The Mighty

One of my favorite scenes in a movie (one that is a little sappy, but still one of my favorites) is Denzel's "I'm just a football coach" speech in Remember the Titans. He uses it to gently remind a community of people who are elevating him to hero status that he is "just a football coach" and he shows it through out the movie. While watching it you see the intensity and drive to succeed that pushes him, and while Herman Boone does many great things in the movie-he is ultimately a football coach, determined to win. I have thought of Herman Boone's speech several times this week as I have watched the Penn State scandal, and the fate of Joe Paterno unfold on my ESPN updates, the web, Sports Center and pretty much every other media outlet I've come in contact with.
Like most of you I know only what the media has told me. How much and just what, and who knew about it, is still unfolding and I am not nearly naive enough to believe the media has or is reporting the entire story. America loves a sex scandal, and headlines sell magazines and newspapers-which in turn sell advertising and makes publishers and web site owners more profits. I also know enough about the politics of any instituion-be it a Divison I college, a church, or a public school-that in the face of scandal and controversy, the best idea is to find a scapegoat or two, cut bait and move on in a "positive"direction...Or in other words, a few well-placed firings gives the appearance of a situation under control, whether it is-or was-or not.
So I am not here to debate the firing of Joe Paterno, or even lament the tarnished reputation that now may follow a legendary and successful football coach. What I am struck by, again and again, as a sports fan is our outrage when a hero falls from grace. When the mighty fall, we eat it up; but want to spit it out at the same time. And I wonder why? Why do we expect these men-or women- to be anything other than what they are? Whether it is a football coach,  a first baseman, a racecar driver, -we expect different behavior from "sports heroes" than everyone else....Why? And why do we take it so personally when the "let us down"?
Sports, and I love sports, is about drama. We sit on the edge of our seats for the buzzer beater shot in a tie game, the walk-off homerun in the bottom of the ninth, the Hail Mary. We are drawn to the natural drama of a conflict (what's a good hockey game without a fight?), we are drawn to almost inhuman talent, and larger than life personalities (and sometimes bodies) we see on television on Saturdays or Sundays and we expect these people to be superhuman in every way. We want to ignore that most sports are multibillion dollar businesses and those athletes are part of the business, not just the show, of sports. The words professional athlete are not synonyms for role model, or nice guy, or your best friend. They are exactly what they say-professional means they make money playing a game. Why do we get so angry when they try to negotiate what they feel is fair in the world of business? Yes, the money seems outrageous to us, but wouldn't you want to earn the same wage as your neighbor for doing the same job-espescially if you are better at it?
 Any parent who has ever turned their child over to a coach knows how vital it is to your child that this person be a basically upstanding individual of high moral character (meaning, you can drop your child off at practice and feel safe knowing someone is taking care of them) but many of us also want our children to be winners. We want our schools, our alma maters, our hometown teams to be winners. The kindhearted coach who donates to shelters and builds playgrounds at the University only keeps his (or her) job if they are also winning ballgames. Wins=ticket sales=revenue=tv deals=....You want to keep your job coaching at an elite level, win ballgames.
Many things can be overlooked if you are steering a winning program. Should they be? Maybe not, but if the winning coach at your favorite NCAA basketball school was suddenly fired a week before Selection Sunday for anything less than a capital crime, you might be among the hoardes of angry fans demanding answers. There is a reason why coaching positions aren't tenured, even the best teacher who loses the big games may need to go at your local high school. Don't believe me? Two words-youth sports. Your mailman can turn into a raving lunatic if he's placed in charge of a Mighty Mite team; I've seen parents turn on their own children in the name of "coaching"-- and by coaching, I mean winning.
 Athletes and coaches are different from you and me. Or at least from me-I am uncoordinated, pretty short and slow. I can't jump high, turn handsprings or kick a field goal. As much as I'd like to try driving a racecar, I'd probably wreck it. I have neither the concentration, patience or rational mind required to coach the athletes I am not talented enough to be. So, yes I envy and admire those who do. My son, who is athletic and competitive, espescially admires athletes and coaches; he absorbs sports knowledge like a sponge, and could sit and watch basketball intently by the time he was about 4-about the same age he started playing teeball. Sports=life for him.
A few years ago, during the summer Olympics, my family and I (who often watch sports together) were as excited as the rest of the country about Micheal Phelps...only for my son to ask me "what's marijuana?" a few months later while watching Sports Center. "What's rape?" my son asked another day after watching Sports Center...I, like many of you, want to vent my anger toward the athelte bringing up these awkward headlines. I wanted a personal apology because my child admired these "heathens". But I am not the moral authority of the world, that real (sometimes ugly) world where we all live and where uncomfortable things happen that must be explained to our children. There is learning in those moments, too.  At a high school basketball game last year, my son watched a player on the other team throw basically a tantrum on the floor. He looked at me and said (before I could open my mouth) "I know, Mom,...if I ever act like that, you'll take the basketball from me yourself."
 And I wouldn't trade the evening watching the Cardinals win the World Series together, filling out (and then erasing) those brackets in March or Superbowl Sunday with my boy on the couch for anything, even if it means sometimes explaining the very real human mistakes of the triumphs we just watched.  The key, for me, is remembering that under those pads and helmets, or scribbling all over a clipboard are real people, who may make terrible decisions that they are not entitled to our forgiveness for. Sometimes the mighty fall, and yes it is painful to watch. Sometimes the "mighty" fall-like the tantrum thrower from that high school basketball game-at the hands of of the more skilled-and that triumph is delightful to watch. The fact that we are watching makes us sports fans, the fact that we care make us people, and the fact that they sin (and sometimes fall) make the mighty people, too.