Calvin Hill was stuck in traffic in suburban Virginia nearDulles Airport one day a few years ago. As the former NFL runningback waited in a long line at a light, he glanced in his rear viewmirror and spotted several cars, traveling on the shoulder, comingup rapidly behind him.
Hill thought about where he was - just minutes from Redskin Park- and what he knows about professional athletes, and said aloud whatcame to mind: 'That's probably a couple of the Redskins.'
When the cars whizzed by, Hill recognized the drivers.
'Sure enough, it was,' he said. 'Everyone else was waiting inline, but not them.'
The boyish impatience of several Redskins offensive linemennever will make headlines, but it does represent the lighter side ofa recurring problem among the nation's professional - and college -athletes.
Just this year, these occurrences involving professionalathletes dotted the sports pages: the Washington Capitals'involvement with a teenage girl in a limousine after the team partyin May, the New England Patriots' abuse of a woman reporter inSeptember, charges of rape against former Georgetown basketball starDavid Wingate and an airport outburst by tennis's John McEnroe inwhich he broke the finger of an airline employee.
Once, reporting about athletes was confined to what they did ona playing field. Now, when athletes break the law, you read aboutit - in detail. If athletes go beyond the bounds of decency or goodjudgment, you read about that too.
From childhood, the nation's top athletes lead lifestylesdifferent than the rest of society, experts say. They play and theypractice and their siblings wash the dishes. By the time they'readults, some of these athletes are playing by a different set ofrules than the rest of society.
Is it any wonder, then, that some of them believe - in fact,feel entitled - to do things that other people never would do?
'After athletes slide by in college, they hit the pros and aregiven $500,000 a year,' said Hill, now a vice president with theBaltimore Orioles. 'Then we ask them to be positive role models? Itjust isn't logical.'
Hill, who played most notably for the Dallas Cowboys and theWashington Redskins and now watches his son, Grant, play basketballat Duke, says athletes are not unusual in most of what they do.
'But they are unique in the sense that they are allowed to getaway with more,' he said. 'It's a seductive thing. Those who wantto break the rules know they can get by because of who they are.'
There appear to be no statistics that would indicate athletescause more trouble than any other group in society. But, with thepossible exception of movie stars, no group's misbehavior is asminutely detailed.
'Once again, athletes are being judged by the actions of a few,'said Reggie Williams, who played linebacker for the CincinnatiBengals and was a Cincinnati city councilman. 'I don't think a greatmany athletes do expect to get away with anything, and yet there isa prevalent culture that begins with elementary school and goes onfrom there. You've got the parent, the teacher, the coach saying tothe athlete they are special, and that insulates them from some ofthe consequences, from the playground on.'
As a schoolboy (and now a schoolgirl), an athlete is 'identifiedas being good and is allowed to slide by,' said Hill. 'People coverfor them.'
At home, the athletes' parents continue to give them specialtreatment, said Richard Lapchick, director of the Center for theStudy of Sport in Society at Northeastern University in Boston.
'You go into any home of any teenager who is a good athlete andyou probably will find a parent who is more lenient with them thanwith the other brothers and sisters,' Lapchick said. 'The parentsget someone else to take out the trash.'
They go to college to play sports and study, usually in thatorder, and find what author Murray Sperber calls 'wall-to-walltutoring.'
In addition to the well-documented tales of academic leniency,shiny foreign cars and other inducements not available to otherstudents, college athletes apparently are not even learning how tomake plane reservations or rent a car.
Team trips, especially for football and basketball players,involve being told when and where to report, hopping on a bus andbeing driven to the door of a plane. They never have to hold aticket, check into a hotel or decide what time to eat or when to goto sleep. Coaches take care of all that.
'They live in a hermetically sealed cocoon,' said Sperber, anIndiana University professor of English and American studies whowrote 'College Sports Inc.,' a critical look at college sports.
So when a tiny percentage of them becomes professional athletes,'we've created monsters,' said Williams.
'Many athletes live in a bubble,' said tennis player PamShriver, 'and when they finally get out, they are surprised: `Oh,wow, the real world.' '
When Hill was playing, he wondered about different rules fordifferent people. After he was traded to Washington, he was beingdriven by Assistant General Manager Bobby Mitchell to the doctor forhis physical. Mitchell was stopped by a police officer and given aticket for going over the speed limit.
Hill was shocked.
'I said to Bobby, `That guy's going to give you a ticket? You'reBobby Mitchell.'
'That's the mind-set of the athlete.'
In the years right after he left the NFL, Hill still coveted theperks of the job. When he would fly west from Washington, and hischoices of connections were Chicago's O'Hare Airport or Dallas-FortWorth, he always would pick Dallas.
'The ticket agents still knew me there and they would alwaysupgrade me,' Hill said. 'It wasn't wrong, and I knew it wasn'treality, yet I'd still do it.'
It's the life athletes come to expect and then find hard toshake.
'You get the best tables. People are always picking up the tab.If you're driving over 55 and you're pulled over, the policerecognize you and tell you to have a good game Sunday and let yougo,' Hill said.
