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The martial artistes
Posted: Wednesday May 31, 2000 01:07 PM
It would probably surprise you to learn that one of the major issues in domestic English politics concerns the continued allowance of fox hunting. It is a volatile subject, debated regularly in Parliament. Fox hunting? But then, generally speaking, more attention is everywhere paid to the plight of animals in sport than it is to people. Enlightened as we may have grown, we still attach pretty much a laissez faire attitude to the well-being of athletes. Hey, nobody's making them play. So if Eric Lindros (in hockey) or Steve Young (in football) want to put their helmets back on and venture forth again into battle after enduring yet another concussion, we allow them their wishes. After all, we early on attach the greatest honor to the athlete who plays hurt. Sport, of course, evolved from warfare, and in many games, the athlete is still presumed to be a surrogate warrior. We in the grandstands, are, of course, unindicted conspirators, and our appreciation of violence -- what we carefully, euphemistically refer to as "a good hit" -- is different only in degree from what you see the barbarous Roman populi cheering for in the current Gladiator movie. In sports like boxing, we even cleanse our souls by arguing that it's O.K. for pugilists to pound each other's brains for our amusement because these poor boys are, after all, being given a chance to escape poverty through the offices of legal battery. Only recently, of course, we have found that the behavior we have encouraged for our amusement upon the fields of play cannot be so easily contained there. One figure provided by the National Coalition Against Violent Athletes suffices: college and professional athletes are four times as likely to be charged with assault as are members of the general population. The violence against women by athletes -- especially team-sport athletes -- seems almost endemic. There is a regular drumroll of cases involving National Football League stalwarts accused of beating or raping their lady friends, and one NFL player, Rae Carruth, now awaits trial for orchestrating the very murder of his pregnant girlfriend. Ray Lewis, another NFL stalwart, is currently on trial, charged in the death of two men in a street fight. These two capital cases are, of course, so rare. But given the amount of casual brutality that seems to pervade the social lives of many American athletes, perhaps we should not be surprised that, eventually, one or two would result in the ultimate act of violence. It should also not surprise us to learn that this vicious behavior may be turning fans away from an interest in games. Certainly, it is obvious that the various leagues are very concerned about this affect on their business. It is more difficult, of course, for leagues to punish players for transgressions away from the field. But then, society has been just as lax in calling its heroes to account. Historically, just as athletes are four times as likely to commit an assault, they are only half as likely to be convicted. But one has the sense now that a great many Americans -- yes, even fan-Americans -- are fed up with the vicious behavior that athletes carry off with them from the arena. In a way, we are the foxes being hunted down by these ferocious fellows, and we in America are growing weary of such hounds on the loose. These commentaries, which appear each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition, are posted weekly by CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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