Baker then of the Washington Nationals, who was Chapman’s former manager and at the time the manager of a team that was hoping to sign the likely free agent, defended Chapman. Baker gushed that the pitcher was “a tremendous young man with a great family, great mother and father… I got nothing but love for the young man.” The Washington Post’s Tom Boswell opined the manager “didn’t get it. Sports has been aflame with long-overdue attention to domestic violence issues…. [T]here has been a nauseating succession of similar examples.” MLB mandates players to attend an annual domestic violence presentation during spring training. That session is not required for other team personnel, including managers like Dusty Baker, coaches, or owners like San Francisco Giant’s CEO Larry Baer. In March 2019 Baer was caught on video physically assaulting his wife during a heated altercation. Baer was asked by his team’s board of directors to take a leave of absence. The Giants stated that Baer had “acknowledged that his behavior was unacceptable, apologized to the organization, and [was] committed to taking steps to make sure that this never happens again.” The Commissioner’s office contended MLB, not the Giants, had indefinitely suspended Baer without pay. MLB asserted that it has a “zero tolerance policy” as to “this type of abuse” covering all employees. In reality, though, for non-players it is mostly up to the teams to decide what the appropriate penalties should be. Baer returned from his suspension a little less than four months later. The Giants designated Rob Dean, who had been the acting president and CEO, to assume a newly created role of chairman. Baer was told that for the time being he would not be the public face of the franchise. In 2020, though, Baer was clearly back in charge leading the team through a coronavirus-impaired season. Child Sex Offenders The importance to MLB in these personal conduct matters of protecting teams’ investments continues to be an issue. How MLB dealt with two talented baseball players, each of whom was charged with sexual offenses against children, seemed to have had less to do with the respective offenders’ culpability and more with what the affected teams want. S.L. Price’s 2018 article in Sports Illustrated entitled “Prospect and Pariah” detailed how the NCAA and MLB each responded to Oregon State University (OSU) Beavers pitching sensation Luke Heimlich, after it was improperly leaked that, as a teenager, he had committed a sex offense. When he was 15 Heimlich pled guilty in juvenile court to one count of molesting his six-year-old niece. Heimlich received “two years probation, took court-ordered classes, wrote a letter apologizing to his niece and was forced to register for five years as a … [low risk] sex offender.” As a juvenile, his court records were supposed to be sealed and then expunged after Heimlich had completed his sentence. Due to a clerical error, his conviction became public knowledge in 2017. Neither Oregon State nor the NCAA took action against Heimlich once they became aware of his sex offender status. He continued to pitch exceptionally well and helped lead the Beavers to the College World Series. After The Oregonian ran a feature detailing the contents of Heimlick’s confidential guilty plea, though, he was suspended from the team. According to Price, the star pitcher became a “pariah” to most major league teams as well. Nonetheless, Heimlich was allowed to rejoin Oregon’s baseball team for the 2018 season, helped lead them to a national championship, and was named the college pitcher of the year. Nevertheless, no major league team or their minor league affiliates would have anything to do with the top pitching prospect, which is still true today. What MLB did in the case of veteran Pittsburgh Pirates relief pitcher Felipe Vazquez was remarkably different. In 2018 Vazquez extended his contract with team for a reported $22 million. The next year he was charged with multiple sex offenses against a teenager, both in Pennsylvania and Florida, beginning when she was only 13. The girl, who was now 15, reportedly continued to send Vazquez text messages about the two of them having sex once the season was over. Vazquez’s crimes were considered so serious that a Pennsylvania criminal court denied him bail. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred placed the pitcher on administrative leave with full pay. Pirates’ president Frank Connelly said the franchise takes “this matter, and these charges in particular, very seriously,” but did not terminate Vazquez’s contract for more than a year. There were obvious differences between Vasquez’s situation and the one Heimlick found himself in, which should have led to Heimlick being treated more compassionately. He was a juvenile when he pleaded to a sexual offense that was supposed to be expunged from his record. The charges against Vasquez were much worse and he has been in jail ever since. How MLB treated each of these players had little to do with justice. Gross Sexual Misconduct Ignored According to the Athletic, the worst kept secret in baseball were the many gross sexual improprieties that Los Angeles Angels pitching coach Mickey Callaway had been alleged to have committed while employed by three different teams. None of those franchises took any action against Callaway until the Angels suspended him with pay this February after MLB finally decided to investigate. Callaway who is married with two kids initially denied any wrongdoing. Callaway was a pitching coach for the Cleveland Indians from 2013-2017. In early February of