Sports and Society

SUGGESTED READING FOR PROGRAM 1 KEYNOTE ADDRESS: JUSTICE ALAN C. PAGE May 20, 1998

Justice Alan C. Page
Associate Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court
NFL Hall of Fame Player
 
 

You are here today and for the next two days to listen, learn about, and discuss ethical issues in sports. I'm pleased to be a part of this gathering.

Conversations you'll be having over the next couple of days will not only play a role in improving sports, but - to the extent that sports is a metaphor for what goes on in the real world - these discussions will have a role in improving society.

I left professional football after the 1981 football season. Since that time I have been a runner and the father of a daughter who is soon to be a graduating inter-collegiate athlete, but I haven't spent a great deal of time thinking about ethical issues as they relate solely to sport. I have, however, spent time thinking about, worrying over and working on ethical issues as they relate to the law. Thus, when I was asked to speak at this conference, I wasn't really quite sure what it was I had to offer -- especially to a group that is made up of experts in amateur and professional sports, and experts in the area of ethics. Ethical concerns arise in virtually everything we do. The issues are so broad, complex and pervasive that it is going to be a challenge to those of you attending this conference to begin to scratch the surface of the issues that you'll be discussing, let alone for me to tackle the subject in the time that I have.
One can hardly open a newspaper or turn on the evening news without finding a story about some well-known professional or amateur athlete that implicates ethical issues in sports. All too often, lately it has to do with the athlete's misbehavior whether it be in uniform or out of uniform. We hear about misconduct in legal behavior, including the possession and sale of illicit drugs, drug and alcohol abuse, and the use of violence on anyone who gets in the way, whether it's an opponent -- you can almost name any hockey player you want or you can pick anybody who was in that brawl last night in New York, a coach and of course the name Sprewell comes to mind, a photographer and there's the name Rodman -- or someone unconnected to the game, such as a bar patron, a groupie, a girlfriend or a wife. We hear about promiscuity, sexual assaults, performance enhancing drugs and the general lack of respect for both the game's and society's rules and values. And what about the importance of sportsmanship? Or should I say the rampant poor sportsmanship: the trash talk, the taunting and that dancing the players do. Has good sportsmanship lost its meaning altogether?

Now image is everything for today's athlete and I should say athlete-entertainer, especially in front of the unblinking eye of the TV camera. Once players sacrificed themselves for the good of the team. Many of today's players are more likely to sacrifice the team for themselves. The issue of greed cannot be ignored as multi-millionaire athletes and billionaire owners become the norm and their primary objective seems to be finding ways to divide up what they hope will continue to be an ever growing golden pie. Just take a look at what has happened to the Florida Marlins.

Today's athlete isn't simply a member of a team, he or she is sole proprietor of a multi-million dollar entertainment industry and it's interesting that the media just can't seem to get enough, no longer even pretending to be an objective observer. The media does everything in its power to make everything bigger than life, as though events in life itself aren't big enough in their own right without the help of sensationalism. The more sensational the story, the better it sells, I suppose. But do I really need to know the amount of a particular athlete's child support payments or do I need to know who he's sleeping with? I don't think so. Whatever happened to the day when some things were actually private?

There are other issues as well, some that affect the integrity of academic institutions nationwide. I'm talking about the fact that the NCAA, an organization whose role and sole purpose (at least as I understand it) is to regulate college athletics, is for all practical purposes setting the academic agenda for students at all grade levels - from kindergarten through college. Does anyone else in this room find this to be as bizarre as I do? I always thought that academic agendas were the coveted responsibility, particularly at the high school and elementary school levels, of the local community.

What makes me think about this in particular is the relatively recent controversy regarding college-bound athletes who are denied their athletic scholarships by the NCAA because one or more of their high school courses don't meet the NCAA's academic requirements. Whether or not these courses -- which were apparently good enough to get these students into college in the first place and good enough for them to graduate -- are good courses or not, is really not the point. Although in the case of some Minnesota athletes who have been affected by this, the courses involved were honor's courses from some of our state's best high schools. The point is that when we allow the NCAA to dictate high school curriculum and make judgments about what children need to learn, we are abdicating our responsibility.

