Warning: what you are about to read may come across as offensive to Society Provention of Cruelty to Animals supporters, professional and collegiate athletes and coaches, and media outlets throughout America. After all, who enjoys beating a dead horse?
Earlier this month, Iowa State head coach Larry Eustachy was seen in photographs kissing two young females at a party in Missouri. After initially stating he will not resign despite a recommendation from SU Athletic Director Bruce Van De Velde urging the embattled coach be fired, Eustachy stepped away from the position, taking a buyout package (not to mention a tarnished reputation) with him. Popular among both players and coaches, it was simply a case of a good man showing poor judgment.
Tony Cole, on the other hand, has had a history of criminal offenses. Featured on ESPN for his groundbreaking account on Jim Harrick and Jim Harrick Jr.’s illegal activities while at the University of Georgia, Cole appeared to be polite and mild-mannered to all who saw him on the television screen. In reality, he is anything but. Forget the fact that Cole attended three high schools and two prep schools in a five-year span. In his two years spent at junior college, he admitted that he did no coursework. Not a little, not minimal … none. That essentially rendered the degree he earned as little more than a piece of paper. The junior college standout was kicked off of the team last year after being charged with aggravated assault with intent to rape. He was in legal trouble again when he was charged with writing a bad check in early March.
Something…
Mike Price was recently fired from his coaching position at the University of Alabama before ever coaching a game for “questionable conduct” on a trip to Florida last month for a pro-am golf tournament. This was after reports surfaced about Price spending hundreds of dollars at a topless bar and, the next morning, a woman ordering about $1,000 worth of room service and charging it to his hotel bill. Never mind the fact that he woke up the next day fully clothed, and that he is coming off back-to-back 10-win seasons and a Rose Bowl berth last year.
Go back to 2001, when Atlanta’s Gold Club was making headlines for its ties to the mob and its front for other crimes, such as credit card fraud, money laundering and prostitution. In July of that year, Atlanta Braves outfielder Andruw Jones testified that the owner of the Atlanta strip club watched while he had sex with two women he later saw in the club. The result? About four months after the incident, Jones signed a six-year, $75-million dollar contract extension with the Braves. After all, the team would be stupid not to re-sign a 24-year-old slugger who had already won four Gold Gloves, right?
Something isn’t…
Most recently, Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan, one of the preeminent sportswriters in America, was suspended for a month without pay and banned from all radio and television appearances during that month for disparaging comments made about Joumana Kidd the wife of Nets superstar Jason Kidd. In a televised broadcast of WBZ-TV’s “Sports Final,” Ryan said that he’d “like to smack” Joumana because he feels she uses her son, T.J., as an attention-grabber. With the incomparable Will McDonough passed away, one could argue for Ryan as the new ruler of the Boston sports media … and even he got a suspension.
The primary reason the Nets will be appearing in their second consecutive Eastern Conference Finals, Kidd sat out four games in 2001 after hitting his wife. He reached a plea agreement, which involved the then-Phoenix Suns star attending anger management classes. Four games for hitting your wife, and a month for implying that a woman should be hit; by no means is either proposition meritorious, nonetheless…
Something isn’t right here.
So why do things have to be this way? In a special to ESPN.com story, Mark Kreidler explained it best with the opening sentence of his story on damage control written April 30: “Too bad Larry Eustachy can’t hit the open jumper.” In sports, there exists a double standard so tangible you can hear it, like when Kidd’s son T.J. burst into tears after witnessing what had happened to his mother; you can touch it, as Jones did to the bodies of those two women with which he had intercourse; and you can smell it, like the scent of beer on Eustachy’s breath. It just doesn’t seem right, and that’s from both perspectives.
The general consensus is that when you are in a position of high profile, you are held to a higher standard. Can you honestly resign yourself to the theory that a basketball coach at a Division I school is of greater prominence than being considered one of the greatest defensive outfielders of all time, at the age of 24? It’s as if you are no longer allowed to be one of the guys and no longer to do the things that make you happy when placed in these positions.
From the other perspective, should players be allowed to get off the hook so easily for such actions? The idea that athletes lead sheltered and coddled lives that lead them to na
