Sunday, June 15, 2014

BOOK 'IM, DANO

                When I joined the staff of The Daily Illini as a University of Illinois freshman in 1955, my first assignment was to the office of the Champaign police magistrate, Virgil Burgess. A police magistrate was a kind of justice of the peace, hearing traffic violations and misdemeanor crimes, and the posting was traditional for a journalistic newbie.
               
               I didn’t get much news from the beat but did get to know Burgess. He was a nice old man (maybe 15 years younger than I am today) who kept a pot of coffee going and liked to talk. Sometimes on Mondays he’d entertain me with accounts of humorous police busts of the weekend before, including those of U of I football players involved in bar fights. One player in particular, who’d later attain professional fame, was a frequent delinquent.         
               
           It never occurred to Burgess that I’d write up such matters. It never occurred to me or to the reporters for the town papers to do so. The view then was that boys would be boys and that jocks were especially boyish.  Underage drinking was no college-town sin and as long as no one was maimed the cops cleaned up and sent home the Saturday night brawlers. It was better for all concerned that way, everyone agreed.
               
            I think about that almost every morning when I peruse the sports pages. You can’t pick up the paper these days without reading about an athlete (or two or three) getting into trouble with the law. Assaults (mostly bar fights) are frequent raps, as are mixing booze and driving and (most distressingly) incidents of domestic violence.

 One football player, former New England Patriots’ tight end Aaron Hernandez, is charged with murdering three people. Another, ex-Pro Bowl safety Darren Sharper, stands accused of being a serial rapist. It seems that there’s a crime wave in progress, with many of the perps being guys we cheered when their teams took the field.
            
             I think the question “What’s going on here?” can be answered in part by the little story that began this piece. Time was when a sort of gentlemen’s agreement shielded well-known athletes from public gaze for bloodless improprieties, just as politicians were given a pass for sexual, uh,  peccadillos. The turning point for the latter issue came in 1987, when Sen. Gary Hart, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, was nailed in the press for flaunting his extramarital affair with model Donna Rice. Ten years later Bill Clinton was impeached for doing something John Kennedy reportedly did just about every day during his presidency. So the planet turns.

 Today we live in a tabloid world where every transgression by anyone with the slightest celebrity is broadcast immediately to an eager public. Almost everyone has become a cell-phone-camera paparazzo and few remarks, no matter how off-hand, go unrecorded.  It’s a wonder we have time to process it all.

That said, though, something clearly is up and needs to be accounted for. One piece of the answer that was absent back in the day but present now is steroids, which make the user antsy, irritable and far more likely than otherwise to fly off the handle. Sports organizations would have you believe that their testing programs have tamed the stuff, but don’t buy it. Scientifically speaking the users always are ahead of the testers, and as long as the stakes remain high they’ll continue trying their luck whatever the possible consequences.

Another factor is the air of permissiveness that surrounds good athletes in an increasingly sports-crazy society. Our most-promising young jocks float through childhood on a cloud of “yes,” their talents shielding them from rebuke by parents, teachers or their contemporaries. A pioneer in that regard was Pete Rose, who as a youngster was rewarded with cash from his parents for his diamond feats and given a pass on schoolwork if he performed well afield. Rose was ineligible for sports his senior year in high school because of classroom failings, but that was okay with his folks because he could play on a semi-pro baseball team instead. Little wonder, then, that in later life he felt free to disregard his sport’s bedrock strictures against gambling, or the tax laws.

 Much the same sort of thing surfaced again earlier this year when it was revealed that seven of the 12 players on the basketball team of Curie High School in Chicago played an entire season, through the city-championship game, while academically ineligible. Apparently, teachers and administrators didn’t want to spoil the kids’ fun with unpleasant news.

The most discouraging aspect of the rising criminal-jock tide is the number of collegians involved; few major schools haven’t been affected, most more than once.  And while the increased willingness of the college-town press to report such matters plays a role (things like Jameis Winston’s crab-legs caper would have been buried a decade ago) I think it also stems from the growing gap between real students and so-called student-athletes at schools in the sports business.

Athletes long have enjoyed privileged status on campus, but as athletics budgets have soared, and with them the stakes for winning, colleges are taking greater chances on the kids they recruit while not providing these often-marginal students with the time and help they need to succeed in the classroom. In embracing the one-and-done model in basketball, and countenancing not-much-longer campus tenures for top pro-football prospects, colleges are conceding that they are mere stopping-off places for young men whose goals have nothing to do with academic proficiency. While many of these guys are in college they’re not of college, meaning they may be less than receptive to education’s civilizing influences.

NCAA “reform” is in the air now, but I hold little hope for it. It’ll probably end with the schools tossing a few more dollars the kids’ way. That’ll satisfy most critics but won’t deal with the system’s real problem, which is the sacrifice of the schools’ educational mission on the altar of playing-field revenues. Until that’s addressed we can expect more academic scandals of the sort that’s playing out at the University of North Carolina, and more jocks’ names on police blotters.     



                 
               
               

               

                

Sunday, June 1, 2014

GOOOOOAL!!