This is the same NCAA which requires athletes to take a minimum course load each semester or quarter and requires them to make continuing progress towards their degree to remain eligible. Yet, why is it that after spending three to four years as an intercollegiate athlete so many end up no closer to earning a degree than they were when they first walked in the door? Is it time that we consider divorcing the academic enterprise from those revenue producing athletic enterprises? How else can we save the integrity of our academic institutions?

How about those athletes who spend three to four years in school but still lack some of the basic skills? During my last year with the Vikings, we had a new defensive line coach who thought that the best way to teach Jim Marshall, Carl Weller and myself how to be better football players -- how to be better defensive linemen -- was to have us read the play book in our team meetings at night. There were nine of us in the group. Now I don't know how many of you have had the opportunity to read an NFL play book, but I suspect one or two of you probably have. For those of you who haven't, the difficult words are offense, defense, block, tackle, etc. Out of the nine young men in that group, five of them couldn't read that play book. Each one of those young men had spent three to four years in some of this nation's best academic institutions. Obviously they missed out on learning how to read in the first, second and third grade -- long before they became athletes. But they, like thousands of other children before and after them, slipped through the cracks of an imperfect educational system. They were fortunate, however, to have better-than-average athletic skills which allowed them to reach a certain level of success. But what about all those others? While that was twenty years ago, I don't have a great deal of confidence that things have changed all that much.

Maybe it's time for the sports world to consider a code of conduct or code of ethics. As a lawyer, I was governed by rules on lawyers' professional responsibility. As a judge, I'm governed by the code of judicial conduct which sets the floor for ethical conduct. Certainly lawyers are not perfect and clearly there are those who fail to meet our ethical standards, but having minimal standards with a disciplinary process in place raises the ethics of everyone in the profession. Maybe it's time to at least consider such codes for the world of sport -- covering athletes, their agents and those who manage, own and control athletic teams.

The ethical issues that are going to be grappled with at this conference gained attention because sports and athletics are so big and so important -- and that's good. However, it's also important to recognize that athletes are only the visible tip of the iceberg. They bring attention to these issues in ways that few others can. But from where I sit, I can tell you that these issues go well beyond the athletic arena. I will also say that I believe the solutions to these issues start right here, with people like all of us here in this room -- those who are interested in exploring ways to strengthen society's moral fiber. That task has never been more important.

Our world continues to grow more and more complex, more and more complicated. Every day each of us is asked to make choices about who we are and who we will become. Those choices affect our well-being, as well as the well-being of others. It is not always easy to do the right thing in the face of powerful economic, social and occupational pressures. Indeed it becomes even more difficult when a nation's social values seem to stress winning and the pursuit of self-interest -- not just in sports, but in every level of everyday life. Too often the focus is on climbing the social and economic ladders as quickly as possible without much concern for who gets stepped on along the way. You know the old sayings: "it's a dog eat dog world"; "you need to look out for number one"; "nice guys finish last".

Think back to a time when you felt torn between doing what you know is right and what was most expedient. We find ourselves in those situations all the time. How do you respond? How about the situation in which the difference between right and wrong was more gray than black and white? How do you respond to those situations? Do you rationalize that since it wasn't entirely clear what the right response was, any choice you made would be okay?

The American Heritage Dictionary defines character as moral or ethical strength, integrity, fortitude. Wrapped up in some of these ethical situations are issues of character. In a sense, character is who we are at our very core. It's what determines what we believe and how we choose to respond to any given situation. Character is not something that we are born with.nor does it develop automatically. It must be consciously developed. Character is also not something that is static. Whether we are fifty or fifteen, five or seventy-five, we will be forced to re-evaluate and renew our character again and again. It isn't enough to rely on what we've done in the past; that's old news. It isn't enough to give lip service to what we believe; actions speak louder than words. How we act today and every day for the rest of our lives defines who we are. That's true for everybody in this room; that's true for athletes. How they act today and every day for the rest of their lives will define who they are. Character doesn't just happen -- doesn't just happen. People with character take responsibility for who they are and what they do. They don't blame others and they recognize their role as responsible individuals.

