IN THIS ISSUE:
FRONT ROW
Youth- and School-Based Sports:
Floridians Give Sportsmanship a "Yea"
Collegiate Sports:
Coach to Team: "Sweep Up Your Mess"
Professional Sports:
• Could a Locker Room Assistant Splinter Baseball?
• Phoenix Suns’ Character Lapse May Have Cost Team the Title
Googling With: Kobe Bryant
Jocks Behaving Badly:
• Jaguars, Bengals Take Early Lead in 2008 Mug Shots …
Jocks Behaving Exceptionally:
• Athletes to Help Athletes Build Character …
• Coming Off the Bench in a Big Way …
• Deng Wins NBA Sportsmanship Award …
• Philly High School Athletes Sure Get Fired Up …
• Softball Rivals Bowl Each Other Over …
• Community Helps Save Rival’s Program …
• A Few More Sportsmanship Lessons From the CIF …
Michael Josephson Commentary: Trading With the Devil
Josephson Institute Happenings
SIDELINES
Announcements
Trivia Test: Who Affects Fan Conduct the Most?
Sportsmanship User's Guide: Sample Letter to the Media
You Make the Call: Should Hank Aaron and Bud Selig Honor Barry Bonds?
Principle of the Month: The Role of Mothers in Athletic Success
Say What?
Upcoming Seminars
Rail-splitting produced an
immortal president in Lincoln,
but golf hasn’t produced
even a good Congressman.
-- Will Rogers, humorist (1879-1935)
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FRONT ROW
YOUTH- AND SCHOOL-BASED SPORTS
Floridians Give Sportsmanship a "Yea"
Playing by the rules means on and off the field in Florida.
The Lee County school board recently passed the state’s first sportsmanship resolution, imparting students, coaches, and administrators the responsibility to "promote the highest standards of sportsmanship at all times…to ensure fair play, respect, and graciousness in winning or losing."
The resolution grants principals and coaches full control over their students’ behavior, with violators subject to disciplinary action.
It can be tough to control emotions during play, but the kids are learning the right thing to do. "Everyone on the field has thought about [retaliation]," senior soccer player Katie Maschmeyer told The News-Press, "but you’ve got to be mature enough to walk away."
[www.news-press.com, 4/12/07]
Obstacles are those frightful things
you see when you
take your eyes off your goal.
-- Henry Ford, automaker (1863-1947)
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COLLEGIATE SPORTS
Coach to Team: "Sweep Up Your Mess"
When the Notre Dame football team travels to Beaver Stadium to play the Nittany Lions on September 8, it’s a good bet the mammoth 107,282-seat stadium will be standing-room only. This year, though, the Penn State players won’t be happy about that. Not happy at all.
Because they’re going to have to clean up the entire stadium afterward. And at every other home game this season. They must also build a house for Habitat for Humanity and volunteer for the Special Olympics during the summer.
That’s because of the actions of at least 15 players who were involved in an ugly off-campus brawl resulting in six arrests, and because of the courage and principles of 80-year-old head coach Joe Paterno, who handed down the edict.
"Our kids were wrong; this is a team embarrassment," he told the Harrisburg Patriot-News. "We’re all going to do it – not just the kids involved -- ‘cause we’re in it together."
That means picking up the garbage, sweeping the stairs, and hosing the stands down. The nasty job is traditionally done by students who play in club sports like rugby and crew, which need the $5,000 the stadium normally pays for clean-up. Paterno said the clubs will still get their money, but the multimillion-dollar football team will do the work.
"This is easily the greatest punishment in recent collegiate history," declared Yahoo sports columnist Dan Wetzel. "In a coaching business so full of phonies who talk character only to bend the rules, here’s Joe Pa four decades on the job and not giving a damn – except about what’s right."
[www.yahoo.com, 5/22/07]
You always pass failure
on the way to success.
-- Mickey Rooney, actor
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PROFESSIONAL SPORTS
Could a Locker Room Assistant
Splinter Baseball?
What do a night watchman, an intern, and a clubhouse assistant have in common? Each triggered what could be the three biggest scandals in recent U.S. history.
• If Frank Willis, a sharp-eyed night watchman, hadn’t noticed a piece of tape over a door latch at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, the Watergate debacle may never have happened.
• If Monica Lewinsky, a 22-year-old White House intern, hadn’t been hired, President Bill Clinton may never have been impeached.
• And if Kirk Radomski, a career locker-room gofer, hadn’t agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors, the ongoing Major League Baseball investigation may never have progressed beyond the fact-finding stage.
Radomski, a former New York Mets "clubbie" who used to work for tips in the Shea Stadium visitors clubhouse, recently pleaded guilty in a San Francisco federal courthouse to supplying dozens of yet-to-be-named major leaguers with steroids and then laundering the drug money.