this year, the Athletic detailed allegations by various women about the coach’s inappropriate sexual behaviors, including making unwanted advances and requesting nude photos. The Indians denied having prior knowledge of any such allegations while Callaway was with their team. Subsequently, the Athletic reported that not only had a husband of one of the women contacted the Indians about Callaway’s sexual improprieties, but he documented his complaint with “explicit photos and … a lewd video” that the pitching coach had sent his wife. In addition, the article reported that the team’s president, general manager, and manager had all questioned Callaway about the allegations, but never took any disciplinary action. The New York Mets were so impressed by Callaway and his references, they hired him to be their manager in October 2017. When the first Atlantic report surfaced, the former Mets general manager Sandy Alderson, who is now the Mets president, claimed being unaware of any of the conduct described in the piece before or after Callaway was hired. Yet, a source in the Mets organization told ESPN that the team had been “notified about [such] an incident that took place before he was hired as the team’s manager.” Also, the husband who had contacted the Indians said he had sent an e-mail to the Mets in August 2018. Furthermore, according to the Atlantic, Callaway’s sexually aberrant behaviors were so well known that women in many places where the manager traveled with the Mets had been sent messages warning them to stay away from him. Making matters worse, Callaway was not the only high-profile man in the Mets organization to have been identified as engaging in such behaviors. Subsequently, Jared Porters was fired as their general manager, following a ESPN report documenting that he had texted lewd messages and pictures to a female reporter. In the meantime, not long after the Mets had dismissed Callaway, the Angels hired him as their pitching coach. In February, after the first reports of his sexual improprieties were revealed, Callaway was suspended with pay, but has remained with the team while MLB investigated. A month later, when five more women reported being the subjects of inappropriate sexual behaviors, including harassment, from Callaway, he finally admitted his “infidelities” but contended he had never “engaged in anything that was non-consensual.” The Angels and MLB had no comment other than their investigation continues. -Lack of Female Diversity in MLB MLB, like other major American sports leagues for men, has a long history of discriminating against women in its hiring practices. Therefore, it is not surprising that MLB and its teams have not taken violence and sexual assaults against females very seriously and have been a hotbed for misogyny. According to The Institute for Diversity in Sport (TIDES) gender report card issued in 2020, less than 30% of the senior administrative and 26% of professional staff positions were being filled by women. More importantly, though, no team president or manager is a woman. In addition, until 2020 there were no female general managers, nor female full-time assistant coaches. Now there is one of each among the 30 franchises that populate MLB. After being hired as an intern with the San Francisco Giants in 2014, earning a master’s degree in sports management, and working as the organization’s chief information officer, Alyssa Nakken, a college softball standout, became an assistant coach for the team in January 2020. In the pecking order, she is no higher than eighth and normally is not on the field of play during games. In fact, Nakken made more national news last July when the Giants used her to coach first base during an exhibition contest. She became the first and only woman to coach on the field during an MLB game. Her regular duties, though, are suspiciously ill-defined. As the Guardian put it, she has “a jack-of-all-trades role spanning player development.” Last November, MLB took a more significant step forward when Kim Ng became the first, and only, woman to be named as a general manager for a major professional team for men. Derek Jeter, who is the chief executive officer of the Miami Marlins—and one of a few CEO’s of color in major team sports—made history by naming Ng to that position. Conclusion While Ng’s hire is symbolically important, as The Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins pointed out: “It’s hardly compensation for the whole lousy historical imbalance [based on] sexist exclusion,” not only in MLB, but throughout the American spectator sports world. That sexism not only infects major sports for men, but also those for women, which men still largely control. The only time there seems to be a small break in the glass ceiling is after the men in charge have acted badly towards women and girls who have been discriminated against, harassed, exploited, abused, and/or assaulted. |
To order Burden of Sports with a discount: use "order now button" and at site apply: 30% discount code: RFLFANDF30 (through February)
To order The Athlete's Dilemma go to site below: https://rowman.com/Action/Search/-/The%20athlete's%20Dilemma