To resist the pressures and temptations that seduce us, to make the easy choices rather than the right choices, and to be a person of character takes a strong person. I don't mean strong in the physical sense for, quite frankly, physical stature has nothing to do with character. If strong in the physical sense had anything to do with it, there isn't an athlete out there who wouldn't be a person of good character. I mean strong in the sense that believing that each one of us has an obligation to act in ways that build rather than diminish our character and the character of those around us. Athletes have a special obligation to be people of character. Whether we like it or not, whether we want it or not, whether we're prepared for it or not, our athletic status makes us heroes to some and role models to many. That's simply one of the things that comes along with athletic success. However, just because one is a good athlete doesn't mean that one is a good person. While being gifted athletically makes one worthy of some recognition and may even make one a hero, it does not make one a role model.

What does it mean to be a person of character? It means being honest and trustworthy, saying what we mean and meaning what we say, not saying something when we don't mean it. It means keeping our promises, playing fairly, making decisions with others in mind, and treating people with respect and respecting ourselves. It means working to figure out the difference between right and wrong and then acting accordingly, including taking responsibility for our own actions.

Have you noticed that while everyone clamors to be recognized for success, nobody wants to take responsibility for failures -- especially on the athletic field? Of course, given the pedestal that we place our athletes upon, it's reasonably understandable why nobody wants to be responsible for being vanquished. More and more there seems to be a tendency to view ourselves as isolated individuals competing for the big prize.

We seem to distrust each other more and cooperate less. There is more and more evidence of the rising intolerance that we seem to have for one another, in sports, as well as society generally. But the fact is that although I was once considered to be a great football player, it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm a man of good character. The fact of the color of my skin doesn't mean that I'm NOT a man of good character. The fact that your language or religion or gender is different from mine doesn't make either one of our characters better or worse. The outward differences which identify us as individuals does not change the content of our character.

I mentioned intolerance briefly, and I guess I would be remiss if I didn't digress just for a moment to comment on what seems to me to be an unacceptable rise in intolerance. In some circles it has become fashionable to preach the politics of separation and hate. While I personally don't believe separation brings progress or makes things better, it is at least an option to consider. The politics of hate, however, are destructive and unacceptable. Whether that hate comes from a group that is white, a group that is black, a group of religious zealots, or any other group makes no difference. When it is combined with separation and followed to its logical conclusion, that hate leads to what we see or what we saw over the last four or five years in Rwanda, what we've seen in Yugoslavia, and what we've seen in our riots here at home in the central cities -- which leads me to the topic and the issue of race and the role it plays in sport and life.

I'm sure you're all very familiar with President Clinton's town hall meeting on the role of race in sport. Having identified sports as being one arena where racial harmony exists, the President and a panel, including among others, John Thompson, Jackie Joyner-Kersey and Jim Brown, hoped to explore the successes and stereotypes of the playing fields and what lessons they might hold for the rest of the country. I must admit that I didn't actually see the town hall meeting, cable TV having not yet made its way to the Page household. But I have had some first hand experience with issues of race, both inside and outside the arena of sports. Indeed as an African-American, that experience never goes away. My sense of the town hall meeting, based on the news articles and TV spots that I saw, was that it was probably a good thing as far as it went. My fear is that it didn't go far enough.

Certainly, they talked about the increased opportunity for African-Americans as players at amateur and professional levels, and they noted that the opportunity for people of color still lagged behind when it comes to coaching, front office management and leadership opportunities. But, quite frankly, there's really nothing new in that. We didn't need a town hall meeting to tell us those things. The real question is, what does it all mean? More important, what do we do? Increased opportunity on the playing field is good, but having a few additional young black millionaires in the grand scheme of things doesn't mean very much - especially when one of the results is that it perpetuates the myth for young black boys that perfecting their athletic skills to the exclusion of their intellectual abilities will allow them to grasp that golden ring that will pull them up and out of poverty and away from discrimination. The reality is, that for all but the exceptional few, that simply isn't going to happen. After all, on any given day, any given afternoon, all the jobs in professional athletics are taken. I don't know how much time the panelists spent discussing the need for children of color to perfect their minds before they perfect their bodies. But however much time they spent doing that, it couldn't have been enough.

