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NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s ruling against the New Orleans Saints for the team’s “bounty system” is just another example of a run of bad sports news in the past few years.
Start with Penn State, then add USC, Uiversity of Miami, Ohio State, Syracuse, Ndamukong suh’s stomp, and Floyd Mayweather’s cheap shot. Reach back a little farther and you get Alberto Contador and before him Floyd Landis being stripped of Tour de France wins for doping, and you get Bill Belichick’s sideline video cheating scandal for the Boston Patriots. There are far more examples than those listed here.
Not all these examples are of the same level or concern. Some have argued that people over-reacted to certain occurrences, like for example the memorabilia-for-tattoos scenario at Ohio State. Certainly the child sexual molestation issues at Penn State and Syracuse are as bad as things get. Whatever your take on some of these instances, they all represent a hit on sportsmanship.
The New Orleans Saints “bounty system,” bonus pay for intentionally harming other teams’ players to knock then out of games represents a total disregard for sportsmanship. Not only did members of the Saints coaching staff ignore rules, they later lied to the NFL about their practice, and over at least three years stepped on ethics and fair play. What makes this situation a scandal is that not one or two but many people, coaches and players, colluded to make this scheme happen.
The Saints-that-ain’t worked together in multi-person cheating, lack of integrity, absence of ethics, and disregard for sportsmanship. It’s not unlike Enron or Arthur Andersen of a few years ago, just a different playing field.
Sportsmanship is the idea that sports teams can meet on a court or field of play for fair, honest, and by-the-rules competition. Any effort to gain advantage outside simply the talent and skill and desire of players participating in the event is a form of cheating. Such efforts destroy the integrity of sport, remove from it the joy and beauty of athletics, and reduce the competition to a conflict.
What’s even worse about the New Orleans Saints’ “bounty” is that it aimed at hurting other team’s athletes. This system was set up to damage not just fair play and competition but the health, wellbeing, and possibly livelihood of opposing athletes. It was a form of paying people for assault.
I was never all that warm to Roger Goodell, though I don’t know why. I’m in his camp now. The New Orleans Saints deserved to have the book thrown at them, and Goodell demonstrated far more backbone than most sports commissioners have been known to evidence. He conducted an investigation, found the evidence, and applied the penalty. For this we might in a few years be lauding him for helping restore some sportsmanship in professional sports. Now if only the NCAA could find its own Goodell.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2012
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.
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Authorities confiscate the weapon and call for lockdown when grade school children show up at school with knives, even penknives. And sadly, perhaps they must. It’s the world we live in today.
But it was different when I was a kid. From the time I was in about 5th Grade well into my 20s I carried a penknife everywhere I went. It wasn’t a weapon. It was an all-purpose, highly functional tool.
My penknives came in different sizes, colors, and styles. I loved and lost them all. Somehow they eventually found a way out of my pocket and turned up missing, permanently. This was always a sad moment—my “friend” was gone—but it also meant I could pick a new one.
I used my penknife for whittling, playing “Mumbly-Peg,” cutting things as needed when I was in the field or woods (which was often), and later as a young teacher, cutting out newspaper articles for later reference. Having a penknife in my pocket was a kind of ready necessity for going out into the world.
I was not all that different from a lot of young guys at the time. Many of us carried penknives and no one intended to use and certainly never did use them in a threatening manner. Our penknives were just a part of coming of age, one symbol and artifact of our manhood. No middle class young man in the 50s and 60s grew up without a penknife.
It’s interesting to note how much culture has changed, even with respect to something as simple as a penknife. Today, they’re used by hunters and workmen but aren’t much in evidence anywhere else. As I noted earlier, schools now have extensive policies referencing all manner of items qua weapons. Any kid showing up with a penknife is considered a threat. I’m not taking shots at schools for this. But it’s a sour comment on where we find ourselves in the early 21st Century.
So maybe I’m a member of the last penknife generation? I don’t know. But I’m glad for my penknife memories. They bring back a time too soon gone.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2012
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.
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After spending a week in the Middle East (MENA for Middle East and North Africa) here are a few of the things I’ve learned, confirmed, or reaffirmed:
*The MENA social and political turmoil the West calls “revolutions” can more accurately be described as “evolutions.“
*"Arab Spring” is a misnomer in that the social unrest in various countries in the region are not just Arab and not characterized by much that fits a metaphor like spring.
*Some protestors may want religious rule, but most want personal freedoms, economic opportunity, justice, and liberation from corrupt regimes.
*Much of MENA government-aided or generated turmoil the West assigns to religious influence is actually rooted in the classic triumvirate of power, politics, and greed.
*“Regional culture” exists but not generally to the level people in the West believe—the political and social culture of each MENA nation is different from other nations.
*The dominant religions of MENA are not impregnable socially or spiritually, meaning followers may turn and are turning to other faiths.
