Sports View 05/08/2008

The world of professional sports is an absolute mess. Debauchery is in full effect among the athletically inclined and when you’re young, rich and gifted, who’s going to tell you anything different?
The NFL’s Adam “Pac Man” Jones was involved in numerous off field altercations while a member of the Tennessee Titans, including a 2007 incident inside a Las Vegas gentleman’s club that involved fist fighting and the discharge of a firearm that left one man paralyzed. Jones was recently acquired by the Dallas Cowboys for a fourth round draft pick, which made him the first player ever traded while on suspension.
Major League Baseball is no different. Steroid rumors pop up like a well cranked jack-in-the-box as highly skilled individuals like Roger Clemens, as well as journeymen like Arizona pitcher Jason Grimley, are presented with undeniable proof of their illegal activities.
The recent conjecture that Clemens had a long-time affair with country singer Mindy McCready starting when she was 15 and he was 28 certainly doesn’t help, either.
Even the National Hockey League has been knocked around by off-ice activities.
Who would’ve imagined that the sport’s greatest all-time player, Wayne Gretzky, would get swept up in the mayhem of illegal gambling allegations that extended to include Gretzky’s wife, actress Janet Jones, as well as Phoenix Coyotes assistant coach Rick Tocchet and General Manager Michael Barnett?
I remember a world where professional athletes didn’t just serve as role models, but were happy to do so. These days, prominent individuals like former NBA All-Star Charles Barkley would rather speak out against the concept of personal accountability instead of promoting individual responsibility, and that makes me sad.
So who do we look to in these tumultuous times? While there may be a multitude of young athletes just clamoring to do right in the eyes of our impressionable youth, there’s simply no Michael Jordan-like character to provide a proper example of a good role model.
My solution is this: We need the world’s most responsible sports figure to step up and knock down all that’s wrong on the landscape of American athletics. This person should hold clinics, provide one-on-one counseling and be available to the country’s up-and-coming athletes on a 24/7 basis to teach them the difference between right and wrong. That’s right sports fans, I’m talking about the one and only Mr. T.
Born May 21, 1952 as Laurence Tureaud, Mr. T was a true force of nature two decades back. He was relentless in telling children to say their prayers and take their vitamins, even going as far as making the 1984 motivational video, Be Somebody ... or Be Somebody’s Fool.
While you may not think of Mr. T as an athlete, at his Chicago high school he wrestled, studied martial arts and even earned a football scholarship to Prairie View A and M University. After leaving school to become a military policeman, Mr. T went on to try out for the Green Bay Packers.
From there, Mr. T became a bouncer and parlayed that position into his role as a bodyguard for Muhammad Ali, Bruce Lee, Leon Spinks and Joe Frazier.
In 1980, while competing in NBC’s Americas Toughest Bouncer competition, Mr. T was discovered by Sylvester Stallone, who offered him the role of Clubber Lang, a less-than-friendly pugilist looking to dethrone the champ by any means necessary in Rocky III.
What it comes down to is this: American athletes are becoming as spoiled as milk in the desert and things are only getting worse. What we need is to address this epidemic and find a solution, and I pity the fool who thinks otherwise.