Ethics Bob

I went to the USC-UCLA football game last night, and saw lots of excitement and color—the tailgate feasts, the reunions—planned and unplanned—of old college pals and acquaintances, the bands playing, cheerleaders cheering, and the USC crowd exhorting star quarterback Matt Barkley to return, chanting “One more year.”

Then there was the game: exciting for a while if you were, like me, a Trojan fan, but without suspense as the Trojans won, 50-0.

It was easy to cheer for USC, harder if you were a UCLA fan, but the Bruins have had their day, and will in the future. No mixed feelings as you cheered your team on.

How different if you were a fan of the long-doormat Detroit Lions of the NFL professional football league. The Lions are 7-4, well placed to make the playoffs for the first time since 1999. Their offense is led by quarterback Matt Stafford, their defense by the ferocious Ndamukong Suh.

But it’s no fun cheering for Suh, who along with his formidable talent is one of the dirtiest players in all of football—or any other sport. Thursday in a rage, he stomped on the unprotected arm of an opposing player who was flat on the ground. The play is sickening enough to suck all the joy out of watching the game.

Suh isn’t the first NFL star to use his cleated shoe to maim an opposing player. Several years ago Tennessee Titan star defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth stripped the helmet off a prostrate opponent, tried to stomp on his head, missed, then connected with a second stomp, opening a severe wound on the victim’s forehead, narrowly missing his right eye, and requiring 30 stitches to close. Haynesworth’s notoriety was rewarded when the Washington Redskins signed him to a seven year, $100 million contract.

Nor is professional football the only sport sullied by ugly cheap shots. Just this June the Los Angeles Lakers star seven foot/285 pound center, Andrew Bynum, viciously fouled the Dallas Mavericks’ six foot/175 pound guard J.J.Barea, in what the play-by-play announcer called “one of the most bush-league, disgusting things I’ve ever seen.”

And don’t get me started on professional hockey, where every team employs an “enforcer” to injure opponents.

Haynesworth, Suh, and Bynum all apologized—sooner or later—but their apologies, even if sincere, which is doubtful, don’t make it easy to root for them to win their next games. Lions fan? Laker fan? Ugh. I’ll stick to college ball, where the best coaches, like Oregon’s Chip Kelly and LSU’s Les Miles, punish dirty play with suspensions or expulsion from their teams.

Tags: Albert Haynesworth, Andrew Bynum, Bruins, Chip Kelly, Dallas Mavericks, Detroit Lions, enforcers, ethics, J.J.Barea, Les Miles, Los Angeles Lakers, LSU, Matt Barkley, Matt Stafford, Oregon, professional hockey, stomping, Suh, Tennessee Titans, Trojans, USC-UCLA game, Washington Redskins

This entry was posted on November 27, 2011 at 11:18 pm and is filed under Apologies, Ethics-general, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.