Athletes shouldn’t get a bye

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/01/2024 (590 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A popular theory for decades has been that everyone is connected to everyone else by six degrees of separation.

It arose in the 1960s, and interestingly enough, has been tested again using the power of the internet. (Thought the exact mechanism of the “small world” phenomenon, as it’s known, has been found to be more complicated than the 1960s version.)

Basically, if you take the people you know, and the people they know, and continue that progression out six times, eventually, at around the ring of “acquaintances six times removed,” everyone is connected.

In North America, there could just as easily be a separate theory of two degrees of separation: that, as you passed through secondary or post-secondary education, either you or someone you know has personal experience of a skilled male athlete getting preferential treatment.

It could be as simple as a gifted high school hockey player getting to skip tests, assignments or classes “for the good of the team” — it could be a university that has special, less-challenging courses for university athletes — but the same degree.

Or it could be a case of individual athletes getting a bye for offensive behaviour that others would pay a personal price for, regardless of their skills at math, geometry or English composition.

No one on the high school debating team is likely forced to undergo hazings involving sexual assault. High school football players in Toronto did.

Sports, too often, is treated as if it is special.

At its worst, it could be like the case of Brock Turner, a Stanford University swimmer, who was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, but who received a six-month jail term, because the judge in the case said a longer sentence “would have a severe impact on him.”

The crime has a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison, and the judge’s words during the sentencing led to public outrage.

Or like Hockey Canada.

Hockey Canada settled a $3.55-million lawsuit involving players at the Hockey Canada gala in June 2018, involving members of Canada’s 2018 world junior team. When the story about that lawsuit was broken by TSN, Canadians also found out that Hockey Canada was using money from minor hockey fees to build up a fund to cover uninsured legal liabilities — including the world juniors lawsuit. That discovery, and the reaction to it, cleared house at Hockey Canada — its president and CEO left the organization, swiftly followed by its entire board of directors.

By then, a parliamentary committee had heard Hockey Canada had paid out $7.9 million to cover nine settlements for sexual abuse and sexual assault between 1989 and 2022.

Now, there’s a new chapter. Five players from the 2018 team have been told to surrender to London, Ont., police to face sexual assault charges.

The story is all too familiar.

It’s time we stopped essentially teaching athletes — especially young male athletes — that their prowess in sports can insulate them from responsibility for their actions off the ice, off the field, and out of the pool.

There are athletic skills that are a gift of good genetics. But even the naturals have to do more.

That gift, these days, has to be built upon using dedication, serious training, deep understanding of their chosen sport, and rigorous dedication to team rules. Surely they can understand their public behaviour must be equally above reproach.

The only reason players feel they can shed personal responsibility for their own actions is because we have a long, long history of letting them do exactly that.

The time of accepting that “boys will be boys” is long over.