C.R.E.A.M. (Claim Rape to Earn Athletes' Money)

This is a sports blog, primarily. Sports are supposed to be the shallow end of the pop culture spectrum. Endless arguments about which quarterback is better, debates on whether or not Shaq could have overpowered Wilt, and rants about how Hank is still the home run king are supposed to be as deep as we get.

Instead, I'm preparing to talk about rape. Dammit.

Let me preface by saying that I have a family member who has been a rape victim. Shortly after high school, I also went on a couple of dates with a girl who had been raped by an ex-boyfriend. Residual trust issues forced that relationship to end before it could even really get started.

But even with this kind of insight, I still can't pretend that I can ever even come close to understanding what rape can do to a woman's psyche. Anger, guilt, and distrust are only a few of the stew of emotions that can derail hopes for a happy, loving relationship later in life.

But in the wake of the Ben Roethlisberger accusation and the Rick Pitino extortion case, the phrase "rape culture" has entered my personal lexicon for the first time, and I'm not too sure how to feel about it.

When the Big Ben civil suit became public, we had a rather brief discussion of it on EWB. I and a few others smelled bullshit right off the jump. Turns out, we might be pretty close to the truth, but more on that later.

In retaliation, my friend Razor (go read him at American Razor and Kick-Out Wrestling) posted this article, entitled "When Sports Culture Meets Rape Culture."

Razor's reasoning, in a prior EWB posting, is one I completely agree with. To quote him:

There's definitely some shady business associated with this, but either way it pisses me off. It pisses me off when women falsely accuse men of rape, but it also pisses me off when people automatically assume "this whore just wants money!"

The entire business of sexual assault in and of itself should be enough to piss anyone off, but that's not the point here. The point is that there wouldn't be that automatic assumption of "this whore just wants money" if there weren't so many cases where, well, the whores just wanted money.

Roethlisberger's former teammate Jerome Bettis had a similar accusation leveled in 2002, but no charges came about. According to the Westmoreland County District Attorney, there was "clear" evidence that the accuser's family intended to extort money from Bettis.

Rick Pitino was forced to contact the FBI when his now-admitted one-night stand, Karen Cunagin Sypher, began to hit him up for cars and tuition for her children, then simply went Randy Moss on him and asked for "straight cash, homie." To the tune of $10 million, no less.

When the Kobe Bryant case was ramping up back in 2004, USA Today studied 168 cases of sexually based criminal accusations against professional athletes in the 12 years following Mike Tyson's 1992 rape conviction. Only 32% of those ended in either convictions, guilty pleas, or plea agreements to lesser charges. Many of those were against either:

• former professional athletes who weren't All-Star caliber talents in their day;
• college athletes;
• or boxers whose careers were either winding down or finished.

What's the difference, you ask?

Straight cash, homie.

If a college athlete is accused of rape, how is an accuser going to profit? Most likely, they're not. College athletes are, for the most part, broke college kids, just like anyone else.

If a washed-up, broken-down boxer is accused of rape, how likely is an accuser to profit? Most boxers aren't renowned for their financial savvy even before ten to fifteen years of getting their brains rattled by other men's fists.

If an NFL bench-warmer is accused of rape, there may be some money in it, but not nearly the kind that a Bettis or Roethlisberger or Pitino could command.

These cases are much easier to take seriously because there's not nearly as much motive to fabricate. And like it or not (and I personally don't, but these are the times we're living in), whenever a rich man is accused of a he-said-she-said crime, which rape quite often is, there is A LOT of motive.

Anyone who was read Aesop's fable of The Boy Who Cried Wolf as a child is bred to be this cynical from toddlerhood.

The fable teaches us that not everything can be taken at face value. People lie. People concoct tales.

The boy who cried wolf was bored and wanted some excitement. Andrea McNulty was apparently hearing the ching-ching-ching of that child-support coin, if her co-worker's affidavit is to be believed.

