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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 19, 2014)
Street roots 5 Dec. 19, 2014 DEFORD, from page 4 games. I mean that’s what they’re supposed to do. The equivalent situation would be Woodward and Bernstein, who were a couple suburban reporters who broke the biggest political story in the history of the 20th century. None of the guys covering the White House did because they covered/the White House. And so I’m not surprised that writers other than sports writers are breaking the biggest sports stories. If you look at the New York Times, the . guy who’s been the most outspoken, by far, about the NCAA, which I consider a laughing stock, is a guy named Joe Nocera, who’s an editorial columnist — he writes on the editorial page * and the New York Times surely has the largestsports staff of any paper in the country. None of its writers ever, as far as I know, dove into the NCAA. Now that begs the-question: Is that right? If you were assigned to cover UNC basketball, should you have paid attention,’ not only to what the statistics of the players were, and how they were doing, but what classes they were attending? It’s easy to say, “Well these sports writers are narrow minded stats freaks,” but the fact of the matter is that most of them have á full-time job giving the people what they want. But I do think, overall, most sports writers should have broken more stories. They should have been more attentive to what’s going on off the field than they have been. E. G.: Given your opinion o f the N CAA, what dó you think about its decision to.give the B ig 5 Division I conferences more autonomy? 12 years later. It’s the whole machine of amateur athletics in this country, which the NCAA ends up on top of. But I don’t think the AAU by itself is that prominent — just in basketball, and basketball coaches will say it’s a scourge because kids don’t learn the game. The stars just learn how to score points. If you saw the way they taught basketball in Europe, it’s just an entirely different operation, which is why there are so many European players that make the NBA, because they are just so much better grounded in fundamentals. E. G.: What about all the accusations around domestic and sexual violence with players - is this something that’s always happened and it’s only that now it’s getting more coverage? PH O TO CO URTESY OF HBO Frank Deford first reported on the Wounded Warriors amputee camps in 2011, an d is seen here revisiting the program last year in Louisville, Ky. The Wounded Warrior Softball Team is comprised o f wounded veterans adjusting to post-war life. The team hosts a n ann u a l softball . camp where child amputees come together a n d learn how to play softball from adults who, in m any ways, look ju s t like them. a rift that will become a chasm before too long. I think that’s just natural. That’s why I say that 10 years from now — 6 years from j now — I don’t know how long, it’s going to be an entirely different landscape-and that, by the way, is all underscored by the whole business about football concussions. How much longer are lots of those schools going to continue to field football teams? And football being the most important, not only .American sport, but the most important college sport. That casts a whole new F. D.: I am a complete radical when it comes to college athletics. Don’t pay any attention to irie ... I have believed for years that College athletes in the so-called revenue sports, which are football and men’s basketball,Should be paid and should be paid handsomely. The NCAAis far behind i Rhadpw over the.wliQle business.,,With.» Alabama-Birmingham dropping footbalLapd the curve and is, in effect, by allowing the they’re doing it for financial reasons, I see Big 5 a certain latitude that wasn’t there that as the first leaf in autumn as far as that before, just throwing a bone to the athletes. is concerned, but I also wonder whether They’re going to give them a little tidbit in schools, particularly the Ivy League - I’m the hopes that they’ll shush up and be good an Ivy League little boys, and I think graduate, I went to the genie is out of the Princeton, I think it’s bottle. I think that nonsense that the Ivy we’re headed for, and " I doa't th in k that young people in general h a w been League fields football I may be prejudice games - ridiculous, because I am so very engaged p o litica lly in I think there are an radicalized, but I the last lew decades the way awful lot of think that college wonderfully good fte y w e re m a v e ry ' athletics, 10 years academic universities , from now, will be an compestnoas time, w ith that are going to entirely different Vietnam and the C ivil Bights revisit the whole idea enterprise than it is of football. Do we movement, My sense Is that now. I think college really want to have now that an Issue has arisen, athletes should make such a dangerous money. I think we’re which particularly af loots sport for our young going to have to look African »American athletes, minds? That’s going to into the whole idea of change things as well, it ? s rather natural that they. - their academic there’s no question in requirements. Should come to the floor and make my mind about that. they be forced to go themselves known." And that’s going to to class at all. For work its way down into example, is high schools too. something I would Football concussions, suggest. It’s going to g • you can’t separate them from the whole idea be an entirely changed universe. Yes, I’m of changes in the NCAA. glad that the Big 5 will treat athletes a little more generously than they have, but I still E. G.: So what do you think, why not go all think it’s a sham that they’re giving them the way and ju st abolish football all together? just that little piece of cheese to keepthem F. D.: I don’t think you can do that. I’m quite. not the king of the world, but you - you go E G: Do you think that the B ig 5 having down to Alabama and try to abolish football more autonomy wilTexaggerate the gap between in Auburn and see what happens to you! I the bigger, richer schools and the smaller... think that given its popularity, it would be impossible to rein it in at all, despite all the F D • It has to. Because I think part of talk about concussions and the damage that the problem with the NCAA - and this goes