The Burden of Sports is the most comprehensive treatment to date of the struggles elite athletes and those trying to become elite have had with their mental health and emotional well-being. It includes chapters on: (1) athletes’ battles with mental health generally; (2) athletes’ struggles with mental health related to competing in their sport; (3) brain damage and CTE; (4) substance abuse; (5) specific concerns of female athletes; (5) homophobia, and (6) the effects of discrimination against trans and intersex athletes. It also includes chapter on how the legal system and sports affect athletes' health and mental health. For more information go to the "Book" page The Athlete's Dilemma The Athlete’s Dilemma: Sacrificing Health for Wealth and Fame by John Weston Parry focuses on health-related issues in our most popular spectator sports, including: football, baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey, Olympic competitions, golf, and tennis. Elite athletes, and millions of others trying to become elite, too often succumb—needlessly and/or recklessly—to physical and mental impairments, including brain traumas, dementia, CTE, addictions, substance abuse, infections, and career-shortening/ending damage to their knees, ankles, elbows, shoulders, spines, reproductive organs, and other body parts. In addition to an introduction and conclusion, the book has 24 chapters, divided into four parts:
For more information go to the "Book" page. The Magic of Spectator Sports© By John Weston Parry Spectator sports are important to me. My father, who grew up in the suburbs near New York City, imprinted the pleasures of being a two sport Giants’ fan, even after “our” baseball team had suddenly absconded to San Francisco in 1958. My baseball loyalties were cemented as a young child when the Giants swept the Cleveland Indians in the 1954 World Series. I remember Willie Mays’ over-the-shoulder-catch and throw on Vic Wertz’s blast to the deepest part of the warning track in center field. I shared that precious moment with my Dad, staring at shadowy images on a thirteen-inch black-and-white television set and listening to the eloquent play-by-play of Russ Hodges that only this languid game could engender. Little did I know it would be fifty-six years until the Giants next won the World Series. Then, almost inexplicably, they were champs twice more within a four year span. Such is the magic of sports. My first professional football memory was December 28, 1958. Dad and I listened to a transistor radio in Central Park, while playing catch, because the telecast had been blacked out in the New York area. Our Giants lost in “sudden-death” to the Baltimore Colts in the championship game that, at least until Tom Brady and the Patriots staged their miraculous comeback in the 2017 Super Bowl, was considered by many to be the best ever played. Yet, the first baseman’s mitt my father wore on that chilly day is the far more precious memory. His glove sits on a shelf in our living room next to his ashes and a Giants football hat. My professional basketball loyalty was not established until the early 1960’s. Dad did not follow the sport, but throughout my young life, he, my mother, and stepmother embraced equal opportunity and racial integration. Thus, as an adolescent, I was drawn to the team chemistry that allowed the selectively-integrated Boston Celtics—led by Bill Russell, Red Auerbach, Sam and K.C. Jones, Bob Cousy, and John Havlicek—to win a multiplicity of championships, even over opponents with better individual talent. Team defense, prodigious rebounding, exquisitely blocked shots, long release passes, “stop and pop,” Auerbach's victory cigars, and the Celtic's parquet floor became forever etched in my psyche. For me civil rights were best captured in sports by Paul Robeson, Arthur Ashe, Bill Russell, the Celtics, Willie Mays, and Shirley Povich. I did not fully appreciate Jackie Robinson until some years later, undoubtedly because he played for the Dodgers and was a Richard Nixon supporter. At Lake Forest College in Illinois I wrote my honors thesis on spectator sports in American society. I examined how those sports affected—and were affected by—law, politics, government, and perception. During my college years, I also became a Chicago Blackhawks fan. Hockey was the one major North American professional team sport that I had never followed more than casually. By close proximity and osmosis, however, I soon became captivated with the exploits of Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, and Tony Esposito. However, my loyalty to the Blackhawks did not endure, because in the early 1980‘s a new proximity made me a fan of Rod Langway and the defense-minded Washington Capitals. Years later, after my daughter, Jennifer, became a fan, I adopted the Baltimore Orioles as my second baseball team. My favorite pastimes have been dominated with sports, particularly playing tennis and exploring the great outdoors with close friends. Just as often, though, I have been an enthusiastic spectator sometimes at a game, but usually on a couch, enthralled with the “thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.” Agony in the Shadows of Victory©