Facing up to 25 years in prison and a half million dollars in fines, he has agreed to talk, handing over all his financial records, player contacts, and distribution lists.
Commissioner Bud Selig suddenly has a lot more to worry about than whether or not he shows up when Barry Bonds breaks Henry Aaron’s career home-run record.
[www.espn.com, 5/3/07; The New York Times, 5/13/07]
Golf has humbled, humiliated,
and just about licked
all the great athletes who tried it.
-- Early "Red" Blaik, college football coach (1897-1989)
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PROFESSIONAL SPORTS
Phoenix Suns’ Character Lapse May
Have Cost Team the Title
In one of the dumbest brain freezes in NBA playoff history, Phoenix Suns all-star center Amare Stoudemire and swingman Boris Diaw, responding to an on-court altercation, left the bench in Game 4 of their NBA Western Conference semifinal series with the San Antonio Spurs.
Both players were suspended for the crucial fifth game, which the favored Suns, boasting the second-best record in the league, lost at home. They went on to lose the series.
In his forthcoming two-volume Encyclopedia of Sports Parenting, founder and executive director Dan Doyle of the Center for Sports Parenting devotes a chapter to The Nine Rules of Competitive Self-Restraint. He explains the importance of "emotional regulation" and how to maintain self control during sports competition – and in other life situations.
1. Be prepared to get bumped, hit, or shoved. Don’t take it personally or allow it to upset you.
2. Don’t hit back, retaliate, or argue if you’re accidentally or intentionally struck.
3. Let officials and coaches deal with problems. Avoid confrontational eye contact, posturing, or nasty comments because they can ignite tensions.
4. Don’t allow yourself to get upset. Doing so can hurt another player or yourself, embarrass yourself and your team, get you kicked out of the game or suspended, or disrupt the focus of yourself and your team.
5. Mentally practice self-control to prevent being caught off guard when an incident occurs.
6. Practice the "don’t punch back, play harder" motto.
7. Never use profanity or trash talk with players, coaches, officials, or spectators. Such actions can provoke a fight.
8. Never copy poor behavior by sports professionals. Athletic skill alone does not make someone a role model. True role models combine athletic skill with good sportsmanship, good character, self-control, and hard work.
9. Play as hard as you can within the rules.
[www.internationalsport.com]
A hero is one who knows how to
hang on one minute longer.
-- Norwegian Proverb
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GOOGLING
with Kobe Bryant |
NBA procedures, new jersey number (81)
Amazon, Basketball Assists for Dummies
Jerry Buss, poker history, susceptibility to bluffs
Hallmark bon voyage e-cards, team roster
iTunes, “I Love L.A.”, Kevin Garnett address
Real estate prices, Philly, NY
Bling-Bling Jewelers, rings, Jerry West address
ITunes, “Break Up to Make Up,” Shaq address
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One that desires to excel
should endeavor in those things that are
in themselves most excellent.
-- Epictetus, Greek philospher (ca. 55 - ca. 135)
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JOCKS BEHAVING BADLY
Jaguars, Bengals Take Early Lead
in 2008 Mug Shots …
The Cincinnati Bengals won last year’s police line-up competition with nine players (including six of their 2005-06 draft picks) arrested in a nine-month span for off-field incidents. It seems the Jacksonville Jaguars appear to want the crown this year, though. With five players charged with crimes since September, the squad has been dubbed "Bengals South."
Not to be outdone, Bengals linebacker A. J. Nicholson, one of the nine players arrested last year, was charged with domestic violence last month. Until then, the team had gone four months without an arrest.
The good news is that the two teams finally seem to be getting the message, if not their players. Two days after Jaguars cornerback Ahmad Carroll was arrested on weapon and drug charges last month, the team released him. Three days after Nicholson’s incident, he too, was gone.
[The Florida Times-Union, 3/18/07; www.aolsportsblog.com, 5/6/07; http://cbs.sportsline.com, 5/7/07; http://slam.canoe.ca, 5/18/07]
It's better to deserve honors
and not have them than to have them
and not deserve them.
-- Mark Twain, author, humorist (1835-1910)
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JOCKS BEHAVING EXCEPTIONALLY
Athletes to Help Athletes Build Character …
It’s one of those "Why didn’t anyone think of this before?" concepts. With so much negative publicity about athletes in the news, a handful of all-stars decided it was time they took matters into their own hands.
In 2006, legendary icons from a cross-section of individual and team sports -- Andre Agassi, Muhammad Ali, Lance Armstrong, Warrick Dunn, Jeff Gordon, Mia Hamm, Tony Hawk, Andrea Jaeger, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Mario Lemieux, Alonzo Mourning, and Cal Ripken, Jr. -- founded Athletes for Hope, a nonprofit organization that aims to inspire and help athletes to get involved in philanthropic endeavors, enhance the positive contributions they make to society, and create a movement for positive change.
