ESPN Should Look Inward Before Taking Moral High Ground

MIAMI -- It's been an interesting week here in South Florida, where Topic A since last Saturday has been the fallout from the footbrawl between the University of Miami and Florida International University.

While the national media has been brutally piling on the Miami football program, with some even calling for the university to eliminate one of the nation's most successful on-field programs, the local media has mostly been in a defensive crouch. Many here insist that the coverage -- particularly on ESPN -- has been equal parts over the top, mean-spirited and in many cases simply unfair.

Clearly the brawl was a disgrace, no question about it. But so was the constant airing of the videotape on various SportsCenters, ESPN News, Cold Pizzas et al night after night, throughout the week, with more of the same seven days later during College Game Day.

And there's no question several ESPN commentators -- sadly some of them also members of the sports writing fraternity -- seemed to delight in a knee-jerk fanning of the flames. They've variously described Miami's football program as "Thug U" and accused school president Donna Shalala of being far too lenient in disciplining the main transgressors.

They've also surmised that Coach Larry Coker, already with tenuous job security despite a national championship and a 58-17 record in 6 1/2 years at the helm, now certainly will be fired after the 2006 season.

Truth be told, Miami in recent years had gone a long way toward trying to erase the thug image that can be traced back more than 20 years.

"It's as if there was never a period of time when things were right," said former Hurricane coach Butch Davis, who really did clean up the program during his tenure in the late 1990s and already is being mentioned Coker's possible successor. "It's like 25 consecutive years of thuggery."

But don't tell that to Woody Paige, a long-time Denver sports columnist who also has been a regular on the dreadful Cold Pizza the past several years. He called for Miami to place the football team on hiatus for several years. "If UM and its president and trustees really had any courage, they would make the football program go away," Paige said. (By the way, if ESPN and its president really had any courage, they would make the Cold Pizza go away, but that's a story for another day.)

I just wonder if Paige ever said the same about the rogue University of Colorado program several seasons ago, where rape was the major issue, as opposed to a brawl on the field.

Chicago Sun Times columnist Jay Mariotti, a regular on Around The Horn, otherwise known as "Screaming Sports Scribes," suggested that Miami's football program cease and desist for at least the rest of the 2006 season. He described the one-game suspensions meted out to all but one of the participants as "a pathetic non-decision by the University of Miami," and added that "they've hit rock bottom."

And my friend Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times, another shouting scribe who really should know better, called Miami a "joke" academically, even if he offered no statistical evidence to back up the statement. Wonder what would happen if you compared the SAT scores of the players on his own neighborhood football powerhouse, Southern Cal, with the "joke" Hurricane squad. I don't know, but before you start slinging mud, its best to see how much gooey dirt is in your own back yard.

Even Dick Vitale, that noble defender of the student-athlete -- as long as they can jump through the roof and -- Oh, Baby -- perform like PTPers -- had to weigh in on ESPN Radio. "They should never, ever be allowed to put a uniform on again in Division I football," Dicky V opined. "That should be automatic. It was absolutely a crime." Think he had the same opinion a few years back when players from his beloved Notre Dame brawled pre-game in the stadium tunnel with players from Southern Cal?

I do believe Shalala, a former Clinton cabinet member, was far too lenient in her suspensions -- all but one player involved were asked to sit out against mighty Duke last week.

Shalala is a big-time football fan, mostly because she likes the money that it pours into her school's coffers, just as it did when she was chancellor at my own alma mater, Wisconsin. The once woebegone Badger program finally started winning during her regime, a period when some critics of the program also accused her of lowering academic standards to raise the team's ranking in the top 25. Two years ago at Miami she permitted a local high school star named Willie Williams, with 11 arrests on his teenage rap sheet, to be admitted and play in the program.

Then again, do you really think Miami is the only big-time power to de-emphasize academics in favor of filled stadiums, national titles and, most important, big-time alumni contributions? That's the story the national media, and particularly ESPN, has mostly ignored. With college football a prime staple of its fall programming, you think ESPN is going to vigorously bite the hand that feeds its beast?

Was the Miami-FIU footbrawl a crime? So far, no charges have been filed, and apparently there won't be. Really now, how many times have charges been filed in hockey games, where fighting not only is tolerated, but for many years tacitly encouraged by a league with a history of "goon" mentality in its not too distant past?

And by the way, how many hockey fight highlights has ESPN aired over the years, especially when it had the NHL rights, the better to promote its own games.

Last time we looked, Miami-FIU was a football fight in a violent sport that has sparked brawls on the field since the days of leather helmets and flying wedges. The same day the preppy lads of Dartmouth and Holy Cross were trading punches in the middle of the field. The major difference between that incident and Miami-FIU? Dartmouth-Holy Cross wasn't televised. No tape equals a non-TV story.

Of course it got out of control down here last week, and Miami safety Anthony Reddick, who took off his helmet and started using it as a club, deserved his indefinite suspension. I also saw Reddick on local TV here offer as sincere an apology as I've ever seen from an athlete in any sport, looking into the camera and saying, "the person that everyone saw last Saturday was truly not me. That wasn't a good reflection of my character, and I can only promise that this behavior . . . you'll never see again. My behavior was a disgrace to my school, my family, my friends and especially to the young kids that look up to me as a role model."

And, by the way, no one connected with ESPN ought to be the arbitrator of what's right and wrong in college stadiums or on campuses around the country.

At least not until ESPN stops accepting huge advertising dollars from all the major beer companies in an era where binge drinking among college students still remains a huge issue. Not until ESPN prohibits its own broadcasters -- some of them so-called news anchors on their studio shows -- from pitching beer to its main demographic, 18-to-34-year-olds, including millions of college kids, who also provide the largest viewership for shows like Cold Pizza and Around The Horn.

Ban the booze ESPN, then perhaps your screaming scribes can shout ad nauseum from the high moral ground.

Quick Fix: Last week's column took Comcast Sports Net to task because of a poor visual production of the Navy-Rutgers football game. The blame belonged instead to College Sports Television, an independent operation that actually produced the game.

Leonard Shapiro can be reached at Badgerlen@hotmail.com or Badgerlen@aol.com.