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.

It’s Football Time in . . .

As Monday Night Football’s opener inquires, “Are you ready for some football?!”

Tomorrow night, football – college version – will unwrap its season when Ohio State, my alma mater, hosts Marshall. South Carolina hosts Southern Mississippi in another notable opener. That will be what more people will see because it’s on ESPN, since the Buckeyes circa 2010 debut on the Big Ten Network.

For the moment, all football fans are euphoric – their favorite teams all are undefeated. (At least they haven’t lost yet.) For many, however, it will be downhill right after opening kickoff.

My hopes are especially high since the Bucks are a consensus No. 2 in preseason polls, and defending champ Alabama will face all kinds of challenges repeating. But that’s why they play the games. After weeks and months of “too much talk, not enough action,” every squad will have the opportunity to show what they can do.

Here in the South where I live, most fans seem convinced the SEC again will reign once everything in the season’s said and done. I imagine some of them even think the game was invented below the Mason-Dixon line. Actually the first football game was played between Rutgers and Princeton in 1869 in New Brunswick, N.J., just a few miles from where I grew up. The game then, of course, bore little resemblance to what we see today.

Since the NFL starts its season one week later, for one weekend college football will reign as king of the hill. And for the next four months we’ll listen to non-stop debates about who’s the real No. 1, who will win the Heisman this year, and whether anyone in the sluggish North can even compete with any team in the speedy South.

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for some football!

The Great un-American Game

Was it Willie Nelson who sang, “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be soccer players”? Maybe not, but with apologies to poet Robert Frost, “something there is (in America) that doesn’t love…a soccer game.”

Yes, the networks and ESPN are casting faux enthusiasm toward the World Cup, but it’s the same treatment they give figure skating in the Winter Olympics. “Yeah, we gotta cover it, but I’ll sure be glad when it’s over.”

The American psyche, forged in the melting pot of blended cultures, is unquestionably unique. But despite the European, African, Latino and Asian mix that makes up our society, somehow soccer got lost in the translation.

Ask the average U.S. sports fan about soccer and the reply is, “I don’t get it.” All that running up and down, back and forth with deft footwork; great stamina and athleticism for sure – but so much effort with so little outcome. You watch a 90-minute soccer game, and lather into a frenzy for what? 1-0? (And it’s “nil,” not zero or zip.) Or, as the U.S. team did on Sunday, crow victoriously over a 1-1 tie with England? In soccer, an offensive spectacle is 3-1. Woo-hoo!

These days, people complain baseball, “the Great American Pastime,” is too slow and lacking in action. Yet it’s not uncommon to see scores of 6-5, 8-6, and sometimes even double-digits. Still, compared to “upstarts” football and basketball, which have surpassed it in popularity in recent decades, baseball is “boring.” If that’s the case, no wonder we can’t get revved up about soccer.

To me, watching a soccer game is akin to going out to buy a new car and settling instead for new wiper blades. Or buying tickets months in advance to see your favorite band in concert, then one day before the event having it canceled because the lead singer has a hangnail. Much ado about nothing!

Perhaps over time, with the influx of people into the United States from soccer-crazed lands, soccer will soar in acceptance. Here in Chattanooga, for instance, with an influx of Germans because of the new Volkswagen plant, maybe some of their devotion for the original “football” will rub off. But don’t count on it.

No, in America, football will always be synonymous with “pigskins,” first downs, blitzes and sacks. And we don’t need the vuvuzelas, those raucous-sounding plastic horns that soccer zealots are using to try and destroy one another’s eardrums. The traditional bell chime, to remind the defense that it’s third down and they need to stop to opposing offense, is just fine with us.

Why settle for “Gooooooooooooaaaaaalllllllll!” when you can shout, “TOUCHDOWN!”?

The College Football Playoff Fallacy

If you practice Bracketology – the science of predicting which teams will advance in the NCAA Basketball Championship Tournament – your life has probably been turned upside-down. Few envisioned Butler marching past Syracuse and Kansas State, and fewer imagined Northern Iowa upending Kansas. Many people’s favorite Kentucky got bounced out – by West Virginia, without its starting point guard. Georgetown lost to Ohio (not Ohio State)!

Commentators crow about how wonderful it is seeing have-nots prevail against the haves. The adage, “on any given day, one team can beat another,” is affirmed. Hooray for the little guy!

But this year’s topsiest-turviest tournament of all points out the fallacy of arguments advocating a college football playoff. The goal, we’re told, would be to resolve once and for all who the preeminent team is each year. But would it?

What true fan honestly contends Northern Iowa is truly a better team than Kansas. If they were to play 10 times, how many times would the directional school win – maybe twice? And who would be so bold to declare the Bobcats as talented as the Hoyas? Yes, winners advance fair and square, but does that ultimately convince us which team is superior day in and day out?

The same would hold true in a Division I (or whatever the academics insist on labeling it) college football playoff. On that given day, the lesser team could prevail. A fortuitous bounce here, a costly penalty there, a key injury somewhere else and a game’s outcome could hang in the balance.

I would favor a “plus one” matchup, in which following the bowl games the two best teams (chosen by consensus) would battle for national bragging rights.

But even then, so what? We would still have wars wrecking nations; economic woes putting people in financial ruin; diseases ravaging bodies. Sports championships are fun to argue about, but little more than diversions. Fifty years from now, who will really care?

Thousands of years ago, Israel’s King Solomon penned some words that apply here. He wasn’t writing about athletic tournaments, but might well have been when he said, “I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind” (Ecclesiastes 1:14).

Christmas, College Football Style

Feb. 3 is “National Signing Day,” the equivalent of Christmas for college football. Every rabid fan from Boston to L.A., Austin to Ann Arbor will study websites to see what gridiron goodies have been stashed under the goal posts.

It’s the day when – according to the recruiting gurus – we will know how Favorite College should fare on Saturdays a couple years hence. For schools ranked in the top 5 nationally, maybe even No. 1, there will dancing and shouting in the streets. However, alumni whose college’s recruits are deemed inferior will be grinding and gnashing teeth, as well as wringing hands. “Oh, why didn’t So-and-So not want to play for the Tomcats? Why’d he choose the Buzzards instead?”

Anyone who follows such things knows recruiting rankings and evaluations are an inexact science, with hardly anything scientific about it. Only time will distinguish a “blue chip” from a cow chip, or which high school “Who’s Who” will become a collegiate “Who’s He?”

Being a fervent Ohio State fan, I think of players like Troy Smith and A.J. Hawk that were hardly a blip on anyone’s recruiting radar coming out of high school, yet they earned a Heisman Trophy, All-American status and other honors before advancing to the NFL. Meanwhile, some “can’t miss” Buckeye recruits, in fact, did miss – and not by just a little.

Recruiting services can’t predict career-ending injuries, poor academic performance, encounters with law enforcement, or most important, heart and determination. Which reminds me of 1 Samuel 16:7, which refers to God’s selection of David as the next king of Israel: “For God sees not as man sees; man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” If only the recruiting analysts could do the same.