Back when I was in college – but after Sir Isaac Newton had stopped teaching physics – there was a popular Bob Dylan song where each of his marginally intelligible refrains ended with the line:
“For the times, they are a-changin’.”
Well, times certainly did change from the early 1960s through the late 1960s and the times have certainly changed from then until now. But maybe there is a microcosmic wave of change beginning to gather itself in the sporting world today and maybe it too will gather momentum. I’m speaking of a small movement towards the concept of athletes being accountable for their actions. Wow! There’s a gestalt we can only ponder from where we are today. Let me tell you why the sports world might be edging on a vector heading that could lead us there.
About 10 days ago, the Feds busted a drug/steroids lab in New Jersey and the “customer list” for that place had some recognizable names on it. One was Gary Matthews Jr.; I wrote earlier that whether or not he actually used the HGH produced by that place, he was currently going to be judged by the company he’s keeping in the person of the lawyer who represented OJ Simpson when OJ had his “image crisis”. Fully lawyered up, Matthews met with reporters and gave the typical “non-denial denial” and used the investigation itself as the reason he could not talk about matters related to the investigation. That falls into the category of the “move along, there’s nothing to see here pretense”.
Remember, Matthews isn’t accused of doing anything criminal at the moment let alone convicted of anything more anti-social than parking tickets. But he did have a career year last year and he did sign a $50M contract in the off-season and so “enquiring minds want to know.” And he’s not answering… But Arte Moreno, the owner who signed Matthews to the $50M deal is not happy and Moreno says that this matter “is going to be resolved by Opening Day, one way or the other, I promise that.”
What Moreno means is not that the Federal investigation and legal proceedings that might some day follow from it will be resolved; he means that he wants an explanation from Matthews about how his name got on the customer list at that laboratory. I don’t know what Moreno has in mind as a lever on his side of this, but here is an owner demonstrating a backbone. He’s on the hook for $50M; he wants some answers and he’s not satisfied with the “non-denial denial”. Stay tuned; that could get interesting.
At the same time, Ron Artest had another run in with the authorities over an alleged domestic violence situation. I already told you that the Maloof brothers (owners of the Kings) simply told Artest to stay away from all team activities and facilities until the matter is settled. Stay tuned; that could get interesting.
And on the other coast of the US, the new head football coach at the University of Miami, Randy Shannon, announced a new team rule. He made it public and he didn’t leave a lot of ambiguity in that new rule. Any player caught with a gun in his possession is off the team – not suspended, off the team. Stay tuned; that could get interesting.
But “important” is a large step beyond “interesting” and we don’t know yet if these actions are or will lead to anything “important”. If they begin to increase athletes’ accountability for their actions, then they will be important events and ones that should achieve the status where one recalls when they happened. Future historians, take note please.
Just an aside here, but imagine what could happen if this accountability trend really caught on and a major participant in moving it further along was the Cincinnati Bengals franchise…
There is one other piece of news today that deserves comment. Yesterday, there was news that one of the mushers – and her sled – was missing in what was described as a “particularly treacherous part of the journey”. I sort of think that the whole trail is dangerous and treacherous so I won’t comment on where this happened. Fortunately, all she did was to take a wrong turn and go about 50 miles out her way on the wrong trail and she’s been spotted by a search plane driving her sled toward a checkpoint. When she was still missing, I got an e-mail from one of the participants in an Iditarod Fantasy Pool we organized about 10 years ago; his note was brief; he hoped I didn’t have her in the Iditarod pool this year.
The interesting thing about this situation – and now that she’s been found it isn’t a tragedy – is that this is a rookie musher in the Iditarod and she’s 61 years old. I don’t mean this to be ageist or sexist in any way, but what would make anyone think that the Iditarod is something you just “pick up and do” at any point in one’s life? I’m glad she’s alive as opposed to carrion, but I must say that I don’t understand her mindset.
About 15 years ago, the Iditarod was immersed in a controversy and the courts had to get involved to settle a dispute between a musher and the race officials over the interpretation of what was called “The Dead Dog Rule”. I was always amazed that there could be controversy about a dead dog; it seemed to me that after about a year of argument and litigation the status of the beast as an exchanger of oxygen in the biosphere should have been clear. Finally, the court made a ruling; and I don’t remember how it ruled because it really wasn’t nearly as interesting as the debate over the alive/dead status of a dog. Given that precedent, can you imagine what would have happened if there were a dead musher in the race? Imagine the team of dogs pulling through the finish line with the musher on board in some kind of Weekend at Bernie’s situation. That would have been good for at least a year’s worth of controversy.
Finally, the Iditarod reminded me of dogs and so I’ll close with this line from David Letterman about why he did not attend the Westminster Dog Show:
“If I want to see something roll over and play dead at the Garden, I’ll go see the Knicks.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…