'In training camp, your life has been completely itinerized.They tell you when to go to sleep, when to get up, when to eat, whatto eat, when to practice, how many wind sprints to do. You neverhave to drive to an airport. You never have to buy your own ticket.You're royalty. But unlike Queen Elizabeth, who has someone puttingout four or five outfits for her each day, you're not royalty forlife. An athlete is a king or a queen only for as long as they canrun and jump.'
Everyone has a story. Sperber used to be a sportswriter inMontreal. He covered the North American Soccer League team there andone day was traveling home with them from a game in Tulsa, with aconnection in Chicago. The team had a couple of days off after itgot back. So, in Chicago, Sperber suggested to one of the players, a24-year-old from Milwaukee, that he should not get on the plane toMontreal, but go visit his family little more than an hour's driveaway in Wisconsin.
The player, Sperber said, liked the idea - until he was told hewould have to change his ticket and rent a car. The added expensewasn't the problem. He was afraid to make those changes.
'It was too much for him,' Sperber said. 'He just got on theplane and went to Montreal. Here's a guy who had gone to Marquetteon scholarship and had played soccer. But even on the soccer team,not one of the glamour sports in this country, he apparently didn'tknow how to change a ticket.'
Three years ago, the Orioles discovered one of their playerscarried all the money from his paycheck in his pocket, Hill said.'The whole concept of putting it in the bank and writing checks wasforeign to him.'
The team solved the problem by sending coach Terry Crowley withthe player to the bank to open an account.
'Athletes become very trusting,' Hill said. 'This is why theyare easy prey for unscrupulous people.'
All of this is not particularly new. But what is different isthe media's - and the fan's - interest in what athletes are doing.The stories are legendary now: Babe Ruth publicly drank andsocialized with women on train trips in front of reporters. But it'salso legend that the reporters said to one another, 'Gentlemen, Iguess none of us saw that.'
Now, athletes are fair game. The intensity with which members ofthe media investigate non-sports stories has carried over to theplaying field. Male reporters don't wink at the indiscretions ofmale athletes anymore; they write them down. And there are more than500 women covering sports now too.
'We put those people up on such pedestals, then if they slip alittle ways, it's a big fall, whether it's a major thing or a minorthing,' said NCAA Executive Director Dick Schultz.
'With the attention of TV and Madison Avenue, it's noticed,'Hill said. 'The PR guys know that when an athlete does something, itdoesn't help the team's image. They are no longer insulated from thepublic.'
In some ways, this scares them, the experts say. Sperber's'cocoon' image connotes a soft, secure place where an athleteescapes from the real world.
'Elite athletes are just so separated, they can't help butexpect and want to be treated differently,' Sperber said. 'One thingthat has struck me from watching and analyzing athletes is that theylive in such a black-and-white world.
'Coaches see things only in black and white and this translatesto the players. In a world of ambiguities, sports is black andwhite. In this world, they don't hear a lot of criticism from theoutside world either. When they do, it surprises them.'
Recently, a star linebacker in the NFL was involved in adomestic disturbance. His wife called the police. As he latertalked about what happened to reporters gathered around his locker,he said, 'I see a lot of guys with wedding bands on their hands, soI'm sure you know what I'm talking about.'
Said Sperber: '{He} is so totally in that world that he doesn'tknow that's not the way it is.'
'Sometimes, not just athletes, but entertainers, anybody,suddenly reaches a certain plateau and thinks they have privilegesthat aren't available to other people,' Schultz said. 'Sometimes,people start to take themselves too seriously and think they're moreimportant than they are and feel they've reached a level that, now,they can expect some special things.'
The solution to this problem is to bring athletics - andathletes - back down to earth, many say. But in these times ofbillion-dollar TV contracts for college sports, it might beimpossible. Williams, the former Bengal, believes education is theanswer and that it has to come early, in the home, from parents.
'Athletics were never as high a priority for me as academicswere,' he said. 'I sat the bench in high school and went to the IvyLeague {Dartmouth} where there are no athletic scholarships. Thisallowed me to be much more objective about it, to watch some of thegreat athletes I grew up with become spoiled.'
Schultz said athletes should not be kept apart from otherstudents on campus.
'The only way we're going to get rhyme or reason out of this iswe have to try to make the athlete as indistinguishable from therest of the student body as we can,' he said. 'That's very difficultto do, but we need to work for that.'
Lapchick said it is essential athletes learn that their procareers likely will be short - if they happen at all. They also'must learn to contribute to society.'
Shriver would love to see some sort of 'code of conduct' writteninto professional athletes' contracts.
'It's probably not a realistic idea,' she said, 'but I wish wecould do something. You hear athletes say it's not fair they aresingled out when they do something wrong. Well, I don't buy that.If you're in the public eye, you're probably getting paid more moneythan the average person. Accountability is a part of the life.'
Lapchick said he hopes the nation's preoccupation with sportsmight turn out to have benefits at the high school level.
'This society has gone so crazy that you just don't have ahandle on kids in high school,' he said. 'But you do have a handleon kids in high school when they are in sports. Because of theirlove of sports, they'll listen to their coaches. That means you cantrain them, and that they may become positive role models.'