By John Weston Parry For over thirty-five years (April 1961-January 1998) the most recognized sports slogan in America was “...the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat...,” the signature of ABC’s Wide Worldof Sports. Today spectator sports have become a shared cultural phenomenon that brings joy to billions of people around the globe, and countless billions of dollars to a select group of business enterprises. That two hour, iconic ABC sports show has been replaced by 24-7 ESPN sports programming, which is now owned by Disney ABC Television Group. Arguably, more so than any other leisure activity, sports unite people from different nations and cultures, while providing unmatched excitement and entertainment to fans world wide. Unfortunately, the agony of sports goes well beyond athletes or teams losing games or competitions. Many elite athletes—and the youngsters who try to emulate them—are failing at life as a result of their having been negatively influenced by sports, often beginning at an early age. Communities and fans are losing as well, especially in America where football and other male-dominated sports reign supreme. Various leagues, federations, committees, and associations operate our most popular spectator sports like business cartels—largely without government regulation—primarily to generate more revenues and wealth for themselves. Those that do business in America include the NFL, NCAA, MLB, IOC, FIFA, NBA, NHL, MLS, PGA, WADA, ITF, and IAAF. These organizations and enterprises not only frequently allow or encourage athletes and coaches under their domains to engage in bad, dangerous, and unhealthy behaviors and practices, but often engage in their own schemes, transgressions, and corruption that sully the communities in which they do business. Very little has been done to address these sports pathologies, unless and until bad publicity jeopardizes the economic bottom line of these governing cartels. Denials, deceptions, and well-orchestrated pretenses of being concerned with the athletes’ welfare, the host communities, and the public interest substitute for meaningful actions to deal with these accumulating problems and dysfunctions. Yet, our major spectator sports are treated by governments as if they deserve legal exemptions or are public charters, even though typically these sports enterprises operate as cartels with questionable, and sometimes reprehensible, social values. Once in a while Congress or the Department of Justice investigates, threatens an investigation, or issues a report without enacting legislation, but usually it involves blatant antitrust violations, sexual abuse of child athletes, or widespread corruption of unpopular global enterprises such as boxing, the Russian Sports Ministry, or FIFA. Overall, the enactment of sports-related regulatory legislation or the prosecution of athletes or individuals who run or benefit from these sports cartels have been rare events. Normally, our laws shield these cartels from public scrutiny. As a result of neglect and the lack of governmental oversight, a growing number of serious pathologies now infect our most popular spectator sports, including:
A RECKLESS PRESIDENT PLAYS RE-ELECTION
POLITICS with AMERICA’s FAVORITE TEAM SPORTS The NFL, NBA, and College Football Have Been His Main Targets By John Weston Parry Racism and coronavirus risk taking continue to fracture American democracy. President Trump and his loyal Republican followers have stood near the center of the resulting chaos—and too often have facilitated the misery and danger. Not surprisingly these Trump-inflamed social pathologies have roiled major professional team sports and super conference college football as well. The President has castigated athlete-led racial protests as being un-American, while inserting his divisive brand of politics into professional and college team sports in hopes of improving his dimming re-election prospects. Under the policies and rhetoric of the Trump administration, Americans have become more sharply divided based on race, gender, and age. A lack of unity, common purpose, and shared humanity has placed American democracy in jeopardy. Once thought as inconceivable in this country, an overwhelming consideration as the national elections grow near is whether to oppose or support an increasingly undemocratic future, which would embrace white supremacists. For too many Americans that threshold decision, which may well seal the fate of our democracy, is propelled by their perceived self-interests: What’s in it for them and the socio-political-religious group they most identify with? That destabilizing and expanding American predisposition is reflected in and enhanced by our major spectator sports, notwithstanding the fact that among athletes there has been growing unity of purpose, especially black players protesting racial injustice. Yet, when it comes to the calamitous social maladies that the coronavirus already has spawned, and which threaten to grow much worse, selfishness—measured in wealth, fame and self-gratification—continues to dominate these sports, including athletes. Me-ism even has worked to constrain black athletes’ racial justice initiatives. Racial Justice The repeated, unnecessary, and too often deliberate killings of African Americans and other people of color by mostly white police officers spawned #Black Lives Matter. Beginning with former quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s courageous personal decision to kneel during the national anthem before NFL football games, this movement has spread incrementally to all major professional and college team sports. Except for people with mental disabilities, no group has been more at risk of becoming the victim of unjustified police homicides and other law enforcement violence than African-American males. Conversely, no group has made a greater contribution to major American professional and college team sports than African-American males, especially in the wildly popular NFL and globally popular NBA. Not coincidentally then professional football and basketball players have been at the core of racial justice protests in the American spectator sports world. Two phenomena have coalesced to help propel the voices of African-American athletes to a place of social relevance after half a century of relative silence. The first has been the unprecedented, continuing series of well-publicized