football can do to you. It hasn’t been hurt back years and years - is this idea that one one iota, as far as I can tell, commercially. umbrella organization should rule over all of And because of the new college playoff, college athletics. It makes no sense for a ’ which is going to bring even more attention huge state university to be under the same to football, it’s probably.going to be the rubric as some little church school in the . most popular year in the entire history of middle of Kansas. That’s crazy! You wouldn t football. So I think, the abolition of football find that in any other has to be done university by university, thing you should do is break the NCAA tip. school by school, conference by conference. Obviously now that you have given certain And I think that’s what we’ll see, that fewer rights to some schools, it’s bound to create and fewer schools will field football teams. E, G.: Do you think there’s a way to make the sport safer without it losing its draw? F. D.: I don’t think so. I think the whole thrill of football is the danger. I mean, that’s what makes it so exciting. And if that weren’t the case, sure, we could have flag football games tomorrow, we could have a flag football Super Bowl in February, but it’s F. D.: Athletes have always been naughty . hoys, but I don’t remember the violence component. That’s one thing I do believe has changed, I’ve just been astonished by th a t,.. it seems that the players in more violent sports terid to be more violent off the field. You don’t hear a whole lot about swimmers and tennis players beating up their girlfriends. I mean I do think there is some obvious ponnectioft between the sports young men play and the violence that they exhibit and one can say, “Well the reason they pick the sport in the first place is because they are preternaturally violent... I can’t tell you why, but I believe it’s a different world in that respect. Athletes - were always sort of naughty. There was drinking arid carousing, and God knows athletes, simply because they’re sort of heroic in every society, always found it easierto attract women, right? So they were always very much involved with women, but I just don’t recall what seems to be an the éxcitementemrséemg a quarterback drop ep id em ic of v io len ce, m o stly d ire c te d to w ard b a c k a n d h u g e irysn ru sh in g a t h im a s hjg’ts w o m e n . B u t y o x i a l s o a e e i t w ith . g u n s a n d - it jrisVseemsloT5e’ 1t^m^T0?!C o ri^ i^ l'thafpa^i5The''ihsfSht"": ' fast"cars;JI much more extreme than it ever was before. before he’s clobbered. That’s tiie. thrill of football. E. G: In light o f some o f things we’ve talked I can’t see any substantive changes in the about today an d the nature o f the topics you sport or in itspopularity - people love it. -cover, does all o f if take.any o f the joy out o f And a lot of people admit it: It brings out the worst in us. Absolutely, the worst. We go being a spectator fo r you? Or do you still truly enjoy sports the way you did when you first to a basketball game or a baseball game we started out in your. career? don’t feel the same way that we do when we go to a football game, F. D.: I’ll give you a personal example, and I’m probably reflective of all sorts of other E. G.: Do you enjoy watching football? people. I grew up in Baltimore, so I’m a F. D.: I don’t enjoy it as much as I used to. Baltimore Orioles fan, right? And who’s the star of the Baltimore Orioles this year? I’m riot going to pretend to you that I don’t watch football games. I’m riot sitting up high Nelson Cruz, who had been thrown out of baseball for steroid use the year before, but and mighty and saying that it’s beneath me, now all of a sudden, he’s my Oriole, and this but I sometimes I caution myself to not like is the way I think most of us look at it — , what I’m seeing in front of me — it’s just too he’s my guy and what he did off the field damn violent. The fact that we’re the only and what he did not do in the classroom and country in the world that likes football - so forth and so on, I think we have a ? and we áre really, that’s kind of scary to me tendency to say “everybody does it” and fact too; what it says about us. And I understand of the matter is in many regards, they do. there are a lot of historic reasons about why So l turn something of a blind eye toward we have our American football and that as much as the next fellow does. It everybody else adores soccer, so it isn’t just that we are bloodthirsty Americans, there’s ; comes back to me, I mean I must say that every now and then when I’m watching a a long, illustrious history. But not game and somebody who?s been convicted . withstanding: It is father iriteresting that other American sports, baseball and of a crime appears, it pops into my mind and upsets me a little, but I’m pretty much basketball and hockey, which is a North Americari sport, have all taken seed all like all the other Romans in the Colosseum. around the world, but American football E. G.: There’s something that’s kind o f - hasn’t. comforting in knowing that. E. G.: You’ve denounced the N C A A for exploiting student athletes in the name o f saving them from exploitation. Some critics would say it doesn’t start with the N C A A but with the A m ateur Athletic Union. What do you think about that? F. D.: I don’t think it’s so much that it’s just the NCAA that’s the problem, but I also wouldn’t sriggest that it’s the AAU, which is only a subsidiary problem. It goes back to high schools and even beyond to kiddie Sports. It goes back to college scholarships, which is not the NCAA’s fault, but the parents’ fault. It’s at 7 or 8 years old, taking a-kid and having him concentrate on a sport so that maybe he’ll get a college scholarship F. D.: Well yeah, I mean we’re all human that way and you know, you spend your whole life: Should you listen to the dirty joke? Should you see a little pornography? Should you walk away from the bad things? And most of us aren’t that strong, aren’t that noble, and I include myself in that category. So Nelson Cruz is myguy! In a word, that’s it. I wish he were a paradigm of virtue. I wish the guy hitting the home runs and throwing the touchdown passes was above reproach, but if he isn’t, he’s my guy. (Laughs) We love athletes, I suppose, liker we love our children. We forgive them. emily@streetroots.org
