random thoughts on the vitality of sports and media

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2986158

Anyone who's aware of basketball history, this is the fellow who choked his coach once. And there was previously an incident involving a gun or an assault on this yacht a few years back. My first thought at the first incident was hey, Spree has a yacht? Which was replied to with it must be called the SS Beeotch. Turns out that was incorrect. This is also the man who famously proclaimed that 'he had to feed his family' when turning down a 3yr/21 million dollar contract. For turning that down he was rewarded with, ahh yes, no contract at all. He hasn't played since. Apparently his family has starved because rather than sell his yacht, it was seized.

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/put-down-that-basketball-sport-causes-crime/

This was a more diverting topic, albeit rather fundamentally flawed research. I agree that sports/after school programs are not by themselves going to reduce crime. I'm not sure that they are supposed to, but rather to provide some people a more positive outlet alternatively to deciding on a life of crime. There are some for whom a positive outlet is practically useless. My experience with sports has been that it allows people to jettison hostility and energy, get exercise, and provides an understanding of things like roles or discipline (if one wants to improve and actually enjoy playing well, this is not to say that I do myself, but I do understand the mentality). I'm not sure that any of those things without a good direction entering the scheme ahead of time is going to happen. Someone playing without disciplined understanding regardless of the energy is probably not very good.

Consequently, the original article had a rather amusing conclusion that sports trains criminal minds and arms them with physical acumen to commit street atrocities. This to me is akin to saying that a karate class arms one with the physical ability to kill at will. It is true that a master of martial arts is a master of a deadly art, but the discipline and will to commit such acts is also restrained and controlled by the mastery of said arts. Sports, while training the body in a variety of potentially healthy but potentially criminally useful activities, must also be combined with an unhealthy will to commit such actions in the first place. I would have to argue that there is more that would need to be done to make a sports program help clean up a neighborhood of street thuggery, but I suspect the same could be said of rap music for example. Neither is by themselves a suspicious activity and (except perhaps extreme examples) is not a catalyst for violent activity. Declaring that sports cause violence is a rather cyclical argument. People cause violence. Playing sports involves violence because people are playing. Sports do not cause it. Tensions in a game do run high because the feeling of competitive value kicks in, and then violence becomes almost inherent in the system. But in every sport, violence is generally penalized, especially to excess. Good hits in football (the norte americano version) knock down a player or jar loose the ball, but they do not unnecessarily injure (ie, head or neck injuries). Good hits in basketball prevent baskets, but do not send someone to the emergency room. And a foul is still called anyway, a penalty. Being that basketball, or soccer (football) are the likely sports to be considered in France, this is particularly important. In fact, in watching international competition in either soccer or basketball, one sees a lot of people flopping around as though cut down by enemy fire when a 'foul' is committed. This tends to make the commission of violence rather cost-prohibitive.

In any case, all one really needs to do to find fault is point out that the author is from France. Apparently it never entered to study that the main purveyors of violent activity during France's riots were unemployed immigrants, specifically Algerian Muslims. People who the French tend to snob over and keep as unemployed by importing more of them and generally destroying the ability of free enterprise by founding new businesses (which are the same ones that stupid Americans attack when they see a Sikh with his head wrapped up, but at least the guy was able to start a business for us to vandalize). I suspect that keeps them rather pissed off, which if any of them have jihadist backgrounds is probably not the best idea. To my mind people who are willing to commit violent acts of aggression are going to find ways to do so. It is our calling to find ways to either divert this aggression more positively (which with luck may happen, but mostly not with this idea) or to prevent by taking measures to restrain aggressive behaviors. Ie, I do not walk around with a sword attacking people ninja style because I would end up in jail rather soon afterwards. This is an unpalatable outcome for me, so I don't do it. I'm not all that proficient a ninja or being a swordsman anyway, so I suspect people have little to fear. Besides, according to this frenchie, I wasn't in a midnight basketball program so I'll not kill anyone anyway.


