If you’re reading this, then you’re a sports fan.
Plain and simple.
We all sit on our couches on Sunday, say our favorite team is awful and then praise them when they score. We like to second guess the coaches and pretend that we are coaches ourselves.
It’s what we do in our type of sports fraternity.
There is, however, a difference between being in love with sports and being obsessed with them. If you love sports, then you watch them daily, enjoy talking about them with friends and fantasized about stepping up to the dish in the bottom of the ninth inning with the game on the line as a kid. This is what I consider a healthy sports fan.
On the other side though, you have obsession. Obsession is where you can’t watch anything except sports, sit in silence if a conversation is going on where sports aren’t involved and you praise the athletes.
I’ve seen that fans often don’t know where to draw the line between being a fan and being obsessed to the point that they place athletes and sports above all else in their life.
This is what has happened in Steubenville, Ohio.
You know the case by now where two football players for the Steubenville Big Red football team are accused of raping a 16-year-old girl from a neighboring town. The girl was unconscious as the guys performed sexual acts on her while taking photographs of the girl that surfaced around the net. In the case, they viewed over 350,000 text messages talking about it.
Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond have to be guilty, right? The police would handle this right away since that’s their job, right?
Wrong.
Football is bigger than the police department, bigger than the school and obviously, it’s bigger than right or wrong in this community. A girl is allegedly raped, but it is swept under the carpet because the football program runs the community.
Guilty or innocent, it’s appalling.
This isn’t the only case of this happening either with athletes. How many times have you seen an athlete receive a DUI, assault and battery or carrying a gun in an airport only to receive a slap on the wrist? Remember the Penn State fiasco and how long that was kept mum because of Joe Paterno and the football program’s power in State College?
Because these men (and women) are gifted athletes, they’re above the law? We want to blame the athletes for thinking they are above the law or untouchable, but the only person to blame is the one looking back at you in the mirror.
We made them the way they are.
With constant idolization, praise and the greater than thou recognition we give, can you really blame them?
Anyone who knows me or reads my columns knows that I’m as big of a sports fan that you’ll find. I enjoy them and they provide an escape for me. I know the line though. I understand it’s just a game and the athletes are just human. The majority of them are actually good guys, but because the bad news sells, that’s what we see more of.
For the next Shaun Rogers that takes a gun into the airport or the next case similar to the Steubenville rape case, I hope justice is served in a timely fashion.
They are, after all, just like you and me.
