The Rules of the Game Michael Vick and the business of sports.
Saturday, August 25, 2007 Way back when, professional sports was often a family business, populated by men still playing boys' games for fun and money. It's a much bigger, more serious business now, as Michael Vick's 10-year, $140 million contract attests. When he signed in 2001, it was the largest in NFL history. With this kind of money at stake, the bottom line moved to the top of concerns in most pro sports, even as all involved still chose to call what they did a "game."
The Vick story is no game, for himself or for professional sports.
Mr. Vick, now suspended from the NFL, is likely to plead guilty to some of the federal charges against him Monday, even as he denies some of the acts of which he's been accused.
Sports have long had commissioners, realizing that any sport dominated by young men who are suddenly exposed to new money but who may have had poor backgrounds is going to have player troubles.
Baseball got retired judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis after the 1919 "Black Sox" game-rigging scandal. Judge Landis was a man of principle, who fiercely defended the integrity of the game and set the tone for baseball commissioners for decades. Baseball and the White Sox lost "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, one of the game's best hitters. But the sport's reputation was saved.
We would not support the idea that sports today need outsiders as monitors or Congressional oversight or a Department of Sport, at least as long as they have strong commissioners willing to act to maintain the reputation and standards of the sport.
The problem with baseball in recent years has been that the commissioner, unlike Landis, has had too little power. Bud Selig recently won more from the owners, but the steroid scandal blossomed because the owners and particularly the unions wouldn't act for years. Only when the story blew up with the Balco-Barry Bonds probe did Mr. Selig get enough clout to make the unions bend; his appointment of the probe led by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell will probably give him more. This is all to the good.
Football and the NBA have had better records in part because they have had stronger commissioners. Pete Rozelle set the tone by suspending Paul Hornung and Alex Karras for the 1963 season for gambling. Paul Tagliabue maintained the strong-commissioner model. New NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has sent a proper message by warning the Bengals that their player problems won't be tolerated and by suspending Tennessee Titan Pacman Jones for the season. Last night, with a criminal sanction imminent, Mr. Goodell suspended Mr. Vick indefinitely.
It's hard to see how the NBA could have done more to prevent the case of the crooked referee. David Stern has asked an outsider to inspect the league's officiating standards and monitoring, a good idea. In the past, he has been tough on fighting and other lapses.
There really is no better alternative than a league commissioner willing to enforce standards of behavior on and off the field, court or gridiron.
Sports are entertainment too, of course. Fans pay for the thrill that athletic spectacle provides. The continuing popularity of these sports is that they create a world in which talented people are permitted to free-wheel, improvise and do wondrous things--but always within a clearly defined and enforced set of rules. Everyone involved knows and agrees on the rules of the game.
In the real world today, rule-breaking itself has become a kind of entertainment. Starlets sent to jail for drunk driving or drug possession become fodder for lifestyle pieces. It's supposed to be regarded as all fun and games "as long as no one gets hurt." And it has been noted that sports fans, whether in San Francisco or New York, seem willing to look past pretty much anything the boys do, so long as they keep putting up numbers on the scoreboard. "Bread and circuses" has a long pedigree.
The Vick case, however, suggests that tolerance even in our time has its limits. Whether Mr. Vick will ever play again after paying his debt to society is something the league--and the fans--will decide. But Mr. Vick would seem to have a larger reckoning in store with the norms and values of the society that so richly rewards him for his running and passing. It is the civilizing rules of that world he has flouted, and it is to that larger society, as much as to his fans or his team, that a debt is now owed.
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