Must violence among athletes be a crime that pays?
Attorney suggests curbing ‘flagrant sports battery’
By Eldon L. Ham
As fallen NFL quarterback Michael Vick and others have discovered, off-field transgressions can be severely penalized.
The courts, though, have long adhered to a hands-off approach where on-field mayhem is concerned, but that reticence should be overhauled for at least two reasons: emerging technology and evolving attitudes.
Unnecessary sports violence on the field of play causes frequent substantial injuries to participants at all levels, from high school to the pros.
Illinois now provides civil remedies by recognizing a modern “contact sports” exception for willful and wanton misconduct, but where criminal penalties – and deterrence – are concerned, Illinois follows an archaic tradition that too often allows a free pass.
New laws often follow changes in society, albeit sometimes too slowly, and now a change in technology has rendered the old hands-off rule out of touch.
Nearly every sporting contest, from the pros to little leagues, is recorded on video, usually by legions of parents, grandparents and others, if not also local TV coverage or even network television. So almost every on-field altercation can now be preserved and studied.
Attitudes are also shifting. Illinois already has a special criminal sanction in place for attacking a sporting event official, and there is a growing public outcry concerning needless violence on the field of play.
The time has come for Illinois to blaze a modern approach to criminal thuggery, disguised as sport, by defining and proscribing aberrant on-field conduct, as follows:
Flagrant Sports Battery - An intentional or reckless act of excessive battery or other violent force of a magnitude that is unnecessary or contrary to the object of the game, sport or contest, as provided in the express or commonly implied rules and reasonable expectations of such game, sport or contest, and which causes substantial injury.
Perhaps the new law could be called the “Neal Goss Sports Act.” Goss was only 15 years old when he was paralyzed while playing ice hockey for New Trier High School in Winnetka. But his fate was no accident, and that begs a volatile issue.
A player from the opposing team apparently skated the length of the ice at full speed and brutally checked Goss from behind, blind-siding him into the boards several seconds after the final buzzer sounded.
Goss was paralyzed; the aggressor was not injured. Such aggressor was charged with aggravated battery and pleaded “no contest” to a lesser misdemeanor, receiving probation.
But take away about four seconds, and the guilty player would likely have gone scott-free; as it happened, the attack was three or four seconds after the game and therefore was a battery perpetrated “after” the contest.
Malevolent misconduct on and off the field is growing, and that includes all ages and levels of play. On Oct. 1, 2006, Tennessee Titans defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth used his cleats to scrape 30-stitches worth of skin from the face of defenseless Cowboys player Andre Gurode, who was lying on the ground after completion of a play.
Moreover, that act may have been emulated just four weeks later by NCAA players from Miami and Florida International who sparked an on-field melee that resulted in 31 player suspensions.
Last year, a little league coach ordered a player to injure a boy from his own team so the coach wouldn’t have to play him in an important game.
Yes, players do assume the normal risk of injury, even from broken rules. But they don’t assume the risk of losing an ear to Mike Tyson’s teeth or suffering a malicious attack between plays. Thanks to video, sorting out the on-field truth will no longer be a problem in many cases.
In 2003, a powder puff “football game” devolved into a grotesquely violent hazing ritual that sent five teenage girls to the hospital and resulted in numerous suspensions.
Little would have been done except for one thing: a see-all video tape that found its way into the national press and played incessantly on CNN internationally for two solid weeks.
With video, there are no more excuses for ignoring cruel or malicious acts; if a picture is worth a thousand words, a red-handed video is worth a thousand witnesses.
All pro sports are visually documented, but so are college games, high school contests, and even club sports. Indeed, almost every play in most games featuring young adults is caught on tape by someone. And if it is, let’s use it.
Not all injuries should be actionable, of course – that would be absurd in any sport – just aberrant behavior that amounts to a newly defined crime of “flagrant sports battery.”
Any routine injury that results from the usual clipping, facemask penalties or brush-back pitches would not normally be actionable, while cutting up a player’s face between plays, biting off an ear, punching an opponent in the mouth, or otherwise intentionally causing serious injury, would be.
A growing pandemic of sadistic bloodshed disguised as sports is a growing danger in Illinois and elsewhere, but it doesn’t have to be.