Over the past few months, I have listened and watched how people react to news stories, and then over-react to levels that becomes irrational.
Time and again, society treats sports and entertainment like a domestic ecstasy. It’s a perfect world outside of the real world we live in, which is broken, insane, and imperfect. And once again, society point their scornful finger at sports and entertainment for being exactly what society is: broken, insane, and imperfect.
Sports mirrors society, but most of us choose to ignore that aspect. We demand perfection from those we look up to and yet we fail to see those flaws in ourselves.
I sit back with amusement. Why? Because I’m not shocked by the level of domestic violence, drug use, and criminal activity and other things that have beset the sports world, and in Hollywood.
A book I read in 1998 and I still have on my bookshelf pulled back the curtain on crime and sports back then, and we turned a blind eye and ignored it.
Jeff Benedict and Don Yeager wrote an eye-opening book titled “Pros and Cons” about the disturbing trend of violence in the NFL, on and off the field. What Benedict and Yeager exposed could easily be applied to baseball, hockey, and soccer. Back then, the internet was a new thing and “Inside Edition” was where we went to get the skinny on “everything”.
It is recommended reading for those who hasn’t followed the history of how crime intertwines with sports. After reading it, you won’t be so “shocked” by what we are seeing now.
Society feeds off of sensational stories that gets us talking and reacting, which is our modus operandi on social media, rather than making a concerted, genuine effort to understand issues. Most of us are too lazy to delve into topics that are complex and hard to sort out.
Unpopular opinion: TMZ is not a news source, regardless how many stories they have broken or videos they have leaked. TMZ’s main purpose is to out celebrities and record their behavior, even if it means paying paparazzi and unscrupulous people to get pictures and videos of famous people in compromising positions.
Individuals like Benedict, Yeager, and others, have researched, discussed, and talked about these topics involving violence in sports long before everyone else. It’s unfortunate that it took so long. No, Keith Olbermann, Dan Patrick, and Colin Cowherd doesn’t get credit for “bringing light” to these subjects. They’re just like the rest of us: whatever is the big story, they’ll pontificate about it to the public.
Sports mirrors life: there are a lot of ugly stuff going on that we think we know, but don’t know. We need to stop treating sports like a fairy-tale nirvana, because the choices and decisions that are made, as in the case of the NFL, are the same things that people make in the real world.
Some good and some bad, some really bad and some pretty good.
We just hate to admit that. It’s always someone else’s fault.
Civility Is Not Dead...Yet 