While railing on "rape culture" for the cynicism surrounding athlete rape accusations, writers like Kate Harding and Jaclyn Friedman should give equal time to all the girls who have cried wolf...including Andrea McNulty and Karen Sypher. If victims are ignored or disbelieved, it's because there truly is a precedent.

We're not all insensitive clods who believe that every woman's asking for it every minute of every day. We all have mothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, daughters, nieces, and none of us would experience anything but horror if they were involved in a case of this kind. But, we'd like to think that our family would contain the kind of people who would be more interested in justice than a payday, as well.

We don't put athletes and coaches on this ivory pedestal and think they can do no wrong. If anything, any person who holds athletes to even the minimum standards of typical people is hopelessly naive. Thousands of athletes over the decades have proven themselves to be shallow, immature, selfish, manipulative, greedy, and/or hedonistic.

Still, rich, famous, sexually promiscuous men have targets on their backs. If they were less sexually promiscuous, maybe they wouldn't have quite as many of these problems. Unfortunately, that's like asking a lion to go veggie...it's just not part of their nature.

When Do You Go "We"?

It's a common enough situation. Fans call into their local sports radio/TV show or send an e-mail or whatever, and the question/opinion usually goes something like this:

"Yeah, Jim Bob, long-time listener, first-time caller. Hey, do you think Overhyped Recruit/Free Agent #22716 can get US into a bowl game/the Tournament/the playoffs this year?"

Us. We. Our. They're possessive and inclusive words, putting the user in as part of the sentence. In our context, the speaker is such a passionate fan that he or she (usually he, to be fair) must place himself in the expression right next to the coach, the star linebacker, and the rest of the team. But why? Is it productive? Is the speaker that starved for success in his own life that he must live vicariously through his chosen team and associate himself that closely with them? Or do they buy into the marketing of "The 12th/6th/howeverth Man" and really feel part of the action when surrounded by ten-to-eighty thousand other screamers?

This last thought actually holds quite a bit of merit, especially as it relates to college sports. Pro sports fans never seem to approach the same level of frenzy as what you'll find at a Duke basketball game or a Florida football game. Maybe it has something to do with the ennui of knowing that a small-market team won't be able to afford that star rookie in three years, so why bother? But, in college, especially at your top programs, you know that you are where thousands of players want to be. And part of the reason players want to be there is because of the ear-splitting, raucous atmosphere generated by 80,000 beered-up athletic supporters. (Ahem.)

I hadn't really observed this phenomenon up close until moving to Gainesville, Florida in 2006. For those of you who haven't observed people in a town with an elite college football program, let me tell you...people are nucking futs about their team. The Casual Friday before a game, especially one at home, you get dirty looks if you're not wearing the team colors. Walking through the grocery store, you hear housewives doing the family's shopping, and even THIS conversation invariably turns to the game. In a town like Gainesville or South Bend, the players are treated like rock stars and love every minute of it. Fans are very conscious of their role in this arrangement, are perfectly content with being used as recruiting tool and psychological weapon, and in return, ask only to be able to identify themselves as part of the team. And for that day, maybe they are.

But what about when you're not at the game? What about when you live, say, on the other side of the world? On EWBattleground.com (or EWB for short), we have a few passionate fans of various American sports, but the vast majority of discussion is centered around soccer, as many of the members are English. Fair enough, but soccer discussion is absolutely saturated with we's, our's, and us's. Club supporters live and die with their clubs, usually as expressions of civic pride. And again, if you've been to the game and are contributing to an atmosphere that throws the other team off their game, fair play to you. You're part of the action...for that day. But I associate with many Englishmen on said board who will use the plural possessive about American teams, which I completely don't get. If the closest you've gotten to contributing to the team is ordering a $50 jersey online, does that rate you as part of "us"? Are you then a part of the team from 3500 miles away? Is this like the club opening an international office?

