You can't handle the truth

The sports news world is on fire over the Ray Rice spousal abuse scandal. It is a distasteful episode that has scarred our largest national sports pastime. The sad part of this story is that we are all to blame, and none of us want to hear that, because "you can't handle the truth!"

Most of you will automatically say, "I don't have any connection to this behavior." I think that all of us do, and it is not something that is new, nor in my opinion is it likely to change.

Ray Rice has been a star athlete and football player for most of his life. He has not only been a willing participant in one of the roughest of our sports, he has also developed along the way, many behaviors that enhanced his ability to play the game of football.

Furthermore, he, like many famous athletes, has learned his craft in football quite well, while concurrently failing to learn some of societies' more normal and accepted behaviors.

Of course, Ray Rice is at fault for his actions, but I think that we, as members of our modern day culture, must also share some of the blame.

In the 1992 movie "A Few Good Men," Jack Nicholson portrayed the infamous Marine, Colonel Jessep. At the military trial in this movie, Nicholson delivers one of the great lines in movie history, "you can't handle the truth ... you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall!"

In those few lines, Nicholson exposes for all of us to see, an ugly truth about humanity. That truth is the complex practice in which we as humans, allow certain individuals in our world, to comport themselves in manners which are beyond common decency. We grant them these abnormal actions, so that they may perform actions for us that we ourselves cannot.

What the character Colonel Jessep is admonishing, is that most of us don't really like his kind of person, or the way he acts. Still, when there is danger to our country or way of life, we gladly turn to him and his kind to protect us. "You want me on that wall, you need me on that wall."

Football players like Ray Rice have much in common with fighting men. They practice their profession on a violent field of play. They know that their success depends on how well they fulfill their task upon that violent field of play. Like gladiators of old, they also know that their career can come to a tragic end at any moment. A professional football player like Ray Rice on average plays only 3 years in the NFL. Someone comes along better than them, or they get injured.

Great football players are not always just the best athletes. They must be the athletes that have an attitude that is conducive to danger and violence. Just like soldiers, they are the one's who advance towards danger instead of running away.

We all remember the daredevils from our youth. You know, the kid who climbed the tree, jumped off the cliff into the lake and who was always the first to leap into a fight.

When any job needs doing, you try to find the right person for that endeavor. When the military looks for the fighter pilot, they want the kid who doesn't fear heights, and who is always taking risks.

The same is true for athletes like Ray Rice. We choose them for their physical ability and their fearlessness. The problem with any of these types of individuals is that in many cases their dangerous behavior extends beyond the playing field or battlefield.

A man like Ray Rice was very likely scouted as a very young boy. His natural physical talents for speed and strength would have separated him from the rest of the players his age.

Coaches, parents, fans, boosters and sports agents, begin a series of benefits and rewards that make the growing up process for these athletes significantly different from that of the normal kid.

On a social level they are treated differently as well. As they become increasingly popular for their skills on the athletic field, they receive notoriety, and become celebrities at a very young age.

They receive clothing, shoes, and travel expenses. Many times their families are given jobs so they can perform their sport in a certain locale. When they are recruited to play in college, they are wined, dined, and given other more tawdry incentives, to attend a certain university. Our own beloved University of Missouri has a team of beautiful women called the "Golden Girls," who do all that they can to entice a young 17 year old to become a MIZZOU Tiger.

It happens everywhere at every major school. These young men grow up with a distorted sense of entitlement. Don't take my word for it, go visit a Griffons baseball game next summer, and see the collection of attractive young females on hand at each game. In most cases they are not there for the baseball.

Reality for an athlete like Ray Rice sets in later in life. He finds himself grown, married, with kids and other adult responsibilities. He is no longer the golden boy, he is expected to act like a grown man who has learned the tough lessons of life that have nothing to do with football.

Yes, we need to punish Ray Rice, but we also have a duty to him and countless others, to teach them. They grow up in a world of extreme favor, where their fame has given them far-reaching leeway.

Remember, most of us don't like to think about any of their personal issues, just that they bring their ferociousness to our favorite team on game day. We can't handle the truth, when those same violent tendencies extend into everyday life.