Launched just last month, the group’s website got more than 120,000 hits in its first 48 hours. The site, www.athletesforhope.org, will soon offer a newsletter, inspirational stories, and volunteer opportunities for others to join the cause.
Coming Off the Bench in a Big Way …
Ira Newble, a seven-year benchwarmer for three different teams (the latest being the Cleveland Cavaliers), is not a household name, but on the world stage he is an emerging all-star.
After reading a USA Today profile of English professor Eric Reeves of Smith College in Massachusetts, who is a passionate Darfur activist, Newble was so moved that he immersed himself in the Sudanese crisis. Gathering research, fact sheets, and articles about the conflict, he put copies in every teammate’s locker. The result was a letter, signed by all but three players, that was sent to the Chinese government because it supplies the Sudanese government with money and weapons in return for oil.
The letter read, in part: "We, as potential athletes in the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, cannot look on with indifference to the massive human suffering and destruction that continue in the Darfur region." It urges the Chinese government "to use all available diplomatic resources and economic pressure to end the agony."
There’s just one snag: The NBA recently announced plans for an NBA China program, the players union has partnered with a Chinese corporation, and LeBron James was named the league’s ambassador to the country.
James, who has a $90 million endorsement contract with Nike, which has extensive dealings with China, was one of the three Cavalier players who did not sign the letter. The second was Damon Jones, who has an endorsement deal with Li Ning, a Chinese shoe company. David Wesley, the third player, is away from the team tending to family matters.
Newble has since contacted many of the NBA’s 400-plus players and plans to do the same to the player unions of the NFL and Major League Baseball.
[The New York Times, 5/13/07, 5/15/07]
One Role Model We Could All Emulate …
Chicago Bulls forward Luol Deng was presented with the NBA’s sportsmanship award this year. The Joe Dumars Trophy, named after the Detroit Piston’s Hall of Fame guard and the award’s inaugural recipient, honors the player who best exemplifies ethical behavior, fair play, and integrity.
In the annual vote by players, Deng edged out Shane Battier of the Houston Rockets, Derek Fisher of the Utah Jazz, Elton Brand of the Los Angeles Clippers, Joe Johnson of the Atlanta Hawks, and Anthony Parker of the Toronto Raptors.
"I haven’t told my parents yet," Deng told the Associated Press, "but for them it means a lot more than any other award. I can win awards on the basketball court, but this is on and off the court. They will appreciate I’m being recognized for who I am."
[Associated Press, 5/3/07]
Philly High School Athletes Sure Get Fired Up …
Shotputting requires strength, quickness, and fearlessness. All came into play when Germantown High School hosted West Philadelphia in a track meet last month.
As Germantown’s Dwyne Hall, Sherood Graham, and Jerome Plant and West Philly’s Kyle Young began their competition on the southeast corner of the stadium, charcoal-black smoke billowed from the second floor of a house across the street. A woman’s voice cried for help.
"These young men just took off, no hesitation," Germantown boys’ and girls’ coach Stephany Tate-Yancey told The Philadelphia Inquirer. "They scaled the 8-foot-high fence and went right over."
The four youths found an elderly woman inside and guided her out. She was wearing only undergarments, so one of the boys gave her his sweatpants, the other his hoodie. After the incident, the four shotputters resumed the competition on the track field.
It was the second act of heroics by league athletes during the year. Last September, while walking home from practice, three Overbrook High School football players rescued another elderly woman from a burning house.
[www.philly.com, 5/3/07]
Softball Rivals Bowl Each Other Over …
Competition between Geneva and Batavia, rival high schools in northern Illinois, had become so contentious in recent years that the atmosphere was unhealthy. So Geneva’s girl’s softball coach Greg Dierks invited Batavia’s team to go bowling.
Instead of a gutter ball, his idea was a strike. Jim Schmitz, the opposing coach, and his players embraced the idea. Dierks’s players, although initially unsure, loved it once they got to the bowling alley.
Seniors and freshmen from both schools formed one team, and sophomores and juniors from both squads comprised the other. "We forgot what names were on the jerseys," one Geneva player told the Daily Herald. "It was fun."
Schmitz marveled at how the event turned out. "You get to see the players in a different light. It helps build respect between the schools and coaches, too."
[Daily Herald, 3/22/07]
Community Helps Save Rival’s Program …
Archrivals Cold Spring Harbor and Roosevelt of Long Island, New York, located just 14 miles apart, have each won four division IV high school football championships in the last decade. The schools met in 2004 and 2005 for the crown. But last season, they nearly didn’t play at all.
Faced with a budgetary crisis, Roosevelt administrators decided to eliminate its entire interscholastic sports program in 2006.
