Saving golden goose, WPIAL laid a golden egg

It's March, and for many the word Madness comes instantly to mind. The state basketball championships have wound up, and beyond a Schuylkill League team winning a state championship, the lasting memory for me will be the less-ballyhooed fight between Jeannette and North Catholic in the quarterfinals of the AA playoffs. I wasn't there, but reports of the incident and the ensuing response are troubling, if accurate.

Madness is an apt description of the refusal of anyone in the WPIAL to discipline Terrelle Pryor and his merry band of waylayers. The potential of this kid is immense and with him comes any number of hanger-ons and folks with less than noble ideals of entitlement, but the potential for something bad to have happened in a hallway with a number of kids pushing and throwing punches is much higher.

The real problems exist in the mindset of adults who don't want to alienate themselves from Mr. Pryor and what he could become. The hype of this teenager leading both a football and basketball team to state championships (although I seem to remember General McLane accomplishing the same thing last season under the leadership of Drew Astorino without incident) and the cash cow that accompanies anything Mr. Pryor does is infectious. Websites have made millions just on the promise of having inside information on where he'll go to college. Perhaps if the brouhaha had occurred in the regular season, lessons would have been easier to teach.

Those lessons may have been too little, too late for Pryor though. During his press conference to announce his college choice, Pryor blew off the incident weeks before with the comment, “I'm not worried about none of that. I think the football field will speak for itself. I mean, that's why you are here right? Whether I was a bad kid or not, you are still here.”

Aside from an astoundingly non-conformist approach to using the English language (barring a science experiment gone awry, the football field will never speak for itself), the troubling bit comes at the end, whether he was a bad kid or not, we are still there, still paying attention. What media outlet was going to shun his announcement?

I recently finished reading Lord of the Flies by William Golding. In case you don't remember it, a group of boys find themselves on an island after a plane crash. After some misadventures and the slaying of a pig, the blood lust and lack of institutional control becomes too much and the boys decide to hunt one of their own. It is a tremendous commentary on where kids will lead things if their egos go unchecked, their indiscretions unpunished.

Closer to home we see that in the ranks of the Penn State football program, of which I am an admitted fan. Every offseason it's the same routine: Player gets in trouble, people call for Joe's head, and ultimately a game suspension is handed down as a show of control. Where is the accountability? Where is the discipline?

There isn't a magical age when kids become too big for their britches, when a little attitude on the court turns into a big problem off the court.

Sports at any level, from competitive pre-school hopscotch to professional logrolling, are a privilege, not a right. They are a means for people to escape, not only momentarily but from tough situations in life. Nowhere should ticket sales or bad press get in the way of doing the right thing when revoking that privilege is the only recourse.

If you haven't done so yet, find a copy of Chuck Souder's column on the changes Sports Illustrated has undergone since its very first issue.