Sports pages or police blotters?
Mark Twain once suggested that “there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.” Were he alive today, he just might have mentioned professional athletes. Hardly a day seems to pass without some news report detailing the involvement of a jock in a drug bust, gun-related incident, sexual crime or some other felony.
Just this past week the National Basketball Association scored a three-pointer on the police blotter. Portland Trailblazers guard Damon Stoudamire was arrested on drug charges after passing through an airport metal detector with 40 grams of marijuana wrapped in aluminum foil. That followed a citation for misdemeanor marijuana possession back in November and a felony charge earlier last year after police found a large bag of “the chronic” at his crib while responding to a burglar alarm.
Then Orlando Magic guard Darrell Armstrong was arrested outside of a club and charged with felony battery on a law enforcement officer — who happened to be female — as well as resisting arrest.
Finally, there was the arrest of Laker superstar Kobe Bryant, who long has been held out as a model athlete and solid citizen. He stands accused of sexual assault on a 19-year-old Colorado woman who is not his beloved wife.
Of course, Stoudamire and Armstrong and Bryant are innocent until proven guilty. And it is quite possible, if not probable, that those NBA jocks will beat the rap.
After all, Baltimore Raven linebacker Ray Lewis was charged with murder in the stabbing deaths of two men and got off by pleading guilty to mere obstruction of justice.
And O.J. Simpson, the National Football League Hall of Fame running back, was charged with killing his ex-wife and a waiter acquaintance, but got himself acquitted of double murder. However, just because a jock avoids prison time doesn’t mean that he is innocent of the crimes he was charged with. It probably means he used some of his multimillions to hire the best defense lawyer money can buy. And he received the benefit of the more-than-reasonable doubt from a star-struck judge or jury.
Of course, there are some sports authorities who maintain that the incidence of lawlessness among professional athletes is no greater than that of the public.
In their 1998 book “Pros and Cons: The Criminals Who Play in the NFL,” (Warner) authors Jeff Benedict and Don Yaeger revealed that more than 20 percent of NFL players had been arrested and charged with serious crimes.
Those charges included murder, rape, kidnapping, assault and battery, weapons possession, drug dealing, driving while intoxicated and domestic violence.
The NBA is hardly better. A couple years back, APBnews.com surveyed the rap sheets of the professional roundballers competing in the playoffs.
Nearly 20 percent had been “charged, booked or arrested in connection with … incidents more serious than traffic tickets over the course of their lifetimes,” such as felony drug possession and felony assault on a police officer and sexual assault.
Apologists for the professional sports leagues say that it is unfair to expect NBA and NFL athletes to be any more law abiding than the lumpenproletariat.
“Can we separate ourselves from society?” asked NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, a few years back. “Of course not. We can’t predict what NFL players will do any more than we can predict students shooting other students or workers shooting fellow workers.”
But it is absurd to compare an NFL or NBA jock to the average student or to the average worker. Pro athletes are public figures. They are multimillionaires. Public figures don’t often get charged in connection with murder. Multimillionaires usually aren’t arrested for sexual assault.
NBA Commissioner David Stern actually suggested not so long ago that the public finds lawless athletes appealing. “Let’s face it,” he said. “The bad-boy images sell.”
Well, as long as the commissioners of the NFL and NBA have those kinds of attitudes, as long as the professional sports leagues continue to deal gently with the lawbreakers in their ranks, the nation’s sports pages will continue to resemble police blotters.
(Joseph Perkins is a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and can be reached at [email protected].)