Sports Crime and The Views People Have Regarding Them
Sports are such a huge part of most of our daily lives. Whether we are on a team or whether we are fan, they take up quite a bit of our time. Personally I love sports but I don’t keep up to date with all the names and the personal drama that happens. Media though portrays sport crimes in a way that I think is less than when regular ordinary people commit the same crime.
USA Today has a list of NFL players arrests. While I don’t know who half of these people are I quickly learned that the consequences of these athletes are quickly excused or given little punishment. Montee Ball, RB for the Broncos, was accused of disorderly conduct and battery after striking his girlfriend in the face. He pleaded guilty for two of those, 60 days in jail plus probation, but then not even a week his team released him.
If this were some ordinary person on the street, I think the consequences would have been much higher. I also believe that athlete’s crimes are sort of below the radar. They seem to kind of be hard to find, which may just be me not keeping up with athlete’s lives. The punishments for them breaking the law seem to be excused maybe because, “well they are athlete’s, that’s typical,” or people are too focused on the game they don’t care what the players do in their free time as long as they get their team the points they want.
Another example: Alvin Baile was accused of drunk driving and possessing the drug paraphernalia after returning from a game. The plead was no contest, found guilty, a three-day intervention program, and the NFL suspended him from two games.
It seems as if the teams just give them a slap on the wrist, and don’t take seriously the fact of committing a crime. The way media portrays these crimes also seems to be down played or not even put into the public’s eye. Why this is? Maybe we are too focused on the player in the game and the affects that game has on us, rather than the reality of the athlete’s crime affecting other people directly?