One specific part of the panel's discussion that I found curious was the exchange between Jim Brown and the other panelists about black athletes using black attorneys and agents. I found it curious because underlying the discussion was the notion or at least the assumption that all black athletes should be using the services of black agents or attorneys. Why weren't they asking why white players aren't using black agents and attorneys? Why aren't team owners and team managers using black attorneys? Did anyone stop to ask why there are so few black agents or attorneys in the first instance? The problems of race are not the problems of the racial minority. The problems of race belong to all of us, no matter where are ancestors came from, no matter what the color of our skin.

To some degree, there is an underlying assumption today that equal opportunity has in fact been achieved, that we live in a color-blind society, that in our nation today all people are treated as equals. The truth is we're not close. We're not close! The phrase "living in a color blind society" should not mean living in a society that is blind to unequal treatment. We may be better at covering up our bias, but making bias harder to detect is not the same as making it go away. When I look at issues of race whether in sport or society at large, I do have great concern, not only about where we are or where we've been but also where we're going.

It seems that over the last ten to fifteen years it has become more and more acceptable to look at and talk about race in a way that has become very, very dangerous. It seems we have taken a step back and I find that troubling and I'm not the only one to have these concerns. Indeed former United States Supreme Court Justice, Harry Blackmun, wrote an opinion in a dissent regarding a 1989 case involving race discrimination in the salmon industry. I would like to share at least part of what he said. "The majority's legal rulings (talking about how the court dealt with the issue of race discrimination) essentially immunizes these practices from attack .. Sadly, this comes as no surprise. One wonders whether the majority still believes that race discrimination or, more accurately, race discrimination against non-whites is a problem in our society or even remembers that it ever was." Those were powerful words from Justice Blackmun.

If we are to begin to solve the issue of race in sport and in society, each of us, all of us, and each person that we have the ability to influence are going to have to act. As Jackie Joyner-Kersey said at the town hall meeting, "we can talk and we can talk, but people need to listen and people need to do something about it." Playing the race card without doing more will not solve these difficult problems. In fact according to Cornell West, author of Race Matters, talking about racism can even be damaging when rhetoric becomes the substitute for analysis. It is also damaging when it becomes the substitute for action.
What can we do? Ultimately, that's the question, isn't it? To start, we must begin by looking inward and eliminating our own biases and setting aside our own stereotyping of other racial groups. Stereotypes are damaging whether intended to be positive or negative. Just as a sample of one is not representative of the group, neither is the group necessarily representative of the one. Most of my interactions with people are with individuals. I have conversations with people. It's how we as individuals treat other individuals that will determine how well these issues of race get resolved.

We need to begin looking at people for their individual qualities and not for their group characteristics, which is not to say that we have to like everyone. There are a lot of people around that I don't particularly care for. Nobody likes a jerk and I certainly don't. But it's the characteristics of the individual that we have to consider, not the group characteristics that come along with the individual. Until we as a society begin to deal with how we treat individuals based on their individual selves rather than their group characteristics, these issues of race will continue to plague us.

In certain team sports, we have learned to live and work together. In that sense, we have shown that racial harmony is not an impossible dream. With the right motivation we can achieve an environment in which people of all colors can live in harmony. We can do that. Some of you may be saying to yourselves, "well all that sounds good, but I'm not so sure that individual effort really will have that much impact. After all this problem of race has been around for a long time and appears as though it's going to be around for a long time to come." I can only ask that you give it a try because ultimately the problem of race stems from the individual and the solutions will be found in individuals.

I would like to share with you a quote from a speech that Robert Kennedy gave in 1966 at the University of Capetown in South Africa that, for me, exemplifies the impact that individuals can have when they are willing to act. This quote has special meaning when you consider the changes that have taken place in South Africa since 1966 and the individual effort that went into that. What he said is this, "Each time a man (and I would add a woman) stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. In crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that cansweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance".

Ultimately, the issue of race is one over which individuals have control. If we change, the racial climate will change. If we don't, it won't. The question for those of us in this room and also for those of us across this country is whether we have the will to change - and the choice is ours. I happen to believe that we can change.

