Another day another sporting icon falls do to suspected infidelity.
Brett Favre is following in the footsteps of Big Ben chasing college chicks, Tiger Woods and his taste for waitresses, and Roger Clemens who had Mindy McCready singing his name.
That’s just the last 12 months.
And as tawdry and delicious as this may be to the ears of so many it still should not be news.
I shouldn’t have to wake up to the news about Brett Favre sexting Jenn Sterger, a sideline reporter with the New York Jets during his brief stint in the Big Apple, and then being hit with the under whelming photos and punch lines of his manhood.
Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t want to burst your bubble but athletes can be dogs just like the rest of mankind — actually I would say the ratio is probably higher with the athletically gifted.
They’re often rich. Generally really good looking — at the least have a great body. People fawn over them. They are used to getting their way. And many of them have the moral compass of an ethically challenged hormonal teenager.
One of the big stories emanating from the Commonwealth Games was that disposed of condoms were causing toilets to become plugged at the athletes village.
At the Olympics in Vancouver, they ran out of condoms for the athletes, and really the rest of the city. They had to be shipped in from the other side of the country.
But really these athletes aren’t anything special or different than the rest of society, except they can run fast, shoot a golf ball real far or throw 100 mile per hour heat.
Ryan Smyth once famously said that if it wasn’t for hockey he’d be flipping burgers. I’m sure that remark isn’t too far off for many athletes.
They really are no different in their infidelity than the oil worker, truck driver, journalist, a CEO, or U.S. presidents.
The sad thing is this is what’s passing for an increasing amount of sports journalism today.
People are ready to lap up every comment that is distributed by the tabloids at the checkout counter or by Deadspin.com or on TMZ.
But it’s all the same. It’s all trash that borders on smut.
It takes away from real sports stories like that of former player agent Josh Luchs who will bore his soul to George Dorhmann of Sports Illustrated in a story called Confessions of an agent which details the ins and outs of player recruitment by sports agents.
At first glance it doesn’t seem like much, but it is at the foundation of the corruption of a multi-billion dollar industry — an issue that has led to a number of investigations and cost coaches wins, programs national titles, Reggie Bush a Heisman trophy, and everyone involved hundreds of millions of dollars.
That’s a sports story.
It’s built on a first hand account of someone willing to go on record. Evidence in the form of contracts and bank receipts. And third party corroboration.
It’s not built on rumour and bought and paid for witnesses — no one has actually proven the messages sent to the sideline reporter’s phone actually came from a phone owned by Brett Favre, or that it is even him who is so ingloriously modeled in the photos.
What Deadspin has is an uncooperative “victim,” a suspect who is not confirming or denying anything, and two other “victims” who always seem to come out of the woodwork. There is nothing concrete.
But what they can sell is the sex. The steam. And yes the fantasy.
It’s all about tearing down some one who has been built up for years.
Unfortunately it is also tearing down the industry.
jaldrich@www.reddeeradvocate.com