There’s a scene at the very beginning of the Tom Cruise hit film Jerry Maguire where superagent Maguire is shown adeptly handling all of the day-to-day duties that come with his territory. Wooing potential new clients, securing sponsorship deals for existing clients, fast talking, smooth talking — it’s like watching a sports agent decathlon…up to and including the part where Maguire has to make the perp walk with one of his clients who just committed a crime.
Maguire turns to the brigade of cameramen outside the police station, smiles like he’s about to ask for your vote, and says something along the lines of “…all I know is this man is a spectacular athlete!” As if that somehow made up for the player having his face buried in a
plate of blow, or driving drunk…or raping a 16-year-old runaway.
Which brings us to Lawrence Taylor. It’s ironic, the debate over Jerry Maguire has always been “Who was the Maguire character patterned after?” Many thought it was Leigh Steinberg; of course, Drew Rosenhaus claimed it was he who was the template for the Maguire character. Me, I was always more interested in who the players in the movie were modeled after. Rod Tidwell was an amalgam of Michael Irvin and whom? Which overhyped top draft pick was the blueprint for Cushman? As for the nameless arrested football player in that opening scene, well that guy was always LT to me.
To say Taylor has had issues is a little like saying JaMarcus Russell
likes to snack. Taylor’s entire career and post-career have been marked
by speed and ferocity, which is fine on the football field (unless you
happen to be either Joe Theismann’s tibia or fibula) but not so good off
the field. He says it himself in his 2003 autobiography, he has spent
most of his adult life surrounded by football players, drug dealers,
drug addicts, and whores.
So when a story breaks about Taylor
allegedly raping a 16-year-old runaway prostitute in Ramapo, NJ this
week, a girl that was brought to him at a hotel room as if she were a
pizza and two-liter bottle of Diet Coke, I’m left wondering if I’m not
surprised because it’s Taylor
at the center of this hideous mess or
because this is just the latest middle finger at human decency by an
athlete in what is rapidly becoming “2010: The Year of the Complete and
Utter Douchebag” in sports.
Honestly, it feels like in the last
six months alone, I’ve said on the air on my show “You know who is the
most thankful guy in the world that (Douche #2) committed this crime?
(Douche #1), that’s who.” No fewer than ten times, with Douche #1 being
some recent perpetrator
whose idiocy gets miraculously (or maybe
not so miraculously) pushed to the back burner by Douche #2’s seeming
attempt to top it a few days later.
Around Thanksgiving, we had
Tiger and that carried us for a while. Then we had Ben Roethlisberger.
Ron Washington tried to poke his head in the race back in March by
admitting he was abusing cocaine. Sorry, Skip, you’re gonna have to do
better than that to carry headlines this year. Hell, New York Jets
cornerback Antonio Cromartie had to take a $500,000 advance on his
salary to pay child support to the SIX mothers of his SEVEN children
(expensive weekend for him coming up, by the way) and that gets no
run at all. Child’s play.
The city of Philadelphia is seemingly
staging it’s own Douchebag of the Year play-in tournament for civilians
with the Phillies having already had a fan vomit on an 11-year-old girl at a
game, another one run onto the field and get tased, and one more run on
the field the very next day with dope in his pocket. Do any of you
think you can really touch LT?
It’s almost like LT hand picked
this week to show just how deplorable he can be, seeing if he could push
his sense of entitlement so far that his arrest could trump an alleged
murder by a lacrosse player at the University of Virginia, a veritable
scumbag “heat check,” if you will. Bravo, LT. Swish.
Lawrence, if
these charges are true and this is your last play as a member of
society, you’ve outdone yourself. You turned Tiger, Ben, the UVA story
and the rest of the dysfunctional sleaze into size-two font. Buried them
like they were John Elway in Super Bowl XXI. Hell, if
Pacman Jones
wanted to re-enter the NFL, this would be the week to do it. Would
anyone even notice? (Wait, what now?….he DID? Damn. See?)
I’d
like to think it’s going to be a long time before an athlete or former
athlete “tops” this LT story, but sadly I’m bracing for it sooner rather
than later. History in 2010 tells me I need to.
Listen to
Sean Pendergast on 1560 The Game from 3-7 p.m. weekdays on the Sean
& John Show, and follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/SeanCablinasian
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This article appears in May 6-12, 2010.
