Games we watch

This time of the year produces what we in the news business call “hot weather” stories — those capturing national attention because of a lack of better material in the sultry days of summer.

Probably the most famous of these occurred in the late 1920s in a small Tennessee community where the right to teach evolution vs. creationism was about to become known to the whole world as “the monkey trial,” pitting political giant and orator William Jennings Bryan against the great mouthpiece, Clarence Darrow.

This year’s candidates for the hot weather title, while far less lasting and lofty in implications perhaps than the philosophical struggle (which continues to this day) over how man emerged, might be the California gubernatorial recall debacle and Kobe Bryant’s ordeal in Colorado. The first could have significant impact on national politics, coming as it does in the most populous state, and the second may be the most significant indictment yet of the misadventure known as professional basketball.

The outcome of the former, where a Hollywood-like cast of hundreds is seeking electoral anointment to a thankless job, could affect the 2004 presidential election if California voters suffering from huge deficits and reduced services decide that the Democrats got them into this silly mess and vengefully turn their votes to President Bush.

The Bryant affair, which has drawn hundreds of national media representatives to a small Colorado community, more exactly parallels the Tennessee hot weather version both in the circus atmosphere it has engendered and the cultural questions it raises about professional sports in the United States — the oversubscription to hero worshiping that has turned pitifully unprepared young men and women into multimillionaire icons far beyond what can be considered reasonable. Kobe Bryant, the latest of the basketball candidates for “best ever,” is accused of raping a young clerk in a hotel where he was staying. He has admitted to the sex but not the rape.

Whether or not he is guilty or innocent, he was the one player never expected to be in this position, and, therefore, the damage to the National Basketball Association, and for that matter sports in general, could easily transcend his ultimate conviction or acquittal. With almost every day producing a new instance of bad behavior by NBA giants and leading figures in other professional sports, why should the Bryant story be so all consuming? Easy. He is enormously talented and had a public persona of unusual cleanliness among his overpaid, physically (and obviously hormonally) outsized colleagues. He was the NBA poster child.

The root cause of all this trouble in professional athletics is money. We are all culprits who supply it in irrational, unbelievable quantities to undereducated, exploited youngsters, who have little understanding of its value or how to manage it. They are not atypical in their age group. They are just wealthy enough to indulge the normal excesses of youth. Add that wherewithal to environmentally and socially deprived backgrounds and the combination is lethal.

Worshiping fans must bear part of the blame. But a major share belongs to the corporations that fuel the entire big-time sports industry. They buy the overpriced boxes and blocs of seats in the arenas for clients and pay the hefty endorsements to sell the shoes and paraphernalia for which less fortunate children have been known to kill one another. Their advertising supports the huge television revenues distributed among the various teams. The average NBA fan can’t afford to see a game first-hand, so high are the prices for anything close to a decent seat and minimal concessions. Often the corporate seats are empty in surreal defiance of the announced “sell-out.”

In a perfect world, no one whose only skill is throwing a ball through a hoop would be paid anywhere near the kind of money that Kobe Bryant and his fellow players enjoy, and in the old days they weren’t. The great player and coach, John Wooden, used to get $5 a game as a professional, the same as a Ford assembly worker. But that was before endorsements and television. This is a world intoxicated by the vicarious thrill of celebrity. It is a world where hitting a baseball can earn a person a million times more than a distinguished teacher or an artist of immense talent would be paid, where the athletes are far more valued than the doctors who must constantly patch them together.

There are those who are arguing that these horrendous allegations are what Kobe Bryant needed to improve his street image for the benefit of the products he peddles.

If that is the case, we are not just talking about how man evolved but just how far.

Dan K. Thomasson is former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service.