After winning Super Bowl 50, Peyton Manning has been the topic of a good deal of discussion. As of this writing, he has not yet declared one way or the other whether he will retire prior to next season (which, let’s be honest, he definitely should). His legacy is on the minds of many.
However, also present in the conversation is a story that has recently resurfaced: allegations that Peyton Manning sexually assaulted a trainer while in college. Shaun King wrote an article for The New York Daily News that has picked up a great deal of steam, and a variety of other outlets have now picked up the story.
The Daily Beast appears to have reported on the story at least two weeks prior to King’s article in the context of a lawsuit that has been filed against the University of Tennessee for “creat[ing] a ‘hostile sexual environment’ through a policy of indifference toward assaults by student-athletes,” according to ESPN.com (quoting the lawsuit). In a clip from “Outside the Lines,” ESPN also mentions similar lawsuits ongoing at Baylor University and Kent State University.
Manning’s name simply joins a long list that already includes Jameis Winston, Jerry Sandusky and countless others as alleged or convicted perpetrators of sexual assault whose cases were handled differently (or at least allegedly handled differently in the cases of Manning and Winston) than would an ordinary case.
Moving beyond sexual assault, we can also look to names such as Greg Hardy, Ray Rice and Johnny “Billy” Manziel — players, specifically football players, who have either been convicted of domestic violence or had domestic violence claims filed against them. If we look further, we can see the history book of sports dotted with all sorts of violent incidents, from Latrell Sprewell’s choking of P.J. Carlesimo to Jahlil Okafor’s bar fight in Boston.
It’s not just at the professional or college levels that we see this trend. From the nationally publicized incidents in Steubenville, Ohio, to the not-so-national stories my dad tells of his tennis players skipping class and then expecting him to cover for them (he didn’t), many athletes seem to expect special privileges beyond those to which they are entitled for playing a specific sport simply because they play that specific sport.
For me, these incidents, some recent and some dated, highlight the over-privileged position in which we often place athletes or athletic programs in our society. We laud and lionize the often truly extraordinary efforts of players on the court/pitch/field, but then make the mistake of assuming that good on-field performance ought to excuse off-the-field behavior.
I’m certainly all for giving student-athletes (and in this I would include athletes who take seriously the club sports in which they compete if there is not a varsity equivalent for that club sport and if the team is run in a manner similar to a varsity team) first dibs over spaces necessary to performing the activities in which they are involved. It’s annoying when I try to play pickup basketball in the gym but two courts are taken by the basketball team, one by the volleyball team, the track courts by tennis, and so on and so on, but they (in my view) have the right, as varsity sports teams, to use that space in order to fulfill the functions of the team.
At the same time, though, this should not mean that special treatment is allotted outside of such situations. At University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for example, many student athletes were found to have enrolled in a class that was essentially designed to do little more than boost the GPA of those who took it. (I should note, to my knowledge, I do not think that such special treatment takes place in the same overt manner at our school, but I would contend that there are instances where athlete bias causes some students to be treated less favorably than others. For example, if athletes are given essentially full control over a space when it is opened up to them, non-athletes should have similar control — over whether hoops and dividing nets are raised or lowered, for example — when the same spaces are opened up to them.)
That being said, I would also like to acknowledge that athletes, especially in moneymaking programs at the Div. I level, are caught up in a complex network of power relations in which they are often exploited at the same time as they are privileged. NCAA football makes billions each year on football, yet players can have their legacies tarnished and their careers effectively hampered for selling their own memorabilia or selling their personal autograph. God forbid they profit in any way from what belongs essentially and in perpetuity to the NCAA.
My overall point is simply this: we need to be careful in our thinking about athletes and athletics. While I love to watch sports, this does not mean that I (or we) ought to excuse the behavior of athletes off the field. We ought to hold them to a standard equivalent to the standards of greatness we expect on the field. Otherwise, we place them in a position of privilege that, despite all the talent in the world, they simply do not deserve.
Ben Taylor, a Sports Editor for the Voice, can be reached for comment at btaylor16@wooster.edu