In closing I would like to leave each of you with a simple question. It's a question that I ask myself every day. How each of us answers this question will determine the future of the course of race in sport and in society. The question is this: What is the action that you will take to bring about change?

Thank you.
 

Justice Page then accepted questions from the audience.

Question: I am interested in helping stem the tide of violence in sports. What has been the role of the legal system as you understand it so far in making some of the events that occur in the arena have less of an impact on the rest of society?

Answer:The issue of violence, primarily off the field but even to some degree on the field, is one that is beginning to pervade society. If only the athletes were the problem we'd be in pretty good shape. Unfortunately that's not the case. Let's consider domestic violence, which is how a lot of violence is manifesting itself in sport. In Minnesota, a state with 4 million people, we had in excess of 13,000 cases come to our courts in 1996 -- 13,000 cases come to our courts and those only represent the incidents that came to court. They do not represent all the domestic violence for which no one took action. We have a serious problem.

We have, both in sport and society, a problem that quite frankly I'm not sure the legal system can do much about. We can issue restraining orders; we can lock up the offender for some period of time. But ultimately every one of these offenders is going to get out. The question is, "how do we get people to play by society's rules?" Part of the answer has to do with the cost to those who engage in domestic violence or other kinds of violence. What is the cost to them? Right now there's not a very high cost -- and so it continues. I'm not sure what the answers are.

I know we keep ratcheting up the penalties and I'm not sure that that's been good or bad. To the extent that anybody thinks about what they do before they slap their wife or girlfriend or whoever and are prepared to do it anyway, I'm not sure that increasing the penalty makes that much difference. In some respects, it encourages the attitude, "well, if I'm going to go to jail, I might as well get my money's worth." Although I haven't seen the numbers, it's a concern to me that there appear to be more and more people who are willing to kill the victim, people who are not being concerned about the outcome. So I'm not sure that inflating the penalty makes that much difference. I don't know what the answer is.

Follow-up Question: Nothing happened with smoking until lawsuits started to be brought against the cigarette companies. Having been an athlete yourself you know there's an old boy network, a code of "we're all athletes together," that seems to prevent an Evander Holyfield from suing a Mike Tyson, or a P. J. Carlesimo from pressing charges against a Latrell Sprewell. Maybe we need suits brought when someone is legitimately injured.

Answer: I can't say much about the Sprewell incident because there is ongoing litigation and we have all sorts of ethical issues as a judge talking about pending or impending cases. But I will say, I think I can say, that incidents such as these go beyond whether P. J. Carlesimo has an interest in filing charges. The state has some interest in regulating that kind of conduct. In some states, whether the complainant is prepared to file charges or not, the state will initiate it's own actions. I don't know whether that is possible in that particular case, but it does seem to me that the state has an interest.

Regarding the Tyson incident: Some of the extra-curricular violence in sport is understandable. You are in the heat of the game, something sets you off and it's not all that unexpected that you might lose control. It's when people go so far over the top, go so far outside the bounds of the sport, that you have great concern. Obviously, that's one of the concerns about the Tyson incident.

Question: My name is Don Sabo and I'm Trustee with the Women's Sport Foundation. Would you share some of your comments or observations, please, on the state of gender equity in the United States or your home state Minnesota?

Answer. Again, that is clearly an issue that is likely to come before our court and one which I should not prejudge. However based on past comments when I served for a while on the Board of Regents at the University of Minnesota, one of the issues that I was interested in and concerned about was gender equity. That issue is of interest to me naturally; I have three daughters. Why shouldn't they have the same opportun ities that I had?

There is much discussion about "well if we increase opportunities for women, we have to decrease opportunities for men." First of all, I don't think that's the case; and if it is, so what? What's the big deal? The question is not whether we're going to have equal numbers; the question is whether we're going to have equal opportunity, which -- I may get myself in trouble here again -- makes me think about affirmative action. If we had equal opportunity, we wouldn't have to spend one minute talking about affirmative action. That would be a non-issue. We ought to be talking about getting to equal opportunity whether it's gender equality, racial equality, or any other kind of equality. We have to get there and we're a long way from there at this point.