police killings of African Americans and other people of color. These homicides, much like kids being mowed down in our public schools, which white men with guns are mostly responsible for, never seem to be addressed by aggressive law enforcement policies by those in power. Even though homicides in this country have steadily declined in recent decades, these two outrageous, social destructive forms of homicidal violence continue to become worse. The second phenomenon has been the unprecedented coronavirus pandemic and how poorly it has been managed in the United States. In large part due to the hands-off policies of the Trump Administration and many Republican governors, the devastating virus has been allowed to spread. In addition to hundreds of thousands of deaths and far more people than that with likely life-long impairments, this reckless political neglect has created unprecedented levels of unemployment, which have not been seen in this country since the Great Depression—especially among African Americans, other people of color, and young adults. With regard to racial injustice, this has meant that many unemployed workers across the country have had the incentive, as well as time on their hands, to participate in outdoor protests. These demonstrations have been widespread, mostly peaceful, remarkably interracial, and safer public health-wise than the President’s rallies, sometimes inside, among supporters who deliberately shun face masks. Furthermore, the staged re-openings of major professional team sports placed the collective bargaining power in the hands of the athletes, who have to be willing to assume the health risks and perform in order for the show to go on. In the NBA and NFL, where black athletes predominate, labor negotiations between players and ownership placed social justice closer to the forefront. Before the coronavirus pandemic hit us hard, the mostly white ownership in these male-dominated sports leagues strongly resisted promoting racial, gender, and other progressive social change. Many, especially in the NFL, have been conspicuous supporters of President Trump. For decades the political whims of management continued to prevail over those of the athletes. That is why Colin Kapernick and other kneeling NFL players could be so easily blackballed and intimidated without serious reprisals from the NFL Players Association. Because of the pandemic, though, these athletes have significantly more economic leverage, while at the same time the owners can readily perceive that there is a substantial possibility that President Trump and his Republican acolytes will not be in power for much longer. This has resulted in a shift in what leagues are willing to deem appropriate in terms of athlete-led social justice initiatives. At the same time, structural limitations have been imposed due in part to the coronavirus pandemic. Brief interruptions for several days—no longer than three to be exact— in the playing of games as symbolic protests, posed few serious problems for these professional leagues, certainly as compared to the logistics of trying to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, especially among the athletes and coaches. The NBA, MLB, NHL, and now the NFL have been engaged in a series of highly publicized exhibitions that have tried mightily to create the perception that the resulting contests closely resemble normal competitions. In reality, though, whether these artificial seasons with their replacement schedules and compromised training protocols are extended a few days, games are postponed, or a few of the more meaningless contests are never played or unilaterally shortened, has become no big deal in this new high-risk environment. What would be a big deal is if these exhibitions could no longer continue because either the players refused to participate until meaningful policies are put in place to curb police violence against African American’s and other people of color or the athletes are unable to participate because in pursuing justice they breach the protective bubbles or frameworks that they have been established to try to prevent them from contracting the virus. Ultimately, though, for a vast majority of these elite athletes playing these games and being paid—albeit substantially reduced salaries and endorsement revenues than normal—remains more important than promoting social justice. The relatively few athletes who transcend this stereotype are showered with praise now that it is okay to be an athlete who openly expresses a social conscience. Overall, though, the kind of social justice initiatives being carried out by athletes in these sports have been limited by the influence of their corporate sponsorship deals and negotiations between these leagues and the player unions. The typically non-public understandings have permitted mostly vanilla-like initiatives to go forward, including: carefully screened messages on NBA players’ jerseys; supporting the right to vote by a relatively few league teams that have committed to help register voters at certain stadiums and arenas; using increased broadcast time during games and on sports talk shows to briefly air players’ social perspectives, particularly those of black athletes; and uniquely in the WNBA, to publicly criticize U.S. Senator and Atlanta Dream owner Kelly Loeffler, who, for her own perceived re-election advantage, has continued to flaunt her white privilege in support of President Trump’s racist campaign. Nevertheless, there are unspoken limits to what these athletes are supposed to do. As powerful New York Giant’s