Rice vs. Moss: Perceiving “Yesterday’s” Athletes and Today’s
It was only a matter of time before Randy Moss’ words caught up with him. After breaking Jerry Rice’s record for touchdown receptions in a season with 23 (Rice caught 22 in a strike-shortened 12-game season) Moss told the press that the record meant something only because, “shuttin’ you guys [the NFL press] up made it special.”Jerry Rice, on Sirius Radio, said Moss’ statement was a “slap in the face” and added dismissively that, “that’s Moss.”
On ESPN’s Mike and Mike in the Morning radio-television simulcast, Mike Greenberg and Sean Salisbury (sitting in for Mike Golic) criticized Moss for making his statement. The show co-hosts questioned exactly what the heck Moss was talking about. They felt the critiques of Moss while at Oakland were and are warranted, because he admittedly failed to perform at times for the Raiders.
Peter King, NFL writer for Sports Illustrated, appeared on the show and said that there are members of the NFL media who will never vote for Moss for the Hall of Fame because they feel he “dogged it” in Minnesota and Oakland. King explained Moss’ statement in the context of today’s generation of football player. He mentioned that Emmitt Smith is also miffed at the perception by the media that his rushing record is a lesser achievement than Walter Peyton’s or another running back’s record before him. King also said that Brett Favre treated breaking Dan Marino’s career touchdown passes record in an off-handed manner, because he is still of the generation of present players and his father “beat” winning into him, so the end result is all the matters to Favre.
King’s outlook on the issue as being generational is an interesting one, and not often discussed. Do writers owe it to today’s players to take into account the times in which we live when writing about the athletes they cover? How do we define “the times in which we live today” with respect to today’s athletes? Have sportswriters, to some degree, lost the respect of athletes because we often fail to judge them by today’s socio-cultural climate?
The answers are probably many and varied (and, perhaps, contentious). Athletes are automatically compared with their peers. However, they are also viewed through the lens of their predecessors; at the very least, their statistics and their perceived decorum or reverence - or lack thereof - for the game they played. These perceptions, which are sometimes manifested in the form of biases, become even more difficult to elucidate when athletes from other eras - with which today’s players are being compared - remain alive.
Looked at this way - Rice’s answer is predictable. We are too often overly wistful in our memory of past athletes, their feats and especially their professed “professionalism.” Rice, for instance, was known to be standoffish with the press, was known as a preener with his perfectly-tailored uniform and towel as uniform accessory, folded to exactly the same width and to exactly the legal maximum of 18″every week for nearly 20 years. Rice, like receivers today, lobbied quarterbacks, assistant coaches, head coaches, and the media for the ball to be thrown to him more often. And the lobbying turned to complaints if his efforts at diplomacy failed.
Today we have forgotten most, if not all, of these facets of Rice’s personality that are easily perceived as negative. The effect is to strip Rice - or any former athlete perceived in this manner - of his humanness and to present him to the public as a sacred past gladiator who is already thought of as perhaps the best football player in the history of the sport. So, of course it is patently unfair to compare today’s athletes with past performers when those past performers’ personality smudges and flaws are wiped clean, leaving only desired images for our memories. It is little wonder that athletes now sometimes bristle at comparisons to certain former peers who have been exalted to the status of sports deities.
Another question, then, is how would the sporting landscape appear if all of yesterday’s athletes were remembered, warts and all?
Today we assign a negative value to the out-sized egos athletes possess, to the point where we become disgusted by or laugh at them for referring to themselves in the third person. Yet today’s athletes were not the first generation to engage in this particular form of self-aggrandizement. In fact, we very rarely acknowledge the fact that it takes an out-sized ego to be absolutely convinced that one human has the ability to enter into an athletic arena and compete against another human, and defeat them in a raw battle of athleticism and wits.
But think of how we might look at Babe Ruth or Paul Hornung, both remembered romantically for their drinking and womanizing, if those exploits were talked about as evidence of talent wasted. Consider the discussions concerning these two great performers if their foibles were perceived as years of potential accomplishments stolen from the public, instead of examples of some sort of “purer time” when sports weren’t taken so seriously (nothing could be farther from the truth).
Consider that, if we indulged in judging their actions by the social mores of today’s socio-cultural climate, Ruth, Hornung, and so many other athletes do not shine so brightly. And the misdeeds or wasted years from a lack of total commitment to their craft attributed to many of today’s athletes seem nowhere near as heinous.
Which world do you prefer: the present environment, where comparisons of today’s athletes with yesterday’s are impossible because of a romanticized past and a sensationalized present, or a world where the realities of the acts of our former and present athletic performers are compared and contrasted?
Perhaps, just for the sake of argument or the sake of balance, we should give the latter a try - for ohhh, the next 20 years.
Tags: Jerry Rice, NFL, Peter King, Randy Moss
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