In "The Roar of the Crowd," Princeton psychology professor David Barash essentially calls sports fans lazy, mindless sheep. But there are points to be had there about the group mentality and man's desire to be part of something bigger than himself. At the same time, it's been well-established that sports tell us a lot about ourselves. Chuck Klosterman told us that most of life can be boiled down to a Lakers-Celtics dichotomy, our chosen team giving some insight into who we are as people. But, the length and breadth of that support can also be quite telling. To use an example, did more people use "we" and "us" to describe the 5-11 Baltimore Ravens of 2007 than used them to describe the 11-5 team of 2008? I'd be quite surprised if the counts were even close. It's the "sing when you're winning" principle. We'd all rather be associated with the team on top than the team getting rolled 38 to 7, but disassociating yourself in a hurry when the team has a bad game or a bad season can also tell a lot.

I'm hoping for a discussion on this, because it is a phenomenon that quite honestly amuses me. I grew up in Lafayette, Indiana, halfway between Indianapolis and Chicago, the son of a mother who was and still is a fervent Bears fan. When the Colts moved from Baltimore to Indy, we adopted them as well. But I have never heard my mother use "us" or "we" about either team, not when the Bears stampeded the rest of the league in 1985, and not when the Colts scraped out a trip to Super Bowl XLI, or as I like to call it, The Perfect Game. (My two favorite teams and my favorite musician playing at halftime? You betcha, it was perfect.) I myself have never used the possessives, and I'm interested in knowing why others do. I am not an employee of a club (yet), and Lord knows my own athletic resume could be written on the back of a napkin, so I'm far from being an alumnus of any particular team. And in this writer's view, those are acceptable circumstances for using "we." Otherwise, you're on the outside looking in, no matter how big a part you think you are.

Allow myself to introduce...myself

Welcome to Starr* Rated. Primarily, you could classify this as a sports blog, but honestly, I have several interests that may rear their heads in subsequent entries. Aside from being a heavy sports fan and aspiring front-office employee, we may dip into video gaming, music, TV, professional wrestling, and some very, very uninformed political viewpoints. I don't pay tremendous attention to politics, and as a result, have very little to say about it. But there's really nothing off-limits here.

About me: I'm 30 years old, about to re-enter the collegiate rat race after a 10-year hiatus. I have a wonderful wife who's put me in a good position to do so, and supports whatever it is I want to do in and after school. No children yet, but we do have a lovely basset hound named Abigail, or Abby for short.

About my sports: I grew up on Walter Payton and Barry Sanders, Michael, Larry, and Magic, the Gretzky-Kurri-Messier-Anderson Oilers, and the Braves' Rotation From Hell (Maddux-Glavine-Smoltz-Avery-Leibrandt). The Indy 500 will always be the most important car race in the world for me, no matter what NASCAR trots out with. As I've gotten older, I've grown much more interested in some of the more "European" sports, like tennis and soccer. You still can't get me to give a damn about golf, except to marvel about Tiger preparing to shred the record book, and I can't get into horse racing, except for the Derby...and even that excitement is primarily spillover from the wife, who lives and dies for the Run for the Roses. I'll check the Belmont to see if someone's going to cap off the Triple Crown, but otherwise, not so much.

My Teams: Colts and Bears in the NFL; Pacers and Bulls in the NBA; Braves and Mets in MLB; Lightning and Capitals in the NHL. Oh, and Man United and Yeovil Town in English "football." Very odd that I've gravitated toward pairs of teams in the same division, isn't it? Even when one does well, it's often at the other's expense. There's some psychological-Freudian-babble issues at the center of this, probably, but I can't quite afford that $100 per hour just yet.

Hopefully, talking about my pet sports issues here will be a lot more productive than trying to discuss them with Abby, who can rarely be bothered to wake up from her usual 21 hours of sleep per day.

And to close it out, let me give props to the sports fans over at EWBattleground.com, even if a bunch of them are myopic homers. I kid. Mostly. Some of them will likely come weigh in with commentary, and they are more than welcome. You'll be able to spot them as the ones who spit venom whenever I talk trash about the Ravens and Steelers. I kid.

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Well, okay, no, I don't. I often do, just not right now. Anyway, welcome and enjoy. No matter who your teams are.