The Miseducation of the Sports Fan

Pat Forde wrote a great column on ESPN.com today highlighting the recent controversy of Micheal Phelps being caught smoking weed. My beef isn't with what Forde wrote. In fact I tend to agree with most of what he said in the article. I have observed him pulling very few punches on a diverse group of public figures. Especially the ones we as a sports public have grown accustomed to chastising.

We've seen the likes of Chris Webber get in trouble for having "roaches" in his car. We've seen Damon Stoudimire beat the rap on some of his "brushes" with drugs. As a matter of fact we've all read at least one article that talked about the sub culture of drugs in professional sports. As I hinted earlier, my quarrel isn't with sports the columnist. We all somewhat had our "beliefs" validated when Nat Newton was convicted for selling Marijuana.

My ire is strictly reserved for people who read the columns. Yes you (us) the sports fan. The comment sections on the various websites confirms the intense drug culture that exist among John Q sports fan. Some of these people have a thimble's worth of intelligence. Sorry to be so condescending but its the truth. These are the same people who can defend some of the worst behavior of their favorite athletes but expect the guillotine for others they don't like or can't "relate" to.

These same guys that went out of their way to call columnists stupid are the same ones who agrees with them when other superstar athletes have similar transgressions. Don't believe me? Here's exhibit A. Mark Chmura gets accused of raping his 17 year old babysitter. We were all shocked considering Mark's "good guy" persona.

Now exhibit B, Rueben Patterson was a different story. He had quite the rap sheet before his "dilemma". Rueben was once known as the self proclaimed "Kobe stopper". Apparently he never could stop Kobe or his affinity for committing crimes. Patterson's crimes against society were no doubt damaging to his public persona but his rape case was against a 24 year old woman and not a 17 year old girl.

Should our perceptions of someone influence the facts of a criminal case or their right to reenter society once their legal matter is over? (If you like this you'll love my upcoming article on Mike Vick) Of course not but in some respects it does. I guess Andre Agassi's 90's commercial was prophetic, Image is everything.

Of course Chmura beat the rap but were we that outraged? Sure he wasn't a "big star" but he was a big enough star for us to be consistent with our "anger" toward out of control criminal athletes.

When Patterson apologized for his behavior, I'm willing to bet that John Q sports fan was very unforgiving. In fact when we read the sports columns and the comment sections it was most likely filled with pompous, self righteous blabber further berating Patterson for his behavior. Rightfully so in the case of Patterson but most sports fans wholeheartedly concurred with the negative sentiment of the article and took Patterson's apology with a grain of salt.

Did we feel the same way about Chmura? This guy showed the kind of contrition that rivaled any scene from a Hollywood A lister. Did we forgive him? You bet we did. That's even after he admitted to inapporiately fondling the young lady. Hand that man a belated Oscar. The same tears shown by Kobe still didn't win him any fans for admitting adultery instead of rape. Even after he was acquitted most people in visiting arenas still "offered their support" for the woman simply known as the accuser.

There are certain public figure bad boys that we've forgiven. Charles Barkley comes to mind.(The spitting incident) John Daly, Brett Myers, Marvin Harrison, Ray Lewis, Josh Hamilton and Rick Ankiel all were welcomed back with open arms. Some had tougher roads than others. Kobe eventually regained his endorsements but he never has quite gotten the love from the sports world.

So the moral of this article is to show the hypocrisy of public opinion. WE reserve our outrage for those who either we "identify" with or those we believe genuinely are "victims". This bias is very complex but simple when one gets a birds eye view of the sub culture of the "water cooler" talk that exist in 21st century America.

Apparently most sports fans and Madison Ave are going to "forgive" Mike Phelps yet again. (Did we remember the underage DUI from 2004?) I'm not mad at Phelps but it seems mighty "strange" that Pac-Man Jones' biggest detractors didn't want to hear about him being a young kid with sudden fame and fortune. Sure some national columnist are consistent but us sports fans are in another zip code as usual.

Charles Barkley told us the truth in 1993 about who our real role models should be. Why didn't we listen then and why don't we listen now?