Professional Sports: Staying Within the Lines

Lines. Sometimes they are created with chalk and can be wiped away. Sometimes they’re painted on to endure over time.  But just about every professional sports team is made to play within the lines: foul lines, goal lines, end lines, even blue and red lines. All pro athletes are taught to stay within the lines and play the game. Simple. What they do away from the lines should be no matter for anyone  except, as with any other citizen, they commit a crime.

But somewhere along the way those lines were obliterated via media frenzy, sport talk shows, and athletes’ unwitting accrued celebrity status. Reports on the games themselves and the players involved have been reduced to a long thin line on the bottom of my TV screen. Sports reporters have been body snatched, replaced by legal analysts, financial experts, and sport psychologists. We no longer clamor for what a player did inside the lines, but what he or she did outside those lines.

Why are we playing too much attention outside the lines? Well, remember Taylor Hooten? Probably not. But he was the high school baseball player who death was brought up during the 2005 MLB congressional hearings.  Taylor was the victim of performance-enhancing substances, which in part was tied into the substance abuse of Taylor MLB idols. Then Congress got serious, baseball’s governance became pathetic, a zillion-word report was printed, and witch hunts were pursued. Don McLean wrote a song way back about the day the music died. Professional baseball’s demise commenced during those hearings.

What benefit was achieved when MLB went outside the lines? Well, the other day Orioles’ player Chris Davis was suspended 25 games for violating the league’s substance abuse policy. Nine years after the fact, players are still trying to circumvent the rules. The fact that Davis was batting below .200 at the time makes me wonder what was the actual benefit.

Still, we have accomplished the original philanthropic objective, right? Young athletes are no longer pursuing performance-enhancing substances, right? A recently published study indicated that 4% to 12% of U.S. high school boys and 3.3% of high school girls have used anabolic steroids. Another study found that 6.6% of male high school baseball players had tried steroids, with 67% initiating use by 16 years and 40% using multiple cycles. If MLB cannot curtail Chris Davis and the others that will surely follow, how will they intervene for the good health of the next Tyler Wooten?

And while MLB died the day Bud Selig and colleagues led us astray outside the lines, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is working diligently to destroy professional football, since it is heading way beyond the goal lines. Goodell is attempting to corral domestic violence. I know sports fans thrive on statistics, so here are a few to digest. According to the National Coalition against Domestic Violence, an estimated 1.3 million women are victims of domestic violence. Every nine seconds in the U.S. a woman is assaulted. But of course, domestic violence is a new phenomenon facing the NFL. Well, back in 1997 an independent study analyzed 264 criminal complaints against NFL players, It was found that 47 of those complaints involved domestic violence. In fact, over the subsequent years, NFL players have been charged with domestic violence more than any other criminal complaint. But as NFL spokesman Greg Aiello noted back then: We’re not in the criminal justice system. We can’t cure every ill in society. You know, we’re putting on football games.” Obviously, the powers to be back then were trying to keep their sport between the lines.

But we have strayed beyond the lines, and there needs to be action taken, and taken immediately. MLB and the NFL need to separate themselves from the criminal justice system. There are poorly equipped to continue to do so. They need to stay out of the way of the Adrian Petersons and Ray Rices and do no further harm. Enlightenment for both MLB and the NFL should come from corporate America, Suspensions only reluctantly occur after exhaustive inquiries that lead to appropriate judicial conclusions. MLB and the NFL should stand aside and allow the judicial process to conclude in the appropriate way. Don’t let Congress or and public opinion run your business.

And, by the way, famous people such as politicians, world leaders, actors, entertainers, and yes, professional athletes are not made to be role models. They are celebrities because we make them so. They are good at what they do, but that doesn’t make them any better than you and I in choosing to do the right thing, whatever that is.

What it comes down to is we are a country that is going to continue to be plagued with substance abuse, domestic violence, and other unwarranted social behavior. It is in our DNA as a society. No one has yet come up with a way to totally eradicate criminality. In my unprofessional opinion, I don’t ever see MLB or the NFL accomplishing