Most professional athletes should just thank their lucky stars, shut up and play ball

I’ve always been more interested in the phenomenon that makes multi-millionaire celebrities of barely literate athletes than in the games these athletes play. And, no sport perpetuates this phenomenon more than the National Football League (NFL) in the United States.

I know many intellectual and social snobs who resent the millions these educationally challenged, mostly black players make. But I think they deserve every penny they get. Moreover, I think young football players who are treated as little more than indentured servants by U.S. colleges and universities should also be compensated commensurate with the millions of dollars they generate for these “academic” institutions; especially since so few of them ever make it to the professional ranks.

Indeed, this is precisely why I find it incomprehensible that so many professional athletes do mindless things that jeopardise their million-dollar salaries: like Latrell Sprewell who assaulted his coach because he didn’t like the coach’s “attitude” during practice; or James Worthy who solicited street prostitutes despite having his pick of groupies galore at team hotels; or Ricky Williams who routinely violated the league’s drugs policy despite claiming he did not have a drug problem. (Imagine a perfectly sane mind that would risk fame, glory and a $5 million pay check for “a few joints”.) Then, there’s Terrell Owens (T.O.) who continually slandered the team owner who pays his salary, undermined the esprit de corps amongst his teammates (by repeatedly impugning their professionalism in the press) and pulled all kinds of publicity stunts that embarrassed the NFL (like delaying a nationally televised game to autograph footballs).

Terrell Owens (L) doing perhaps the only thing he does better than playing football; which is bitching at his teammate, quarterback Donovan McNabb, for failing to throw him the ball so that he could win the game all by himself…

T.O. is easily one of the most gifted athletes to ever play professional football. And, he was instrumental in helping the Philadelphia Eagles make it to the Super Bowl last season, where they lost to the very team-spirited (and appropriately named) New England Patriots.

Yet, ironically, most Americans know T.O. from the infamous TV commercial he made with Desperate Housewives star Nicollette Sheridan last year. The commercial portrayed him as all too willing to abandon his teammates (and his good sense) at game time for a romp with a blonde bimbo.

What we did not know at the time, despite reports of his “competitive feuds” with McNabb, was that T.O. had already worn out his welcome in Philadelphia with his selfish antics and disruptive behaviour. Therefore, his teammates were probably more relieved than shocked when team owners announced on Monday that T.O. had been, in effect, fired!

In fact, according to the Washington Post, T.O. was suspended without pay for 4 games and will lose approximately $200,000 for each of those games. The Eagles will then have to pay him about $1 million to keep him off the field for the final five games of the season because they’ve declared that they don’t want him anywhere near their team ever again….

Of course, the cocky T.O. probably expects that his carefully worded but badly read apology will suffice to get the Eagles or some other team to take another gamble on him – just as teams have done routinely for unruly but really talented athletes in all sports. But I hope even this “win at all cost” mentality slaps T.O. in the face. And, that no team picks up his contract which was scheduled to pay him $770,000 in 2006, $5.5 million in 2007, $6.5 million in 2008, $7.5 million in 2009, and $8.5 million in 2010. Because only then will such misguided, self-obsessed and utterly irresponsible athletes appreciate how truly fortunate they are.

Indeed, the best resolution of this saga for the NFL (and for all of professional sports) would be for T.O. to be denied the opportunity to play another football game for the rest of his life!

Note: The insolent and asinine behaviour of athletes like T.O. is bad is enough. But what I find particularly incomprehensible is, quite frankly, that they risk their professional careers knowing full well that the vast majority of them do not have the education and skills to get other gainful employment. Unlike an investment banker, for example, who would have a much easier time if he gets fired for displaying similar unprofessional traits.

Endnote: To get sense of how immune NFL players have become to the consequences of their bad behaviour, bear in mind when reading this story that some of them are often arrested one day and returned to the field the next. The story involves two NFL cheerleaders who were arrested for “engaging in conduct embarrassing to the team” (the Carolina Panthers). Suffice it to note that these two Sapphic pom pom girls became violent when female patrons at a bar in Tampa, Florida challenged them for taking up too much time in one of the few bathroom stalls….

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