(Introduction of breakfast programs made super strong criminals and midnight basketball just taught them how to function without sleep). Ahh good times the from uncertain future brought to mind by the all too gone past.


Back to a major story which I've avoided. Vick. I have a very small dog. So my bias is clear. I do think he'll play again, several years from now. I've regarded him as a jerk before, but lots of jerks in sports do quite well. Charles Barkley for example tended to do some stupid things, never to this extreme to be fair (a bar fight with someone going through a plate glass window is bad, but not you're going to jail bad), and with his various comments on anything at all, could be regarded as a jerk. There's a place for such people in athletics, or really anywhere. I tend to believe past co-workers might regard me as a jerk for example, but I looked at it as keeping people focused and in motion. Vick, the smallish issues off the field presented a building self-conception of one who is above the law. Some of these issues went almost unreported nationally. For example, one of his posse stole a watch from the security checkpoint at an Atlanta airport. The watch was returned to authorities when requested with a rather ambiguous story and then was not directly returned to its owner but was instead allowed to remain in Vick's custody upon the condition he return it expeditiously. An expensive watch being taken isn't exactly something people take so lightly. The water bottle with a secret compartment story, again a fishy cover story. Flipping off the fans, very smooth. And so on. The point here is that there is something to admire in athletes. The physical condition seems to be a part of being human and admiring people for their abilities (or appearance) in this area is only natural. But we also coddle such people and grant them unrestrained adoration for their actions when if we were in their shoes we should feel only unmitigated pain for our errors. Vick's mistakes (and even those of his younger brother) suggest a series of errors that started somewhere along the line when people started telling him he would be special. He was special, a gifted athlete. That's not the point. He became something else after hearing that over and over from the wrong type of people. To some of us, he'll be a monster. I'm not one of them because human history has far more brutal torments for animals in it. Romans used to tether up bears and let dogs at them until the bear is worn down, then kill the bears. But it tended to be rather hard on the dogs also so this sort of thing isn't new. But it should be very hard for us to accept him as a hero, a cult icon ever again. It's doubtful he'd get a chance actually, since he's now off to prison for a while and then followed by a suspension. I say good riddance for now. I suspect though we'll see him again. After all Tyson was convicted of sexual assault and was back fighting in the ring a few years later. Rape is quite a bit worse in my moral dictionary than killing and abusing animals, (shut it PETA it's true). To be sure, Vick was merely human. And perhaps that's what's so upsetting about all of this to many. That someone whose abilities stretched so far turned out to have fatal flaws worthy of Greek tragedy. It meant our hero was still irrevocably human. Sorry to disappoint, but that's the way it is.

Looking back on this story, I also found it strange that the media seemed quick to judge Vick not as guilty of his crimes, but to find excuses or fault in his guilt and judge him innocent. Then suddenly someone realized that these are serious charges and that he was undoubtedly guilty, from there snowballing until Vick was guilty of faking the Moon landings and the JFK assassination to boot, despite the inconvenient truth he wasn't even born then. It would be better if the media hadn't judged him at all and allowed us the precious ability to judge for ourselves. Presenting what facts as they were available and step back away from the hype. That's responsible journalism.

Much like the bridge story, we're left with an impossible mountain of useless data encouraging our discontent at a particular subject. To be fair, I'm quite pissed that it's easier to fund a new bad bridge than to fix up the old bad ones that someone else built. But I point the finger at us for that problem, not the governments. The governments are giving the masses what they want because the government's defining interest is to stay in power. That's it, simple. Granted the current federal government has done poorly at this mission, giving us almost nothing of what we want and plenty of what we don't. But in general, that's the idea. The media must operate on the same precepts, even more so as a competitive industry. We as a general public must want to be spoon fed shouted opinions and commentary and merely dabble in factual material to base these loud mouthing blathering fools' opinions on. It is high time this changes.