owner John Mara put it, he supports “any players’ right to silent (emphasis supplied) protest,” even if that disturbs some fans. How magnanimous is that? The actual “good trouble,” though, with its accompanying lack of silence has been in the streets of many American cities, which are far removed from the NBA’s Disney World sports bubble and the NFL’s partially insulated stadiums and training facilities. The NFL, like MLB, recently started playing games outside safety bubbles, including in a couple of partially filled stadiums—the number of fans attending are likely to grow as the season continues. On that first weekend of the irregular season, which began on a Thursday night, there was an array of national anthem responses that seemed to defy the NFL owners’ plea for what the Washington Post described as the league’s strategy of promoting “`unity’ without politics.” The NFL’s official effort—along with the national anthem—featured the playing of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,’ which some have embraced as the “Black national anthem.” Colin Kapernick dismissed the NFL’s “social justice gestures [as] ‘propaganda.’” Both he and Eric Reed, the two most prominent former NFL players who had led the original kneeling movement, likely will not be playing professional football this year because they continue to be blackballed by every NFL team. The current NFL players’ mild protests have included: electing not to participate in the national anthem by remaining in their locker rooms; standing in unison as teams; and individual expressions especially kneeling. Despite saying that he approved of the pre-game demonstrations “100 percent,” NBC’s football announcer Chris Collinsworth reflected the attitude of most NFL fans when he said about the protests: “`let’s get that out of the way and go call a football game.” Some NFL fans were more pointed in their criticism, though, including about 17,000 in Kansas City, who had been allowed to attend that game in person—as long as they were willing to pay for the privilege of risking the health of themselves and their loved ones. Many of them booed loudly when the Chiefs and the Houston Texans lined up together in a show of unity that was not even a protest. As was true during the Vietnam War-inspired demonstrations of the 1960’s and early 1970’s, the white men in power, especially those who occupy the White House, have turned to spectator sports, especially professional and college football, to try to deflect racial injustice and the coronavirus carnage in America. President Trump, despite the obvious health risks involved, has led the charge to fill football stadiums to capacity with fans he believes are inclined to support his absurd positions that: (1) there is no racism or racial injustice in this country; and (2) the coronavirus pandemic has been well-managed and is under control. Developmental Immaturity and Coronavirus Risk-Taking While many high-profile athletes in major professional and college sports are at odds with President Trump and his supporters over racial injustice, they have much more in common with him when the concerns involve marginalizing the deadly risks posed by the coronavirus. Much of the time that convergence of views is filtered through a shared lens of developmental immaturity. The President and many older adolescents and young adults display personality deficits, including poor impulse control, narcissism, and compromised judgment. In President Trump’s case these developmental deficits were fused into his persona as a young man. Since then, through a process of cognitive dissonance, these deficiencies—as showcased in the first presidential debate—have become increasingly resistant to change, negating rational attempts at persuasion by a succession of more mature political minds close to him. Most people’s brains and personalities are not fully developed until the mid- or late twenties. Their cognitive and related developmental deficits as adolescents and even as young adults change through normal maturation. Studies have confirmed what we know from experience that typically males express the negative behavioral excesses of this developmental immaturity more recklessly than females. Especially if they are serious athletes, boys and increasingly many girls now develop a mentality early on in which risk-taking is encouraged and expected, which is often facilitated within the cocoon of loyalty and secrecy provided for teammates within locker room-like environments. A similarly skewed mentality is often found in boarding schools, fraternities, gangs, and police departments. Unfortunately, developmental immaturity can greatly intensify such reckless predispositions. Professional and college team sports—and by assimilation the rest of American society—have been harmed by the destructive impacts of developmental immaturity and this locker room-like mentality. These sports not only reflect what has been occurring elsewhere in society, but because of their immense popularity greatly inflate the resulting social damage. This has been especially evident in recent years because the current President, throughout his tenure, has encouraged many of these reckless behaviors, especially those related to the abuse and exploitation of women, and more recently the coronavirus pandemic. The hallmarks of this recklessness are narcissism and lack of judgment in contempt of both morality and factual evidence. Powerful men of privilege have been manipulating the resulting chaos and harm in order to benefit themselves. What President Trump, his followers, and too many young adults—predominantly males—have in common is a reflexive distain for the so-called establishment, an inflated sense of entitlement, and the lack of knowledge, inclination, and responsibility to separate reality from fakery. This does not reflect a lack of formal education per se, which can be overrated and misused, but rather immaturity, ignorance, and an inability to think critically. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater has become such a national preoccupation that QAnon and other similarly unhinged conspiracy mongers are now mingling with the American mainstream. Like the coronavirus, delusional ideas fester in high risk areas unconstrained by knowledge or morality. Coronavirus Risk-Taking at Colleges with Big Time Football Programs So far most American spectator sports, despite various missteps, have managed the coronavirus much better than the federal government and high-risk states with derelict governors. This has been a very low threshold for these sports to meet, however, given that when it comes to killing their citizens due to coronavirus negligence, few national governments can compete with the United States. Despite this carnage, the President, his supporters, and too many individuals and entities associated with American team sports continue to behave in ways that promote and encourage unnecessary coronavirus risk-taking. This recklessness has been particularly true on college campuses with big time football programs where developmental immaturity can run rampant. Already there have been virus outbreaks that have led to the quarantining of tens of thousands of students and indefinite closures of campuses nationwide. This type of coronavirus risk-taking has percolated throughout the spectator sports world where too many athletes and other individuals associated with these sports enterprises have acted cavalierly. They believe, with some justification, that these new health risks may not be that much worse than the pre-existing health risks for athletes generally, especially in contact sports like football and hockey where serious physical and mental impairments are common. What they fail to account for in the impulsive rush to satisfy their athletic needs is that these risks are additive, and quite possibly geometric if the treatment for injuries increases their possible exposure to the virus. In addition, when athletes become infected with Covid 19, they place many more people than themselves in danger. The fact that most well-compensated athletes tend to be under 30 and male makes many of them susceptible to youthful indiscretions, which brain science describes broadly as developmental immaturity. This immaturity is particularly acute for college athletes who typically are in their late teens and early twenties. Furthermore, athletes on big time college football teams also are subject to risky behaviors promoted in locker room environments and seemingly justified by the lure of fame and future professional contracts. There already have been a parade of coronavirus outbreaks, including where elite college athletes and other students have been on campuses together. Most of the attention in college sports centers on the five major football conferences that control the NCAA. Two of those conferences, the Big Ten and the Pac-12—a majority of whose teams reside in states where governors have instituted relatively strict public health measures to control the spread of the coronavirus—postponed their football seasons indefinitely. The other three conferences—the ACC, the SEC, and the Big 12—a majority of whose teams resided in states where their governors had lifted most of the coronavirus public health mandates—decided to go forward almost immediately, but without universally agreed upon health protocols in place to protect their athletes, or other people who come in contact with them. Each of these three conferences and many of the individual football programs have been implementing their own testing and quarantine policies without meaningful input from the NCAA. This is similar to the lack of federal controls and guidance for states and localities under the Trump administration. Thus, the coronavirus wars are being fought in much of college football with no central command structure, resulting in ad hoc initiatives influenced more by money and politics than good science and medicine Making matters worse, the President continued to urge the two super conferences that had postponed or canceled their seasons to resume football operations, regardless of the health dangers in individual localities. He has ignored the fact that the number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. have been rising again as public health experts predicted. The President, as he famously told Bob Woodward on tape, has been aware of the extreme health dangers that the coronavirus poses since at least early February. President Trump tweeted a couple of weeks ago that he had spoken with the Commissioner of the Big Ten Conference about “immediately starting up Big Ten football.” Around the same time the Washington Post reported that Trump’s campaign had tried to incite fans by accusing the “Radical Left [of] trying to CANCEL college football.” Thus, it was no surprise that the President tried to take credit when the Big Ten backed down and decided to implement an abbreviated season beginning in late October. Trump took credit again during the first presidential debate. Conference officials said that presidential politics and money had nothing to with the decision to resume playing football games. They