Cold Spring Harbor said no way. They couldn't imagine a season without Roosevelt on their schedule. Through car washes, concession sales, donations, a contribution from the NFL, and an anonymous gift of $20,000 from a Cold Spring Harbor businessman, Roosevelt’s season was saved.
"We’re excited to reach out to our friends in Roosevelt," Cold Spring Harbor’s superintendent, Dr. Whitney Vantine, told The New York Times. "They would do the same for us."
[www.sportsillustrated.cnn.com; www.nytimes.com; www.liua.org]
A Few More Sportsmanship Lessons From the CIF …
Once again, our friends from the California Interscholastic Federation are showing how sportsmanship can suffuse schools statewide by routinely recognizing exemplary behavior. Here are the latest examples:
• From Archbishop Mitty High School women’s swim coach Thomas Miller to Palo Alto athletic director Earl Hansen:
I want to commend swim coach Danny Dye for his exceptional sportsmanship this past weekend at the CCS Swimming and Diving Championships.
When we won, Danny was the first coach to congratulate me and honor the girls for overcoming adversity (we DQ’d a relay in trials) and finishing the meet as champions. I have known Danny for a long time and he continues to exhibit the true nature of high school sports. He is gracious and humble in victory or defeat.
Congratulations on having a great example for your student-athletes.
• From Leland High School tennis coach Pam Headley to the CIF:
So much attention is given to what’s wrong with high school sports, I thought you should know the other side of that. Bellarmine’s team came to our school for a match.
The Bells dominated the contest, taking 6 of 7 matches. In the process, your athletes conducted themselves with integrity and maturity not often found in high school athletes. Despite being heavily favored, your athletes were not arrogant or cocky; they were good sportsmen throughout. Their behavior is exactly what high school sports should be about and much of the credit belongs to coach Tyler Hansbrough.
He has obviously instilled in his players the positive values that so often are left out of athletics. He is running a program of which you can be proud.
• Witnessed at the conclusion of the CCS Track Championships at Gilroy High School:
After the meet, the top two finishers, Bellarmine and Los Gatos, asked Gilroy coach Jeff Myers to take their picture together. That’s how to show respect for your opponents!
Want a Free Sportsmanship Patch?
We sent each of those who contributed an item a free Pursuing Victory With Honor patch for telling us about honorable deeds on and off the field of play.
We'll send you one, too, if you send us your stories at CharacterCountssports@jiethics.org. Put "Jocks Behaving Exceptionally" in the subject box.
You can also report acts of good sportsmanship to the NCAA's Committee on Sportsmanship and Ethical Conduct by clicking here.
One machine can do the work
of 50 ordinary men.
No machine can do the work
of one extraordinary man.
-- Elbert Hubbard, writer, publisher (1856-1915)
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 COMMENTARY BY
MICHAEL JOSEPHSON
Trading With the Devil
According to legend, Dr. Faust traded his soul to the devil for knowledge and magical powers. In "Damn Yankees," an updated version of the legend, an avid Washington Senators baseball fan makes a similar deal to become a home-run hitting star who leads the Senators to a pennant over the Yankees.
That’s one context for the exhaustively documented revelations that Barry Bonds broke the home-run record of another cheater, Mark McGwire, by using an elaborately designed combination of steroids, growth hormones, and other drugs to build muscle and power.
The recent book Game of Shadows by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams confirmed and added interesting detail to the obvious: Bonds’s late career change in appearance and his emergence as the greatest power hitter in the history of the game was the result of "juice," the slang term for illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Apparently, he began pumping up his performance and his body in 1999. That means two hundred or so of his 746 home runs were illegal and his true lifetime batting average would sink below .300.
Bonds’s record of 73 homers in a season, his unprecedented string of Most Valuable Player Awards for 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004, and his batting-average titles for 2002 (.370) and 2004 (.362) should be, but won’t be, expunged, though they will surely be demeaned by a footnote.
He will probably never be adjudicated a cheater in a court of law, but the evidence is good enough in the court of public opinion, which means he will surely end his career in disgrace. And so he will join scores of prominent athletes sentenced to the Hall of Shame for trading honor, reputation and, perhaps, their souls for the fool’s gold of immortality -- the adulation of sports fans and the glory of setting records.
At the root of these unwise and immoral trades with the devil is the cheater’s illusion that satisfying an obsessive lust will create lasting pleasure and that, in the end, they will find a way to cheat the devil, too.
The lessons go well beyond sports: Never do something that will work out only if it is never found out, never trade honor for glory, and never trade the future for today.
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.
For an archive of Mr. Josephson's commentaries with audio files, go to: www.CharacterCounts.org/knxtoc.htm.
To receive free weekly e-mail, including all five of Mr. Josephson's commentaries from that week, please sign up at: www.CharacterCounts.org/newsletters.htm.
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