By Erika Carrubba and Stephanie Vosk
A year filled with fights, suspensions and close calls in the Athletic Department has left high-profile players struggling to leave behind the year’s mistakes and look to the future.
Senior linebacker Liam Ezekiel served a five-quarter suspension after a scuffle on the field that spilled over into the locker room, while junior guard Jose Juan Barea missed the final men’s basketball game of the season after a controversial ruling handed down by Athletic Director Dave O’Brien.
“Every incident is going to be different,” O’Brien said. “It’s going to be unique, and what we try to do is we take a look at what has happened and how we’ve handled incidents that may be similar in the past and try to apply it to the situation at hand and do the best that we can.”
Whether in the classroom or on the court, student athletes sometimes face a different standard than their peers.
“Imagine being an athlete in a fishbowl and everyone knowing about you. If they weren’t athletes, would we know they were in trouble?” said Peter Roby, director of the Center for Sport in Society. “Imagine the pressures when you become famous and now you are struggling.”
As talk of Ezekiel’s less than two game suspension for an altercation with teammate Miro Kesic circulated around campus, he moved his focus to Atlanta, where he is training to further his football career. While the incident cost him his captain status, his career remained unscathed.
“People make mistakes and that is what I did,” Ezekiel said in January.
As he pressed on training for the NFL Combine, an opportunity for coaches to see college players in action, critics continued to remind the player of the fight that put his teammate in the hospital. Although not expected to be a first-round pick, Ezekiel is predicted by draft analysts such as www.draftinsider.com, to be a fourth- or fifth-round pick in the April 23 NFL draft, which is achieved by only by a handful of college football players.
Ezekiel signed with agent Marty Burke of Burke Media Consultants in Cambridge, and was working with a trainer who has conditioned other NFL athletes, he told The News in January.
At the same time, Barea’s season was less than half over and he was rated in the top 10 nationwide in scoring. Barea helped the team advance to the America East Championship game in which he “used unnecessarily rough play,” according to a report on www.gonu.com. The play resulted in his suspension from his team’s only game in the National Invitational Tournament in Memphis, Tenn.
Despite the setbacks, Barea is pushing onward toward a professional career. He announced he declared for the upcoming NBA draft and will participate in select pre-draft camps. However, he will not sign with an agent unless he is given a first-round guarantee by an NBA team, allowing him the opportunity to return to college basketball by not violating NCAA guidelines.
But with a career in college athletics comes notoriety on campus, and when incidents occur that thrust athletes even further into the spotlight, the character they display will ultimately determine the outcome.
“We need to understand what contributes to the behavior of these people,” Roby said. “Appeal to their leadership qualities, get them to make better decisions … get them to question the messages the media and fame send them.”
Hannah Seo, a freshman criminal justice major, said she believes the attention given to incidents involving athletes makes their punishments more severe.
“I think it’s because they are athletes, their punishment is more publicized,” Seo said. “Everyone sees it.” She added that she thinks regular students do get punished, but with less fanfare.
To Ashley Wilson, a sophomore psychology major and member of the track team, it is not usually the top players who are faced with the harshest of sanctions.
“Normal athletes tend to be treated like normal kids, but top athletes tend to get a little more leeway,” she said.
Wilson said she believes punishments are dependent on the way the incidents are publicized and the particulars of each situation.
Kira Batura, a freshman business major and a member of the volleyball team, said she believes both Ezekiel and Barea were not punished to the extent they deserved.
“I think they let them both off easy,” Batura said. “Maybe it’s because they’re guys … it’s what they do. If we, say, punch someone under a volleyball net, we’d probably be labeled psychotic.”
To Roby, it is the importance placed on athletes by outside observers that allows them to stand out among their peers.
“I think in general, athletes are looked at differently in society because of the importance we place on sport,” Roby said. “It permeates every facet of our culture from age to gender to religion to political. In most cases, there is a way it impacts people, whether their kids are involved or they are involved or they are just huge fans or they have made a vocation out of it.”
As Ezekiel and Barea continue working toward their career goals, they will no doubt face the same scrutiny as many other professional athletes have faced in the past.
“All you need to do is look at how much media attention is paid to it, to sport, to know that sport has a special place in our society,” Roby said. “As a result, people who participate in sport, even at the youngest levels, are looked at as somewhat different because of their ability to perform on a field or in the pool, and that’s not to say it’s right, but it’s pretty much a fact.”
– Staff writers Dinah Alobeid and Chris Estrada and correspondent Zack Finkelstein contributed to this report.