asserted that circumstances had changed, which made playing football safer. Even though the Big Ten’s revised football season is likely to coincide with a new wave of coronavirus cases, officials claimed conditions had improved because of a newfound ability of member schools to conduct rapid testing. Under the conference’s revised health protocols, beginning at the end of September all football players, coaches, and other related football personnel are supposed to be tested daily. This is creating an odious double standard, however, because other students, including athletes in non-football sports, either will not be allowed on these campuses or, if they are, will be tested far less frequently. Unfortunately, rapid testing in the U.S. is no panacea. The current reliability of these tests in terms of producing false negatives—those in which the test indicates the subjects do not have the virus but they actually do—is extremely worrisome. Moreover, even if the tests being used prove to be more reliable than they seem to be now many other factors can pollute the samples being tested, including faulty collection protocols on campus, financial pressures on labs to produce quick results, and overworked lab technicians. Fast does not necessarily mean better or safer. In addition, while it is true the more tests that are conducted, the more mistakes can be corrected, there will be a lag period when football players and other personnel who are carriers of Covid 19 are mixing with the rest of their teams before they can be identified as a threat. At many of these football schools regular students have been banished from campus because of serious outbreaks when they returned. Several of the worst outbreaks have been tied to their football teams. Although the optics have been terrible already, the resulting carnage could be much worse. One football player has died of Covid-related symptom. That he was African-American and overweight, which a large percentage of linemen tend to be, heightened his risk. Furthermore, numerous college football programs, including powerhouses like Clemson, Alabama, and Notre Dame, have had dangerous outbreaks associated with their football teams. Many more would not be a surprise, especially as we move into the fall when the number of coronavirus cases nationwide are expected to increase—and perhaps skyrocket. In the NFL, where rapid testing is more uniform, the Tennessee Titans just had a serious outbreak requiring them to postpone their next game for at least a couple of days. What Commissioner Goodell said about the NFL applies even more to college football: outbreaks are “not unexpected.” The Big Ten’s rapid testing plan—which the Pac 12 will now adopt, despite deciding not to play any football games this season—is better than relying on the testing chaos that characterizes the other three super conferences: the ACC, SEC, and Big 12. Better in this context, though, is a relative concept. Barry Svrluga of The Washington Post has pointed out that rapid testing “could work,” but whether it “should” happen or “will work” is quite another thing. Clearly even this ambitious plan is not prioritizing safety above all else. As numerous journalists have obsserved, including Svrluga and John Feinstein of the Post and Kurt Streeter and Alan Binder of the New York Times, the Big Ten and Pac 12 are prioritizing what they view as the financial stability of their athletic programs. In the Big Ten alone football television contracts were being counted on to produce about $500 million annually and these conferences hope to recoup a substantial portion of those revenues by going forward with their football seasons. The public health implications of this desperate grab for the television money, both practically and symbolically, make a mockery of academic and other educational values. The New York Times Editorial Board denounced the pressure that the President and too many of these major universities are applying on state governments to play these college football games. This leisure diversion “is not essential” by any means. The consequences of playing football may be deadly to many players, coaches, and staff who contract the virus— as well as all the families, students, teachers, and other people they come in contact with. Even assuming a vast majority of these patients survive, many will be exposed to “the potential lingering effect [on their] … heart and brain well after symptoms have abated.” Making matters worse, there is no way to guarantee that the testing of these college-aged athletes will be carried out properly. At a number of these football schools, they still are “testing only players who exhibit symptoms.” Comprehensive and successful testing requires the full cooperation of those being tested. For many of these college-aged athletes that will be difficult to accomplish. Developmental immaturity will work to inflate the dangers that the virus poses. This phenomenon has been displayed on campuses across the country where too many students would rather party than be safe. Already more than 130,000 college students have tested positive and a significant percentage of those cases can be linked to college football programs. President Trump and his Republican supporters have been prominent cheerleaders for coronavirus recklessness, desperately thinking—as they have when they stoke racial fears and sabotage democratic institutions—that it may help them politically at a time when they seem to be facing a substantial election defeat. Now the President, his wife, and members of his staff have contracted Covid 19. |