*The Christian Church exists in MENA as a minority religion, but while suppressed, oppressed, and in some countries persecuted, the Church is also resilient, strong, and unbowed.
*People are becoming followers of Christ in every MENA country and the Church is growing faster in Iran and Algeria than most other countries of the world.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2012
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.
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I’ve heard someone use the phrase “off the reservation” several times recently. I’ve never made a habit of using the phrase, but insofar as I ever have I don’t intend to use it again.
The idea is that a person or group is perceived as acting outside typical or expected parameters. The person or group is doing something that someone else thinks isn’t quite right, going off balance, headed in a wrong or unapproved direction.
The phrase dates to the late 19th Century after most Indian or Native American tribes had been given (forcibly moved to) “Reservations,” large tracts of land in Oklahoma or Arizona, for example, land generally unwanted by non-Indians. The tribes had fought, sometimes over decades, an inevitably unsuccessful war for their ancestral lands and eventually surrendered in order for at least tribal remnants to survive. It was a period of systematic subjugation, even genocide, of the Red Man by the White Man.
From time to time in the next few years, Indians who left the reservation in frustration or desperation were called “renegades” and were hunted down because they’d gone “off the reservation.”
The phrase “off the reservation” is therefore an historical leftover. I hear it used, but I don’t like it. Even though I’m not particularly “politically correct,” the phrase strikes me as a kind of antiquated reference harking back to a sorry and shameful time in American history. The phrase perpetuates the idea that certain people or groups are subhuman and ought to be controlled for their own good.
This entire blog sprang fully developed into my mind when I heard a person use “off the reservation” during a conversation about how two different kinds of ethnic groups didn’t get along. The person who said it was making a point with which I agreed and is a man of character and solid values. But he seemed oblivious to the irony of using this particular phrase in the midst of a conversation about prejudice, hatred, and violence between people groups.
I don’t think using the phrase “off the reservation” is a mortal sin, not even a venial one. But I still don’t like its roots and what it implies. For me at least, I’ll find a different way to talk about someone or some group going rogue.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2012
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.
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Tragedy is a fact of human life, or at least of human history. What seems to us to be terrible outcomes and heartbreak happen weekly somewhere in the world. Harm and death to thousands caused by disasters, floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, accidents, hurricanes, tornadoes, "Acts of God," so many they run together in our minds.
Is God even aware? Is he involved? And if he is involved, why does a loving and just God allow human suffering? Does he care?
Tragedies are sometimes explained by a Christian worldview in terms of "theodicy." It's an attempt to reconcile the character of God--omniscience, omnipotence, love, righteousness--with human degradation, pain, evil, and suffering, including that which emanates from nature's weather.
Theodicy is a word Christians should learn. It helps bring perspective, meaning, and perhaps understanding to tragedy. Think with me some more on this topic:
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2012
This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.
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Many media outlets are using the term “anti-gay” for certain presidential candidates’ convictions that homosexuality is immoral. The term is, or at least could be, misleading.
It’s misleading because one who believes homosexuality is wrong is not necessarily ipso facto “anti-gay,” meaning against people who choose or live a homosexual or lesbian lifestyle.
To be honest, though, it could be. It is unfortunately true that some people who believe homosexual behavior is wrong also reject, demean, or otherwise dismiss gays or lesbians. It’s even sadly true that some of these people hate and a few have done violence to gay or lesbian people. None of this is justifiable under any moral code, of course, but still, these people act as immorally in different ways as they accuse gays and lesbians of acting sexually.
What I object to, though, is media’s easy equation of convictions about the morality of homosexuality with anti-gay attitudes and behaviors. Because one believes homosexuality is wrong, as I noted above, does not mean one is anti-gay—any more than a person believing heterosexual adultery is wrong makes him or her “anti-straight.” This logic is illogical.
I know many people who hold deep-seated views, based upon their religious convictions, that homosexuality in any of its forms is immoral, wrong, and a sin. Nearly all of these people are also compassionate toward those who involve themselves in homosexuality, and I don’t know anyone who wants to make homosexuality a crime. Nor do any of these people want to deny gays or lesbians their civil liberties, available and guaranteed to them like any other American—including immoral heterosexuals.
This means, for example, that one can believe homosexuality is immoral and improper while at the same time working productively with persons involved in gay or lesbian relationships. They can believe homosexuality is wrong yet be friends with, even appreciate the talents and personality of, gay or lesbian people, just like most of them do with heterosexuals involved in any number of immoral activities.
So it is inaccurate for media automatically to describe someone as “anti-gay” simply because he or she believes homosexuality is immoral.
As long as media persists in this inaccurate portrayal it does a disservice to the person being so-labeled, misleads the American people, and sacrifices the reputation of the media involved
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2012
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.