This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Sports

The Men That Boys Should Not Emulate

Kobe Bryant's recent verbal outburst at a referee causes Matt Eagan to pause and consider the current crop of male role models for young men and boys.

Kobe Bryant is almost certainly one of the greatest players ever to bounce a basketball, but when he doesn't have the ball in his hands he has proven to be unworthy of emulation.

The problem is our kids only pay attention to the first part.

For those who missed it, Kobe went to the Lakers bench in a rage Tuesday night and shouted an unprintable homophobic slur at a referee. Just as disturbing, he was largely given a pass by the sports media, especially at the boys club at ESPN.

Find out what's happening in Windsorwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

On ESPN radio this week, discussion centered not so much on Bryant’s ugly words as the fact that TV cameras were there to catch them. The TV cameras are the problem, you see, not the cavalier use of a term so loaded with hatred.

“No one is defending what he said,” is the way the defense usually began. But… but he was in the heat of the moment. But the cameras shouldn’t be there. But that kind of language is used all the time in professional sports, as if that in itself is not the problem.

Find out what's happening in Windsorwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

NBA commissioner David Stern immediately recognized how far across the line Bryant’s remarks were and fined him the not insignificant sum of $100,000. Bryant promptly appealed the fine and issued a puzzling public statement to ESPN radio.

“The comment that I made, even though it was not meant as what it's perceived to be, is nonetheless wrong,” the statement said.

Not what it was perceived to be?

Well, there is no reason to believe Bryant actually thought the referee was gay, which would have made his comments uglier and more personal. He was not making a personal attack. He was, instead, using the most derogatory phrase he could think of, which was to call the referee gay in the rudest fashion possible. Let's call the Nobel people.

The remark and the apology is revealing if only because it so clearly illustrates the culture that surrounds Bryant. There has never been an openly gay athlete in a major American team sport. There is a reason for that.

Who knows how many athletically gifted teens in the nation and in Connecticut, have turned away from sports because the culture, passed down from the pros, is hostile to gay people?

The irony is the NBA is about to launch a public service campaign with the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network to try to halt anti-gay language. The first spot, featuring Grant Hill, was shot on the same day Kobe was undermining these worthy efforts.

Perhaps as troubling as the overt text of Bryant's remarks is the subtext. Taken literally, the harshest insult he can think to throw at another man is that he does not have sex with women. The defining characteristic, therefore, of a man is that he has sex with women.

How far is it from this thinking to cheating on your wife in a Colorado hotel room?

For so long we have been concerned with the images that are etched into our daughters brains. Images of stick-figure women with augmented breasts who stare out of magazines with an expression that says, “I loathe you,” and “I love you.” There is reason to be concerned about such things.

Almost unnoticed are the images that could shape our sons. There are Judd Apatow's man-boys, who seem to have stopped evolving emotionally at 14, and the gang from “Entourage,” who never made it that far. And then there are the athletes.

There is belief in our country that seems to go back to the ancient Greeks that sports somehow develop character. That athletics teach sacrifice and teamwork and those skills will translate into a life better lived. The idea was to have a sound mind inside a sound body. This is how we justify our obsession with games. This how we justify school teams and athletic scholarships.

There remains merit in the idea.

But it should be obvious to adults that Kobe Bryant has not the first clue of what it is to be a man. A man doesn't cheat on his wife with a 19-year-old hotel employee. And he doesn't scream the kind of invective Bryant screamed on Tuesday. Not in the heat of the moment. Not when television cameras are rolling. Not when there are any television cameras. Not ever.

Still we see him knock down a game-winner and we think it's grit. We see Tiger Woods make a clutch putt on the 72nd hole of the U.S. Open and think it's determination. We see Ben Roethlisberger shuck off pass rushers and find a receiver in the end zone and it's somehow a window into his soul.

Strange to find, after all this time, they're just men.

Men you don't want your son to grow up to be.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?