Anger management

Baffled by public reaction to shameful incidents in sports

Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor touches on a Hot Button issue each Monday on CNNSI.com. give us yours.

The two most embarrassed men in sports these days are Dan Issel and George O'Leary, and perhaps that's as it should be. The two coaches shamed themselves with the kind of misdeeds that raise serious questions about their character, about their fitness to be leaders. But our reaction to the incidents raises a question or two about us, as well. The thing about public humiliation is that it's the public who decides what is humiliating, and sometimes our decisions are baffling.

Issel, the Denver Nuggets' coach, was suspended for four games without pay after shouting an ethnic insult at a Hispanic fan. He later apologized in a press conference, his voice quivering, his eyes tearing. A few days later, Steve Francis of the Houston Rockets was charged with driving while intoxicated, which, if true, is an example of poor judgment far more dangerous than Issel's. Yet Issel's offense was national news while Francis' was met with a collective yawn.

O'Leary resigned last week from his new post as Notre Dame's football coach when it was discovered that he'd embellished the athletic and academic accomplishments on his resume, and his transgression was the subject of hours of talk radio discussion and fodder for columnists across the country. At about the same time, ex-Dallas Cowboys offensive lineman Nate Newton was arrested for the second time in less than six weeks, allegedly for possessing a load of marijuana that was almost as heavy as, well, Nate Newton, and the news was greeted with a public chuckle. O'Leary and Newton. Two acts of dishonesty. One treated as a scandal, the other treated as a joke.

It's not that Issel and O'Leary deserve better treatment. They don't. It's not that Francis and Newton should be flogged in the town square. They're just examples of the kind of behavior we see all too often from sports figures. The point is that usually our outrage over an offense is based not on the act itself, but on the rarity of it. We see DWIs and pot busts in the world of sports far more often than we see fudged resumes or ethnically insensitive remarks, so Issel and O'Leary grab our attention. If we really stopped to examine the nature of the offenses, people like Francis and Newton would have their names in the hall of shame right next to them. But maybe that's the good news for miscreants like Issel and O'Leary.

Sports fans see scandalous behavior on almost a daily basis. It makes us increasingly hard to offend, and even when we are, our outrage has a short shelf life. There was a time when a gun charge or a domestic abuse incident, for example, would stain a sports figure's image for life. Now those offenses only seem to be remembered until someone else commits a new one. Marv Albert and Jason Kidd and Michael Irvin and Bobby Cox bounce back from scandals in record time. It might seem as if we're more tolerant, but really we're just desensitized. In a world of Condit and Clinton, a world in which only a few months after the Sept. 11 tragedies we're listening to Osama bin Laden jokes on late-night TV, it's hard to maintain a healthy sense of anger at anyone or anything.

That's why O'Leary and Issel don't have to fear that they'll be remembered only for the events of the last several days. They will get their chance to live down the embarrassment, not so much because the public decided to forgive them, but because their offenses will melt into the pile with all the others until they're indistinguishable. That's the way scandal works these days. We don't know who to be mad at or how long to stay mad at them, so humiliation only lasts until someone else makes the next headline.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.

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