Sports scandals are a dime a dozen. But they can generally be put into two categories. First, you have the scandals that are
primarily about the sports world. These
include stories about athletes who take performing enhancing drugs, referees or
judges who take bribes, or sports leagues that cover up the mind-boggling health
problems caused by their product. In
each case, I don’t doubt that there are broader societal tie-ins, but these
problems center around the games themselves and not the society at large.
I don’t wish to poo-poo the importance of those
classic sports scandals. But candidly, I
am even more interested when a scandal appears in the world of sports that focuses
your attention less on the actual competitions than on the outside world. Recently, two such scandals come to mind.
Have you seen the latest edition of Golf
Digest? Here’s the cover: http://www.upi.com/Sports_News/2014/04/04/Paulina-Gretzky-Golf-Digest-defends-making-her-cover-girl/4891396612386/
It kind of leaves an impression, doesn’t it?
The scantily-clad hottie is Paulina Gretzky, the daughter of Wayne
Gretzky, the hockey legend. Paulina is
not an accomplished golfer. In fact, as far as I can tell, that’s not even
a sports bra she’s wearing; it’s just a plain old bra.
When my wife saw the cover, she said “I assume she’s
not a golfer. She’s the prize at the end
of the course.” More precisely, she’s the prize won by
professional golfer Dustin Johnson, who is now Wayne Gretzky’s son-in-law. My wife, a former high school valedictorian
and Harvard Law School graduate, is surely used to living in a society where
men see models as more prize worthy than scholars. But I would have expected that a prominent magazine
like Golf Digest would have ducked that whole brains-versus-beauty debate and
focused instead on athletic prowess.
Couldn’t they have found a really bright or really pretty woman who
actually played on the LPGA tour? Did
they really have to bypass women’s golf entirely and just adorn their latest
issue with an unbridled tribute to T&A?
Apparently so.
I was listening to ESPN yesterday morning when they
were talking about this scandal. Mike
Golic, one of the two men to whom that network entrusts its coveted morning
drive-time slot despite being an admitted steroid abuser, was explaining the
reason for Golf Digest’s decision.
According to Golic, true golf fans will buy the magazine regardless of
who they put on the cover. But if they
show Paulina Gretzsky’s skin and curves, perhaps they will also attract another
element of “reader.” I see the logic in
that position. Then again, I also see
the logic in taking performance-enhancing drugs. Do I see the logic in unabashed sexism? Or, for that matter, racism? I suppose so, as long as there is an election
to be won or a dollar to be made by trading in filth.
Truth be told, Golf Digest is no different than many
other well-established institutions in American life. These institutions focus more on what’s on the
outside of a woman’s head than what’s on the inside. If this magazine had simply applied its attitude
toward women with a bit of subtlety and ambiguity, it would have stayed under
the radar screen, but it just couldn’t help itself. It had to announce itself and its motivations
– greed and disrespect come immediately to mind.
If you want to read about the magazine’s
rationalization for its cover-girl decision, be my guest. I haven’t bothered. I know racism when I see it and I know sexism
when I see it. Golf Digest has just
announced itself as a sexist rag. It’s
really that simple.
Before I change topics, I have a simple message for Mr.
Golic: this is one golf fan who has no intention of reading Golf Digest in the
future. I encourage the rest of you to
follow suit.
At the risk of sounding indifferent to sexism, the
second scandal that I’d like to discuss is even more disturbing to me than the
first. It has also been around a few
weeks longer, and yet for some reason, I never seem to hear about it on TV. Perhaps that’s because the behavior at issue
is so old hat and accepted that it’s no longer scandalous to the society at large. But if that’s not an indictment of our
culture, nothing is.
The story to which I am referring is known as the
University of North Carolina Fake Classes scandal. You can read about it at the following
link: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-27/in-fake-classes-scandal-unc-fails-its-athletes-whistle-blower According to a non-anonymous whistleblower, that
venerable institution has created all sorts of ways in which “scholar-athletes”
can get university credit for doing middle school work, if in fact they choose
to do any work at all. Allegedly, the
problem begins with admitting athletes who have not demonstrated the skills to
handle the academic rigors of college coursework. Then, with the approval of university
administrators, an entire network is created whereby athletes are allowed to
negotiate their way around the curriculum without having to exercise their
minds. Rich or poor, and regardless of
whether they pick up a book or attend a class, they get full rides to attend
the university and keep their scholarships, while sometimes even getting As for
their non-efforts. The “scholars” at
issue must feel like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory. You get to play the game you love, you don’t
have to go to classes, you don’t have to accumulate debt, and you can make all
sorts of business contacts with the university’s well-heeled boosters. What’s more, increasingly you can listen to
talking heads wax eloquent about how you should actually be PAID to play
college sports. Oh, those poor
exploited scholar-athletes.
This story wouldn’t bother me so much if I thought
the problem was confined to the “Tar Heels” of North Carolina. Unfortunately, I fear the nicotine stain
that surrounds that school’s athletic program can be found, to different
degrees, in most universities with big-time athletic departments. The joke that is the modern American student-athlete
will be most blatantly on display this weekend at this year’s Final Four. There, you can see the University of Kentucky
trot out its latest group of freshmen basketball players who entered the
university with the understanding that they will literally be “one and done.” That’s right – no sophomore slump for them. After
their freshman year, they will be off to the NBA, and another group of
scholars/roundball players will take their place on the hardwood and NOT in the
classrooms.
It was the immortal Captain Renault who proclaimed
to be “Shocked, shocked that gambling is going on in here.” Well, I’m no Renault. I wasn’t shocked to read about the University
of North Carolina and its separate track for athletes. But I am dismayed at how little the media
seems to give a damn. Don’t you get
it? Thanks to an articulate, courageous
whistleblower, the voices of truth and justice now have the University of North
Carolina right where they want it. Those voices can make an example of the
university, shut down its football and basketball programs for years, and fire
any venal administrator who can be demonstrably tied to the scandal. And then, when other whistleblowers arise at
other universities, these schools’ athletic programs can be shut down as well
and their deans can be sent packing.
Sounds good, right?
Sounds like utopia to me – which literally means, “no
place.” Here in the USA, college
football and basketball programs are the geese that lay the golden eggs, and I
don’t foresee any developments that will threaten to shut down that egg-laying. The same universities that think nothing of
taking gobs of money from students who already are deeply in debt will continue
to roll out the red carpet for their jocks.
And the media moguls who control the way stories like this one are
covered will continue to look the other way, while at the same time expecting their
underlings to refer to the ballplayers as student-athletes or scholar-athletes. In so many cases, they are neither. They are simply frauds, just like the coaches,
deans, and “sports-journalists” who enable them.
Sorry for the depressing post. But hey, nobody ever promised a rose garden
when it comes to talking about scandals.
In my next post, there will be no scandal-mongering. I promise.
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