Question: Justice Page, you sighted a laundry list of bad boy behavior and incidents on the sporting field, everything from the Yankees/Orioles brawl yesterday to the Sprewell things, the Tyson things - and some off the court. Since you were raised in an era before all these athletes were born and played in an era when they were kids at best, I'm wondering first if you've noticed any changes in the amount or type of that bad behavior on or off the field, and secondly, does that behavior reflect where society has gone or is it somehow contributing to the way society is going?
 

Answer: Let me answer the second part of that first. I think it both reflects and contributes. It does both. One can go back 20 or 30 or 40 years and find the same sort of thing going on; however I have the sense that there has been an increase not in misconduct itself , but in the level and the quality of the misconduct, as there has been in society at large. Let's face it. We have 7, 8, 9, and 10-year-old children leading the parade here in some respects. It's not just the athletes that are bad actors. We have a society whose character and moral fiber is definitely being challenged. We see the athletes. They are visible, but there are a lot more folks out there than the athletes. None of this is new, this misconduct was going on when I played. It's certainly far more visible today, almost anything today rates a mention. Twenty years ago, some of what went on wasn't worthy of the evening news. Now everything is worthy of the evening news. I think that's part of what continues the cycle. I don't know what begins it.

Question: I was raised in Africa, but every time I looked on television, I found blacks excelling in sports, so why do blacks excel in sports?

Answer: If I had the answer to that one I'd be a multi-billionaire. I don't know. I excelled in sports. I suppose to some degree because I worked hard and I enjoyed what I was doing. I had some natural ability. I was in the right place at the right time and as best as I can tell looking back, one of the strengths I had as an athlete was the ability to focus on the task at hand and not get sidetracked by all the things that were going on in the periphery. That's just me, other people excel for any number of reason. We can get into this debate about blacks being genetically predisposed, but I have no clue quite frankly. The question I tend to ask, is "is that important? Shouldn't whoever can perform better excel?"

Question: I'm Claudia Card from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. What do you think about making sports athletic activities available to people who are not especially gifted, including people who have disabilities?

Answer: Well, let me just give a cheer for Wisconsin. Two of my children are Wisconsin graduates, one of them last year. My other two children attended other universities, one is from the University of Washington, and one will graduate from Northwestern.

One of the great things about athletics at the early stages is everybody gets to participate. Later, we start narrowing the participants to those who are highly skilled. I think it is vitally important, vitally, that everyone who wants to participate have the opportunity. Having had four children that had four different levels of athletic ability, it seems to me that it was just as important for the one with the least athletic ability to be able to participate. It's not about having fans in the stands, not about having people come and watch; it's about participation. That's where you learn. You learn about yourself. You learn about working with others, living with others. You learn about your abilities and limits; you learn about expanding your limits. These lessons are important for everybody whether you're disabled or you're the best athletic specimen ever to come down the pike. Those lessons are important and valuable for all of us.

Question: My name is John Wilson from Millersville University, Pennsylvania. My question is: what is private in terms of what the media reports? I know when I was growing up and very impressionable, I had sports idols. It wasn't until I was older and able to make my own decisions that I found out that my idol came to the ballpark drunk many times and did a lot of bar hopping. Today's kids are just as impressionable and they hear all the negative stuff about guys playing in the leagues. They are maybe acting on that. I just wonder why does the media pick out and make every little thing or big thing news knowing that kids are impressionable and that they hold athletes as role models?

Answer: That's a good question. But I'll tell you, I'm not about to take on the news media here this afternoon. One of the first things I learned in life is never get in fights with people who buy their ink by the barrel or their paper by the ton. Having said that -- there are a number of things wrapped up in that question. The first is that those of us who look to athletes and would have our children look to athletes as role models have to be more discriminating. Simply being an athlete, doesn't necessarily make someone a good role model. Someone may be a motor genius, but that doesn't mean they are someone we should want our children to emulate. We are quite capable of telling children that a particular individual may be a good athlete, but he's not a good person and you don't want to be like that, but that's not the message we send. That is the message we have to start sending.

