Arrested Developments With Spotlight On Sports’ Troubles, Athletes Aren’t Allowed To Be Heroes

The phone rings in the middle of the night, shaking another coach from sleep. What now? What player has been arrested? What booster has run afoul of the rules?

He picks it up. It’s the local police saying something about a star cornerback or quarterback or point guard, it hardly matters, sitting in the drunk tank at the city jail, bruised and cut up from a bar fight. Television trucks were outside, he said. It would be on the morning news.

The landscape of American sports has changed dramatically in an era when athletes aren’t allowed to be heroes anymore.

Just this year, dozens of college players, not to mention the professionals, have been jailed or otherwise disciplined for a variety of offenses. The stories echoed across the airwaves and were splashed in the smudgy black ink of newspapers.

It happens so often that some newspapers have started running columns called “Sports and the Law,” a list of the day’s offenders from the dark side of sports.

There are three basic theories as to what’s going on: Athletes are getting into more trouble these days, it is getting reported more, or a little bit of both.

“The athletes are the only ones that get written up in the paper,” said Auburn coach Terry Bowden, who recently got one of those late night phone calls after a player allegedly struck a female student at a night spot. “I’m not trying to make like nothing’s going on, but I don’t see a trend that athletes in the ‘90s are getting into more trouble.”

Bowden, the 39-year-old wonder-coach who led the Tigers to a 20-1-1 record the last two seasons, is hardly the product of a bygone era. But he has a unique perspective. He remembers the stories his father, Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, used to tell about the perils of coaching.

“There must have been a fight every week,” he recalled. “It was almost expected. Football was a tough, mean sport, and the guys got into fights all the time. You just never heard about it.”

These days, the problems of sports stars are out in the open - just like those of political leaders. The list is ever-growing: Mike Tyson, Dwight Gooden, Jennifer Capriati, Darryl Strawberry, Brian Blades, Erik Williams.

Are these stars better off that their weaknesses were exposed? Or should they have been left to their own devices, the way heroes used to be?

What-ifs almost never produce helpful answers. Perhaps the best link from past to present, the best answer to the pressing question of what will become of sports, died quietly in his sleep in Dallas last Sunday.

Mickey Mantle’s final act in a cathartic transformation showed the world that heroes in sports and in life are never as they once seemed.

“The saddest thing was, even in his own words, he said, ‘Play like me, don’t be like me,”’ Bowden said. “You know, growing up, I don’t recall any reporting about his lifestyle.”

And maybe that’s the good in all this. Tyson’s destructive living was interrupted, and he emerged from prison a tainted sports figure, but more human. Had Mantle’s drinking been publicized and stopped, his transcending image would have been tarnished, and we would have found out who he really was - a man with faults and problems like the rest of us. As it was, we only learned that in the last year of his life. And perhaps, so did he.

Mantle was lifted to the highest mountain of idolatry at a time when our heroes could do no wrong. He came clean in a very different era, one when the darkest secrets of our sports stars and politicians are exposed.

His passing brings us to the question of which has changed more: the modern-day athlete or modern-day culture?

“I don’t know whether it’s increased media attention, or whether there’s a worse type of young man today,” Bowden said.

College football is one game that has been sullied by the disciplinary problems of its players, and even its coaches. Most recently, a Nebraska player was charged with attempted second-degree murder.

The setbacks have besieged even the sport’s most hallowed programs. Alabama, recently placed on NCAA probation for offenses committed by the grown adults who run athletics there, has had five players arrested on various charges since last season ended. Michigan fired its football coach, Gary Moeller, after a drunken tirade at a restaurant. Miami, long dogged by a renegade reputation, recently had dozens of transgressions exposed, ranging from a loan scandal and pay-for-play to sexual misconduct, alcohol abuse and drugs.

Even the golden dome of Notre Dame was stained when two players were accused of battery against another student. No criminal charges were filed, and the players were cleared of wrongdoing by the university.

Washington football coach Jim Lambright said the balance between student and athlete can still be achieved. Problems in sports, he said, are a reflection of problems in society.

The NCAA has begun making rules designed to cut down on taunting and other sideshows that seem to have taken over the modern sports stage.

“The individual achievement is wonderful and naturally highlighted, but it can’t be the No. 1 thing in this game,” Lambright said. “It’s not a sport where, ‘Here I am, I did it, I scored, I intercepted,’ and the helmet comes off and you look for the TV cameras. That’s not it.”

The NCAA also has made it clear it wants studentathletes to be treated more like regular students. Athletic dorms are being phased out on campuses, and athletic departments are being asked to have less influence over players’ lives.

Bowden, though obsessive about keeping his program in compliance with NCAA rules, is no fan of regulations that give coaches less contact with players.

“At a time when more leadership and more guidance might be necessary, we’re being asked to give less and yet be more accountable,” he said.

In the days leading up to the NCAA’s announcement of penalties against Alabama, an angry Crimson Tide player offered a preview of what might be ahead for college athletics. Shannon Brown wondered when athletes would be given money to live on, and when the expectations of perfection would stop.

“The NCAA is putting all this pressure on us,” Brown said. “I don’t want that publicity put on anybody. I realize a rule’s a rule. I just wish the NCAA would realize we’re just kids.

“I’ll tell you exactly what’s going to happen,” Brown continued, a stern look of defiance etched on his face. “The players are going to form a union. That’s the only way that it’s going to get better.”

Lambright’s reaction was almost as if he’d heard that before, or at least considered the possibility himself.

“If you have a bureaucracy that’s too strong and it doesn’t relate to the people … then the bureaucracy better look at itself,” he said. “Maybe the threat of a union has to be.”

In the meantime, Bowden said, the best thing fans can do is change their expectations.

“Be careful if you put all your marbles on your sports heroes,” he said, “because they might just let you down.”