HUMOR COLUMN

Days Of Character And Honor Are Gone

By MICK ELLIOTT

Published: Jul 29, 2007

How was your week?

Anything short of sitting on your pet porcupine would suggest that it was much better than sports' last seven days.

Cheaters, liars and thugs. And we haven't even gotten to Michael Vick.

Just when you were starting to think the world of sports could not get any darker, in part because Barry Bonds' steroid-enlarged head blocks out the sun, the week went pitch black.

Never has sports seen a more soiled string of days. Between the NBA's referee betting scandal, the NFL dog days of Vick, the stench of Bonds' assault on baseball's career home run record and a drugged-out Tour de France, you can't tell the repugnance without a scorecard.

Are you like 99.9 percent of sports fans - peeved, frosted, disillusioned and soooo over it?

Not since the Christians' long losing streak to the lions has there been a worse time to be an athlete.

Where once there were idols and honor, now there are criminals and disgrace. "Just win baby" replaced "it's how you play the game," and this is the future: Sports is a Hoover vac running on high.

Now there may be no turning back. Like water rushing over a stone, integrity that once was sports' most defining boundary has been worn away, one small bit at a time until finally there is almost no line left to cross.

Remember when it would be a good thing for teams to boast a "Murderers Row?" These days they could be talking about lining up for calisthenics.

Whooo-eee! Sport sure is building character.

"The Terminator is the governor of California; the [former] president received oral sex in the White House; our heroes are 21-year-old actresses who drive drunk," said Ronn Torossian, CEO of 5W Public Relations in New York. "The Joe DiMaggio era of sports is over. Sports has become pop culture."

We Let It Get Away

The result apparently is an epidemic of dumbness that is rushing through the games we hold in such high esteem. Entitlement trumps respect that once was automatically returned to others. The bar has been lowered so much that sports' daily police docket of DUIs, strip-club altercations, strings of children out of wedlock, parking-lot gun play and drug use hardly raises a blip on fans' morality radar.

On our watch Jesse Owens has been replaced by Marion Jones. The United States' 1980 Miracle on Ice Olympic hockey team has been upstaged by the Cincinnati Bengals. Hank Aaron soon will be bumped aside by Bonds.

Here is a fact of this era: If Jeffrey Dahmer had good hands, could run 40 yards in 4.2 seconds and somehow could sign, he'd be catching passes in a stadium near you. Pacman would take him clubbing.

So the questions are unavoidable, although probably too late to ask. Could big-time sports actually make itself inconsequential? Is sport speeding hell-bent toward self-destruction, so blinded by its individuals' self-importance and self-absorption that even over-cooked worshipers soon will be forced to pause and question the obsession?

How soon before good parents grow uncomfortable with the idea of their children pulling on replica jerseys? Do they begin to wonder if that's just one fashion statement short of giving little Junior a packet of play money so he can practice making it rain?

Suckers!

Sports fans have proven they will put up with a lot. They build stadiums with tax money and shell out deposits just for the right to spend more dollars on season tickets. Then they pay to park before dropping another $8 on every warm draft beer.

The goose that for so long has laid the golden eggs is eventually going to squawk.

Isn't it?

"Sports is not going anywhere," Torossian insisted by telephone. "Sports is always going to be watched. People like Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant will go through their issues, but at the end of the day, they are still the best athletes to watch."

Basically, Torossian was saying it's over. Sports' days of character and honor and things that made people proud to cheer are gone.

"It's just a different era," the PR man said again. "I'm not a politician, so it's not my job to know if it's good or bad. It's just reality. It's pop culture."

It's a bad excuse.