Rutgers, Duke incidents reveal athletes' dual roles

	Underlying the controversial condemnation of the Rutgers women's basketball team was their status as athletes as much as women. Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

One of the greater ironies of sport is the absolutely contradictory manner in which we look at athletes. On one hand, we hold these young stars up as our idols, All-Americans, heroes, or that cold, clinical modern term substituted for hero: role model. Athletes are role models.

Yet at the same time, we often also think of athletes as tramps. We think they're ugly, violent, spoiled ruffians who feel entitled and take advantage. These ambivalent feelings probably exist everywhere, but they're heightened in the United States because only here, in most sports, does someone who is an athlete have to go to college to be able to advance his athletic craft. When we aren't cheering them on, we think these must be make-believe students who are undeserving of getting enrolled in college -- all the moreso nowadays that college is so competitive. Yeah, these blockheads are getting affirmative action. Athletes are, in that most common old phrase: dumb jocks.

We go back and forth: role models ... dumb jocks.

I've been mulling this over for some time now because of the recent events, which saw those views criss-cross: the vile abuse given the Rutgers women's basketball team at the same time there was a resolution of the shameful Duke men's lacrosse case. In both instances, much was involved beyond sport -- most prominently, of course: sex, race and class. But still, I don't think either would have blown up were it not for the conflicting way so many of us think about our athletes.

Would Don Imus have been so quick to denigrate an African-American women's dance troupe, say, or a singing group?

I don't think so.

Would the public have been so quick to condemn the Duke students and the disgraceful prosecutor so determined to convict them if it had only been a fraternity party, not a team party?

I don't think so.

No, in both cases, it was the athletic connection which triggered the sad business. It is revealing, too, that the two sports involved come from opposite ends of the athletic social spectrum. Basketball -- never mind the gender -- is viewed as the city game, the black game, even, if you will, the ghetto game. Sure, Imus was insulting women, but make no mistake: the subtext of his ridicule was about basketball.

Ah, and as physically demanding a game as lacrosse is, it is viewed as elite, preppy calisthenics. Sure, the players were largely white Yankees come down to take a privileged place in Dixie, but that they were white upper-class lacrosse Yankees made them more vulnerable. Would the Duke president have cancelled the season and forced out the coach if it had been the football team incriminated?

And then, when both the three accused Duke players and the Rutgers team spoke so passionately and eloquently, we were all relieved. We had our heroes back.

At the end of the day the Duke and Rutgers disturbances illustrate that ambivalence we feel toward athletes -- especially college athletes. We can make them into admired stars in the firmament, but we also are suspicious of them and envious of what they've been given.

It is always thus: role models or dumb jocks ... only depending on the moment.