Another part of that question that's tied to the media is: Do I really need to know some of this stuff? Quite frankly, I don't. But evidently somebody wants to know it and presumably it gets reported for that very reason. When the market tells them "I've had enough," the media journalists will stop reporting it because they are only reporting it to sell papers and sell air time. When the market says it's over, they'll quit. That gets back to us. That gets back to what those of us in society want and the message that we communicate. We have to do a better job or that's going to continue to be the message.

Those of us who watch athletics have to do a better job of understanding and communicating to children that simply being an athlete doesn't make you a good person and explaining why. There are positive role models and there are also negative role models. We teach our children what we want them to do; we also want to teach them what we don't want them to do. There are a lot of athletes who are really good poster kids for what we don't want done. We have to communicate that. We have to make that message clear and we have to make it understandable. Then we have to do it in such a way that the people we don't want our children to emulate don't look like they are the heroes. Because right now, they're doing these bad things and we treat them like heroes. That's nuts.

Question: I want to ask you about flawed role models. I think of Darryl Strawberry, who has been through a lot of trouble in his life, as a very effective role model even though he's been in and out of drug and alcohol rehab over the last ten years. He speaks to different groups, he's honest, he's forthright, and he's still visible in the public eye playing the outfield and being a designated hitter with the New York Yankees. Some sports leagues have very severe penalties -for example, the second time you test positive for a drug, you're banished for life. Those individuals would not have a chance to continue in their livelihood or to be flawed role models in the public eye, a la Darryl Strawberry. Could you comment on what type of penalties would be appropriate for athletes being caught abusing drugs and can flawed role models serve a good societal purpose?

Answer: I think the flawed role models are a plus. Let's face it. None of us walks on water; none of us is perfect. We all have our imperfections. People who can overcome their mistakes can be very important because we all have to learn how to do that. It is those who don't overcome their mistakes, who are simply allowed to continue down the same path, that are the problem.

Regarding penalties, far be it from me to try to gauge in a given situation, in a given hypothetical situation, what the penalty should be. Fortunately I sit on appellate court, so I don't actually sentence people. But even in our trial courts, judges sentence within a range provided by legislators. Some great thinkers figure out what the penalty should be. We as judges just work within the range. I think there probably does have to be some range of penalty based on the offense. You don't want to impose the ultimate sanction for some offenses; but for some others, you do. I think each case has to be treated individually. We can't, unfortunately, lump everybody together. Simply because I believe that for one type of conduct somebody should have their head lopped off and somebody else may have the view that we give that offender another chance, doesn't mean either one of us is right or wrong. That's part of the struggle we go through trying to sort out and identify the proper sanction for a given offense. The question becomes: what do we do after the 5th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th offenses?

Follow-up Comment by Questioner: Particularly when drug treatment professionals say that it's common for even committed people, who are trying to get over the problem, to fail two or three times before sobriety really kicks in.

Answer: The difficulty is identifying those that are trying to get over the problem and fail, and those who are exploiting the system.
Thank you.
 
 

Closing remarks by Peter French, Ph.D., Director, the Ethics Center at the University of South Florida

In the 1970s -- seems like a long time ago -- I taught at the University of Minnesota and was a fan of the Vikings and my favorite Viking was always Alan Page. He's more my favorite Viking now. Thank you, Alan.

I was asked to say a few words about why we created this summit, but I don't have to now. I think Alan has done a better job than I possibly could have in explaining why we think this is a terribly important set of issues. I do want to make clear that it's not our intention to make this a one-shot deal. As President Castor said earlier our goal is to create a unique academic program in sports ethics at the University of South Florida. An annual conference of this sort would be a part of that program. Our expectation is to bring together the fields and departments of sport management and sport medicine, journalism and mass communications, physical education, wellness and sports studies, sociology of sports and of athletes, and the philosophy department and other departments in the college of arts and sciences to create a program. We anticipate that this program will probably begin at the graduate level, as a kind of a certificate graduate program. We will make it available to students who are studying in those various fields and want to enhance their study with work in the area of sports ethics. Then as that develops, we hope to create a program with a masters and even an advanced degree beyond that, as well as undergraduate courses in this area at the University of South Florida. We think the time is right as evidenced by all of you here.
 
 

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