Kids look to the stars
I was riding a bus in Portland, Ore. in 1998, not long after both myself and former Timberwolves player J.R. Rider had moved to the Northwest from Minneapolis. Some might remember Rider’s less-than-stellar conduct while in the NBA, including his arrest for smoking pot out of a pop can.
A few rows away sat a group of four young boys who could not have been more than 10 years old. I overheard this conversation:
“You got some weed?”
“Yeah, I got some weed.”
“We ain’t got nothing to smoke out of.”
“That’s all right, we can use a pop can, like J.R. Rider.”
Now, I’m a sports fan, and I have always been careful not to expect too much from the stars off the field. I don’t expect them to be role models, or geniuses. More often than not, the sports fan who looks to on-the-field heroes to be civic ambassadors and valedictorians will have his or her heart broken. I loved Randy Moss’s touchdowns, but not his off-the-field attitude.
Maybe we learned this lesson last month, as the sports world seemed to descend to its lowest level ever. Nationally and internationally, we had doping scandals, referees fixing NBA games and Michael Vick’s alleged involvement in a cruel dog-fighting ring.
Locally, we had U of M football players accused of sexual assault — the latest in a line of college and professional player infractions, from the Vikings’ sexual antics on Lake Minnetonka to the academic cheating that set the sun on a glorious Gopher basketball program. Former Timberwolves player Eddie Griffin’s drunken SUV crash in Marcy-Holmes — allegedly under circumstances we won’t go into — really hit home for Marcy-Holmes residents.
It all brings me back to the Portland bus. I know that adults do stupid things — especially young ones with too much money and a sense of invincibility. While these incidents make me shake my head, I don’t learn anything I didn’t know before.
Apparently, kids do. Like how to create a make-shift pop pipe. Like it or not, athletes are role models, by simple virtue of the public eye.
In contrast, Minnesota said our first goodbye last month to Kevin Garnett, probably one of the classiest sports figures in this town’s history. Luckily, we’ll remember him far longer than we will the Riders and Griffins.
last revised: August 15, 2007