You, uh...wanna buy a shirt?
I love sports. And judging by the fact that about half of my total page views on this website are for posts dedicated to sports...you love sports, too.
Sports are great, aren't they? In a world of "reality TV" they provide an avenue for truly intriguing, real content.
As great as sports can be, though, I'm afraid we are living in a world that has far too often let the proper priority of sports get out of control.
Nothing goes so far as to prove this point like yet another huge scandal involving sports figures. Hmm. Who could I be talking about here?
The news broke yesterday morning that Ohio State University football coach Urban Meyer allegedly knew about the abusive habits of one of his assistant coaches. Not only did Meyer know about the abuse, he harbored the abuser for almost a decade at two different top-tier university football programs.
If you haven't read up on this story yet, I would encourage you to do so. The more I see about it, the more disgusted I get.
As much as I would love to just harangue on Meyer for the next several paragraphs, I'm going to fight the temptation to do that as much as I can.
To an extent.
I can make jokes, but we have to be clear about this. A woman had to suffer through abuse for the better part of six years while her only real support was the wife of the coach who refused to do the right thing. I have my own speculations on how genuine Mrs. Meyer's support was, but that's nothing more than speculation and is entirely unfounded.
This woman went to the police, but she was called off by powerful people close to Meyer and both Florida and Ohio State football. The police departments in Florida and in Ohio seem to have edited documents after the fact to make their complicit nature in this scandal seem better. The legal system covered for this man by sealing their divorce records without her knowledge.
Thankfully Ms. Smith is safe now. But it shouldn't have taken several years for her to be safe. Not when her husband came home drunk and abused her while she was several weeks pregnant. Allegedly.
When Treon Harris was accused of sexual assault at Florida in 2014 and was back on the field a few weeks later, that was a gross miscarriage of justice.
When Chris Rainey threatened to murder his girlfriend in a text message in 2009, while she was with police, he got a four-game suspension from Meyer. Just long enough that he'd be back by the Georgia game.
When Jameis Winston...well...which incident do you want to look at here?
Though not quite the same, and in fact actually much worse, the Penn State scandal from a few years back is the perfect spotlight to shine on our society's terrible track record of understanding the tertiary nature of sports.
When will we stop treating sports like they are the untouchable pillar of society? Better yet, when will we stop treating sports figures like they have carte blanche to be terrible people?
It's not that Meyer heard about allegations of domestic violence. Hearing allegations doesn't make you a bad person. What makes Meyer's alleged violations so foul is that he heard these allegations and failed to act.
The moment you learn about allegations like this, the proper course of action is to call the police and let them investigate. That's it.
You don't meddle, you don't question, you don't interrogate. You report and that's it.
You know...these guys don't look too busy. You could probably give them something to do. (Photo by Matthias Kinsella on Unsplash
Frankly, that's the easiest thing in the world for someone in a position of power. You can reasonably pass the responsibility on to the proper authorities. For people like Division I football coaches who are already carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders, right or wrong, being given the mandate to pass off a little responsibility is a blessing, is it not?
But most of these coaches don't do that. They don't handle this situation the right way the first time, and that's when compounded lies over time end up costing them.
I know he was an old man, but the Penn State child molestation scandal literally killed Joe Paterno. The added stress of his decades of negligent malfeasance coming to light was too much for his withered heart to handle.
If Meyer had just come clean or reported this young man back in 2009 when the first allegations came up, he wouldn't be on paid administrative leave right now while the University figures out if they can fire him without losing any money. What makes things worse is that Meyer has a wall of five core beliefs that he preaches to all of his players. Chief among them is respect for women.
No, Meyer wasn't the one abusing Ms. Smith, but by sitting idly by and letting these abuses continue for as long as he did, Meyer has seemingly showed an immense disrespect for a woman who was awfully close to him and his wife.
So why did Meyer let this assistant coach slide by? Why did Paterno cover for Jerry Sandusky? Why do we let sports figures go?
Because sports mean too much.
Please hear what I'm saying. I'm not saying that sports are just too important to interrupt. I'm saying that we've let sports get too important. There's just too much money and there's just too many livelihoods on the line.
They may be called the Buckeye State, but make no mistake. The chief cash crop in Columbus, Ohio is football turf.
Sports figures have made the TV companies a ton of money, they've made the schools a bunch of money, they've made their communities a little richer.
Since we've let sports get so important to everyone involved, it makes sense why police departments will look the other way, doesn't it? It makes sense why university presidents are fine to let these indiscretions go unpunished for as long as they can stay under wraps.
Especially with these name-brand teams like Ohio State and Penn State that are in many ways the face of college football, we just don't want to see the brand sullied. Ohio State has been in the playoff conversation every year since the new format started in 2014. Shoot, they won the darn thing that first year out of the gate.
With Penn State, all you'd ever heard of Paterno was that he was this great guy. He looked like your grandfather and kind've acted like him, too. I've heard from former players that, up until the day he died, they could call Paterno and he would have sage advice for them and that he cared about their lives.
The narrative has always been that football, especially, is this blue-blooded, all-American pastime that defines our nation. Just a couple weeks ago the head coach at UNC, Larry Fedora, went so far as to say that football was the only thing keeping American men tough.
But if football players and coaches are out there abusing women and children, doesn't that mean that the sport is tainted?
If people would stop hiding these abusers, no. The sport wouldn't be tainted. After all, you can find abusers in every sector of the population. What shouldn't be happening is that we let these abusers go unchecked for several years because they or someone they work for yields enormous power and commands a lot of dollars.
I can throw out several more names if you really want me to of people who have been connected to abuse or sexual misconduct in football: Ray Rice, Hugh Freeze, Bobby Petrino, and the list goes on.
But I could also find several names of school teachers, religious officials, and all-around "good folk" who were also tied into abuse.
I don't know if I can sign off on the idea that there is a toxic culture of abuse in football and sports. I really don't. When you look around, you can see that there are abusers and philanderers hiding everywhere.
What I can sign off on, though, is that we have grown far too comfortable with hiding these abusers in the name of "protecting the game." That is what has to change. Nobody on this planet is above reproach when it comes to sexual assault, child molestation, or any other type of sexual violence or misconduct.
I have twice in my life been close to someone who was eventually convicted of child molestation, and I wish every day that I had known what was going on. I wish I would have known so that I could have done the right thing and called the police and put an end to it.
I wish I could have acted so that no more children would have been hurt.
What I can't imagine is anyone being in a position to act and then not doing it. I can't imagine hearing someone close to you say that they are being abused and then doing nothing.
I don't want to hear the arguments that say, "What if she was lying? What if she'd blown it out of proportion?" Sure, that's possible, but that's what police investigations are for. If you have any inclination that something like this is going on, just act.
And if the police don't do their job, that's on them. I know that there have been several police departments who have dropped the ball on these cases, or in some instances have been obstructive, but that's on them. At the very least, you have to do your part to report abuse.
If you don't, it will catch up to you one day. You can count on that.
Even worse, the fact that you did nothing will haunt you because you can never go back and make it right.