By Brad Locke
March 1, 2004

(AgapePress) - Stories of orgy-fests, sexual assault, rape, illegal gun selling, dope dealing and general malfeasance have long soiled the sports pages. Of course, the perpetrators have usually been athletes of the remunerated kind.

Recent developments suggest that the torch has been passed. Or more accurately, the flames have spread down the ranks. In the past month alone, reports have surfaced of college athletes -- and even more tragically, high school athletes -- engaging in the kind of criminal activity we have come to expect of professional athletes. We shouldn't be so shocked. More and more we treat our amateurs like pros, heaping an excess of hype and celebrity on them, swelling their tender egos like a chocolate-guzzling child, the end result being an oversized, malnourished soul.

Grown men have a hard enough time handling fame, so it's hard to completely blame kids for emulating their heroes. At Colorado, there have been accusations of sex parties to attract recruits, and even the rape of a former player, kicker Katie Hnida. In the same spirit, Wisconsin running back Dwayne Smith, the team's leading rusher last season, was recently jailed on sexual assault charges. West Virginia linebacker Muhammad Howard is facing federal charges for selling guns without a license.

This disturbing trend has even reached the prep level. North Carolina basketball recruit JamesOn Curry, the state's all-time leading scorer, was arrested for selling dope on school grounds. One of Miami's top football recruits, linebacker Willie Williams, whose stat sheet has nothing on his rap sheet, is currently being charged with misdemeanor battery. Two more charges are pending from a five-hour rampage, when Williams initiated unwanted physical contact with a woman, slugged a man at a bar, and set off some fire extinguishers in his hotel.

Between 1999 and 2002, a sticky-fingered Williams was arrested 10 times, a record Miami officials claimed they knew nothing about.

So who deserves most of the blame in all this -- professional "role models," complicit parents and coaches, the hype machine? It's hard to say. But let's start with the media.

There must be a thousand high school recruiting websites -- such as PrepStars.com, Rivals.com and AllianceSports.com, to name some more popular ones -- that rank high school athletes. Newspapers and magazines do this, too. This is how we determine which college teams rake in the best recruiting classes (LSU and Southern Cal, national football co-champs, were 1-2 this year). Parade and USA Today, among others, select high school all-star teams with the help of these lists.

The McDonald's All-American basketball team is the most prestigious and well-known of its kind. If you sign a McDonald's all-star -- it's a rarer feat these days, as more of these prodigies are foregoing college altogether -- you're program is considered among the elite. Of course, the All-Americans who decide to put off NBA riches don't do so for long, usually leaving after one or two years. Naturally, these talented athletes aren't going to school for an education; to them, college basketball is basically a minor league.

Parents (or in many cases, just the mother) of these young superstars are complicit at best, sellouts at worst. I'm not discounting the struggles many families and single mothers go through to raise their kids in a safe, nurturing environment. Often, though, it seems these young men are over-nurtured to the point of coddling. They're given whatever they want as they grow up, so naturally they feel entitled to people's affections and praise -- and in LeBron James' case, a Hummer.

Speaking of LeBron, to give an example of an overly doting mother, it was not an uncommon sight to see Ms. James striding through the crowd at her son's high school games, holding aloft a sign and taunting the opposing team's fans. That's not a supportive mother, that's an obnoxious cheerleader. And his high school coach, as many high school coaches do, took James and his inconsequential teammates on a nationwide barnstorming tour, some of which was televised. Speaking of coaches, it's no secret that many college athletes are paid handsomely for their services, if not by a coach, then by boosters who hold the coach's fate in their back pocket.

(An aside on "King James:" While he has proven to be both a competent student of the game and an upstanding citizen so far, remember that we thought the same thing about Kobe Bryant; James has only begun to taste the amount of fame and fortune that is bound to come his way.)

Then we have the role models, the professionals who set the standard to which the amateurs aspire. Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown, recently out of jail, has been "advising" Maurice Clarett, the 20-year-old man-child who played one year of injury-riddled ball at Ohio State, got caught up in legal troubles and successfully challenged the NFL's draft age rule.

It's obvious Brown has been doing a bang-up job -- Clarett showed up to the NFL combine overweight and out of shape, giving further pause to some already skeptical scouts. Clarett, by the way, blew off a meeting last year with another Hall of Fame running back, Marcus Allen, a much more stand-up guy than Brown.

Fans hold just as much guilt as any of these aforementioned entities. Many follow the recruiting process almost religiously, celebrate the accomplishments of athletes like James and Clarett, and treat these kids like royalty.

We all need to learn that money and athletic skill don't make a man. That's the world's standard, not the Bible's. Those things are temporal and fragile; God's promises are eternal and rock-solid. Until somebody teaches that concept to these prima donnas, they'll continue to be materially rich but morally bankrupt.