Crime Rates and the Gridiron

Sports Illustrated and CBS Sports have collaborated on an investigative report that determined seven percent of the 2,837 student-athletes on SI’s 2010 preseason Top 25 teams had criminal records, with nearly 40 percent of those offenses being serious crimes.

Is it time for wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth, learning about the “criminal element” in college football? Who knows? What’s the context? How does this compare to the student body at large, or society as a whole? I read one report that six percent of every 100,000 youths, ages 10 to 17 in the USA had been arrested. So in light of that, seven percent of college football players doesn’t seem that far out of line.

Almost like doing a study that shows 50 percent of all people in traditional marriages are female.

I remember one national sports radio commentator observing that U.S. legislators have a higher rate of crime, bankruptcies and other legal problems than the so-called “thugs” of the NBA.

Of course, we’d like to think each of our Saturday gridiron heroes spends his off-field hours studying diligently to ace every exam, helping old ladies across the street, visiting ailing patients in hospitals, feeding the homeless, teaching Sunday school and crusading to protect endangered species.

But let’s be honest: Many of these athletes come from disadvantaged homes, often absent a positive male role model. Survival, not upholding high ethical standards, has been their reality. For them, collegiate athletics provide a means for escaping the ghetto.

And football, as we all know, is a violent sport. Saturday game time’s are punctuated by cries from fans demanding the home team destroy the opponent, yet during non-game hours we expect these same players to forsake such dastardly demeanor and behavior, exhibiting less aggression than the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Many, thankfully, do seem able to separate gridiron hostility from their personal lives. But not all. The greater issue, it seems, is what happens to those young men once they step onto college campuses. Do their coaches take the effort to mold into them strong character qualities, along with insisting they take full advantage of the educational opportunities presented to them? Or do they simply reinforce the notion that superior athletes are above the law?

Frankly, having only seven percent with criminal records doesn’t seem all that startling. Seventy percent, certainly. Or even 17 percent. But seven? Not enough to merit screaming red headlines to announce the outcome of a “six-month investigation.”

But then, after expending lots of money and time in this study, and evidently already armed with a conclusion they wanted to document statistically, the SI and CBS powers-that-be obviously had to report something. To say “no big deal” would have been anticlimactic.