                
BY MIKE KLEIN

In assessing the world’s take on the World Cup, the once-every-four-years football* festival that reconvenes June 12 in Brazil, the words of Bill Shankly, a Scotsman and long-passed manager of the Liverpool football club, are apt. “Football isn’t a matter of life and death,” he said. “It’s more important than that.” (*I use the term “football” instead of “soccer” because to do otherwise would mark me as a lightweight in these matters.)

With that, a few observations:

THE #USMNT

As an expat American living on KLM flights between Amsterdam and Copenhangen, nothing would warm my heart more than an unexpected strong World Cup performance by the land of my birth. The reason is simple. During the year, when I am involved in football-related banter, I invariably am mocked for my accent and origin and asked about the prospects of the “San Diego Patriots.”  A good run by the U.S. men’s national team,  better known to its Twitter supporters by the hashtag #USMNT, would alleviate my sense of disconnect and humiliation better than citing my adult-onset British passport as my right of entry into such conversations.

Unfortunately for me and “muh fellow Uhmericans,” legitimacy likely will elude us for another four years. That is because, following its first match against Ghana in the city of Natal, the #USMNT faces post-Natal depression with successive matches against superstar-heavy Portugal and powerhouse Germany while racking up the tournament’s highest number of frequent-flyer miles, making unlikely the prospect of its being one of the two teams that will advance from its group of four. A lack of stardust should breed caution among Yank partisans, with “star striker” (forward) Jozy Altidore having commanded mostly bench time at the club team, England’s lowly Sunderland. Nearly half of the American players ply their trade in the domestic Major League Soccer (MLS). It long has been said that “Brazil is the country of the future…and always will be.” The same can be said for the MLS, and the Yanks appear to be outgunned.

ENGER-LIND

Despite 18 years of abject mediocrity, supporters think England’s questionable, one-goal home victory in then1966 World Cup final should earn the game’s birthplace an automatic berth in each Cup championship match, or at least automatic consideration as a top contender.  But this year’s crew, while coached by the competent Roy Hodgson, lacks spark other than the perennially fearsome Wayne Rooney. Italy and Uruguay will contend with Enger-Lind (as Blighty is called by its throng of lager-fueled enthusiasts) for the two next-round places in Group D. Costa Rica seems the most-likely win for Hodgson’s crew.

A SWARM OF B’s

As I see it, the tournament’s three most interesting teams are Brazil, Belgium and Bosnia.

Brazil always is interesting because it reloads rather than rebuilds, having access to an infinite talent pipeline, and even the mockery that’s likely to fail on the nation for staging the event in mostly half-built stadiums shouldn’t deter enthusiasm once the samba gang takes the pitch. Veteran coach Luiz Felipe Scolari is back on the sidelines, guiding the usual plethora of fast, inventive players. The country’s second team could beat most countries’ varsities.

Belgium is an outside contender, enthusiasm in “de Hart van 
Europa/la Coeur de l’Europe” being tempered by uninspiring results following the brilliant qualifying campaign that earned the Diables Rouges/Rode Duivels their first Cup berth since 2002.  Belgium is long on stars, with defender Vincent Kompany the brightest.

Striker Edin Dzeko, Kompany’s teammate on the club-team Manchester City, the English Premier League champion, anchors Bosnia, the only country making its World Cup debut. While the lineup is think after Dzeko, the team has considerable public sympathy following its recent floods and a war, which while more than 20 years past is still in the front of many minds. I hope Bosnia’s tournament run will create a positive vibe for a misunderstood country that is one of Europe’s most attractive and interesting destinations.

NO TO THE NORDICS

A notable absence from this yrear’s Cup field will be the Nordic countries, fixtures in past events. Thanks to their teams’ failure to qualify talents like Sweden’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Denmark’s Christian Eriksen will be watching on their flat screens, with their horn-helmeted countrymen left to weep in their overpriced Carlsberg beers. Their color will be missed.

ORANJE!

My longtime favorite international team is Holland, mainly because I found the players’ accents spellbinding when I started paying attention to the Cup in the 1980s, well before #USMNT started participating regularly. Expectations of this year’s squad are low, but top-shelf coach Louis van Gaal has a record of wringing the most from his available talent. Oranje’s first test will be a rematch of last year’s Cup-final defeat by Spain. That likely will set Holland’s tone for the rest of its campaign, although its remaining matches against weak Australia and Chile should mean a decent shot at the next round.

 With 32 teams, long travel distances, unpredictable weather and iffy facilities and accommodations, anything can happen.  For me, the two biggest questions are who will lose to Brazil in the final and whether the tournament will pass without major incident.

THE BELMONT (me again)—Don’t get carried away by California Chrome’s bid for the Triple Crown, which is scheduled to conclude Saturday (June 7) with the Belmont Stakes in New York.  Since Affirmed last accomplished the triple in 1978, 12 colts have won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness only to fail in the finale. Besides the race’s length of 1 ½ miles—a distance longer than 99% of American race horses ever run—CC will be facing fresher foes on a track over which he’s never raced. At likely odds around even money he’ll be a tough bet despite his ability.

As far as I’m concerned, the sooner racing dumps the Triple Crown format the better. Horse today are a fragile lot, neither bred nor trained to contest three long, hard races in a five-week period, and even trying them puts an animal’s career in jeopardy. I’ll be happy if CC completes the run unscathed.