My God, can you
believe this heat?” These words are spoken, not by a sponged-out Texan but by
two Colorado natives leaving a tennis court. The temperature is 82 degrees.
It’s noon. These strangers didn’t seem to appreciate this observation: “If you
put together the 10 most perfect days of the year where I’m from,” I generously
volunteered, “you’d have every day of the summer up here. You people have got
to be kidding me.” Coloradans are accustomed to loud-mouthed Texans and their
unsolicited, if well-meaning, opinions. Still, the elderly couple left the
court rather quickly, offering no comment in return.
One person feeling serious heat wears No. 88 for the Dallas Cowboys. I can
only imagine the reaction back in Texas to the outcome of the Michael Irvin
trial. I’m sure that “I can’t believe they let him off,” sums up the feelings
of many. Did he get off easily? To view this rationally, let’s separate
personal feelings about lurid details; feelings on his flagrant infidelities;
and, most of all, anger about self-important athletes.
Irvin was charged with possession of cocaine. Yes, it’s a felony but let’s be
honest about this: How many of you might be charged with the same thing,
tonight, if your luck is bad, or if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong
time? How many of you have not been guilty? Irvin wasn’t selling crack to
adolescents at a school yard. He was charged with having a nice stash of
recreational drugs. He’s a first-time offender. People who want to see the man
go to prison are nuts. If you’re one, I suggest you examine whatever underlying
agenda you have. His sentence was a garden-variety plea bargain on a very minor
drug charge. Something done every day, in hundreds of courtrooms across the
country. The sentence is fair and reasonable. He didn’t get away with anything.
He wasn’t given any special treatment. He did get “what he deserved.”
His true punishment is totally self-inflicted, the frightful damage to his
already battered reputation. Irvin, who seems to personify much of the worst in
the modern-day athlete, played a stupid game of ultra-high stakes chicken with
the legal system. In his unimaginable arrogance, he thought the legal system
was just another easily intimidated rookie cornerback. Next, he tried to really
intimidate other people involved. When it was crystal-clear that the courtroom
in Dallas was most assuredly not a quaking, awed rookie, he cut his losses —
which are enormous — and went back to the locker room.
Irvin lost, and he lost big time. Had he simply pleaded guilty in the first
place, instead of thinking he was Michael Irvin, most would have
forgotten this thing. Irvin would be in training camp with yet another blemish
— yawn, yawn — on his reputation. We wouldn’t be privy to the ugly details of
his social life, threats to kill witnesses, his drugs of choice, or his taste
in strippers. All this maggoty trash came to light, beamed around the world,
because of Irvin’s supreme haughtiness. No amount of spin control will ever
clean up the devastation to the public Michael Irvin. Not a conversion to
Christianity, not a trek to the Dali Lama, not daily visits to the local
orphanage. Nothing will be the same for Michael Irvin. A belief in his
omnipotence, not cocaine, has destroyed Michael Irvin.
Parting Shots: In a
related matter of shabbiness, professional sports reached yet another
unthinkable low in the midst of the obscene bazaar accompanying the opening of
the NBA free agent hunting season. A young player who has accomplished nothing
worthwhile in his sport has become wealthy beyond the wildest fantasies of the
greediest of potentates. In the process, he’s destroyed the well-laid plans of
his old team, simultaneously breaking the hearts of the city which idolized and
nurtured him and thereby reversing the normal process of a player having a
long, distinguished career then moving on to coffee commercials. The
player gave nothing back to the city or the game other than a foul stench.
I speak of Shaquille O’Neal. The Magic were considered a dynasty in the
making. Sure, they were smoked by the Rockets and the Bulls. This was
considered part of the learning process. Their time, surely, would come. With
O’Neal’s departure to L.A., the Magic have been castrated.
O’Neal left not because he was unappreciated. Not because he was
underpaid. Not due to lack of commitment by management to win. No, he
left for the most grotesque reason imaginable for a professional athlete. He
wanted a lifestyle change. He wants to be closer to the hip-hop scene. He’s
supposed to be a pro basketball player. Someone whipped and driven relentlessly
to win. Someone with a nasty competitive streak, who knows it is championship
rings — like the lines written in his Pepsi commercials — that define the
man.
In a world turned upside down, O’Neal proves himself the antithesis of a
professional athlete, a spoiled man-child who wants more toys and, yeah,
winning would be nice. A player who will never be a champion. A player worthy
not of idolization but of contempt. And the Lakers are now a team I ardently
hope falls flat on its face. n
This article appears in July 26 • 1996 and July 26 • 1996 (Cover).