Scoop Jackson Says It Best

I read this article last week, but the following section is relevant after the Marcus Vick incident. I do not understand how the media chooses its stories. Read the whole article by Scoop Jackson here.

"KG and Oprah

How do you make Mother Moses cry? In a year when ball players were getting press for "str8 stupidness" it seemed strange that Kevin Garnett's written appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show went notice-free.

He wrote her a letter. They gave her the letter on-air as a surprise. In the letter, he said he wanted to donate something to her Angel Network, which was building houses for those who lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina. His pledge: To build one house per month for the next two years. That's 24 homes! Two seasons of "Extreme Makeover." Financially funded by one person with no commercial return on his donation. A gesture that should have landed him on the cover of Time alongside Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono as Persons of The Year. A gesture that made Oprah -- read it again, Oprah -- break down.

But still, no member of the media wrote a story about it. USA Today scripted a blurb; ESPN.com made a mention. But overall -- nada.

Now, let Kevin Garnett or any other athlete run a stop light; let them miss a practice unexcused; let them miss a child support payment -- Bam! Lead story on "SportsCenter," forum discussion on "Rome Is Burning," breaking news on CNN.

In an era when it is too often publicly asked: "Where are our kids' role models?"; in a society that is starved for areas of positiveness to come from our professional athletes; in a world where we have been conditioned to believe that every one of these young superstars is unappreciative, ungrateful, undeserving and a void soul, a situation arose that could have shifted the entire perception of their existence. What Kevin Garnett did was just that big.

But guess who dropped the ball? Us. The media, for not saying anything about it, and the public, for not demanding that we do.

The moral of this story: How do you make the media not pay attention to you when you are a superstar athlete? Do something humane."

Football is not important. It is a meaningless game played by boys and men with anger management problems. Sometimes we forget these facts.

I enjoy football. I played for nine years. During my first year, the coach told us "football was not about winning games; it was about becoming better men." I did not forget his teachings, even when I had coaches who did not have the security to pursue that objective.

This is what bothers me so much about the Marcus Vick situation. The men who made the decision to release Vick have implicitly preached that the objective of its football program is to win games. They make stadium additions. They get paid millions of dollars for being public servants. They pay horrible teams to come play their team. Their actions have nothing to do with making players better men. It has nothing to do with character. Nothing, all they care about is winning.

Every once in while, something (political pressure, old white alumni, the media) slaps them in the face and they get righteous. Winning is not good enough. Our team has to have character also. So, they scapegoat an individual, refuse to do any self-reflection, and continue to cash their checks. Nothing changes except a young man or a coach has to find a new job.

It is sad that the farce of the NCAA is allowed to continue. It is time for college sports to recognize and take responsibility for what objectives they are pursuing. They cannot have it both ways.