SPORTS & SCANDAL, HOW BAD?  //  NFL: BRONCOS & THE CHIEFS

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            STARTING NOVEMBER 14, 2011, “SPORTS NOTEBOOK” WILL POST NEW EVERY MONDAY INSTEAD OF ON TUESDAY, continuing with a new post every Friday.  Editor, Marvin Leibstone. Comments to: mlresources1@aol.com

SPORTS & SCANDAL, HOW BAD?  ---  WHERE is shame? Has it disappeared? There was a time, and it seems long ago, when persons having committed illegal sex acts, or knowing of them and having said nothing to authorities, would resign from their jobs immediately. Driven by shame, they’d seek a hole to hide in and pray for a future go at redemption. Today, we find that persons accused of such wrongdoings express denial as if they were Richard Nixon clones trying to make little of their Watergates. You can almost hear them shouting, “How dare anyone ask that I commit professional suicide by confessing to a crime, or admitting that I knew about a crime.”

What has bothered a lot of Americans this week is that Penn State’s Joe Paterno hadn’t resigned the moment news of sexual abuse within his football program hit the airwaves. Though Paterno had never been the abuser of young boys that his former assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, has been accused of being, he had to at least have heard about Sandusky’s illegal behavior problems and he’d done nothing about it, which to any rational person is a criminal act. As coinage for redemption, a Paterno asked to own up, apologize and refuse to remain in college sports makes sense.

As for Sandusky, if all that he’s being accused of is true he’s probably not one to hang himself or stick his head in an oven and light a match, so a long jail sentence will probably be his fate .  .  .  The Penn State scandal has caused lots of parents and their kids to think of American sports as dirty all around. Parents daydream about their kids playing baseball, football, soccer or hockey; none want to trade those dreams in for nightmares about predators abusing their offspring. Yes, there can be snakes in the grass, worms in a barrel of apples, scorpions in the bathtub, and one Sandusky in this world is far too many, but we can take some comfort knowing that across the nation many colleges have decent sports programs and decent persons managing them.

A recent study proved that seven percent of U.S. college football players have criminal records. While this isn’t good news, the study also advises that 93 percent of college football players do not have criminal records, which is positive. It’s likely, then, that, in spite of the many sports scandals in a given year, the lion’s share of American sports has remained clean, that the house known as American sports is not falling apart. However, with this said, the rot that is there ought to be attacked, gotten rid of. Even one percent bad can affect many lives adversely, which means something needs to be done to scour those corners of our games that have been infected, and not just to eliminate those bent sexually but to edge out the corrupter$, too. Authorities need work to dump all those college officials on the take along with the scouts and agents using payoffs, drugs and hookers to steer athletes of potential in certain directions, even to where those athletes don’t wish to go. 

One clean-up idea is restructuring the NCAA so that its investigations of college sports can be more rigorous, more honest, leading to arrests and convictions. Another is for the federal government or Congress to appoint a commission similar to that which investigated baseball’s steroid scandals, purpose: ferret out deviates and corruption within all of the major college and professional sports, dissolving after.

A third recommendation has been appointment of a permanent National Sports Commissioner with White House authority for investigating all American sports randomly and per schedule, a drawback being that the commissioner would be beholden to a political party, thus sports could be hostage to political objectives.

Important now is that the Penn State mess be the catalyst for new investigations nationally and that the NCAA be made to back its play as a true overseer of college sports, thus enforcer of the good.

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NFL  ---   A smart Broncos strategy from now until the end of the current NFL season will include hope, XX-large hope that, in addition to winning all of the Denver team’s remaining games the Kansas City Chiefs, San Diego Padres and Oakland Raiders lose all of theirs, for this could put the Broncos at the head of the American Conference’s Western Division, owning a post-season billet.

Good news for Denver’s fans is that in addition to their team beating the Raiders last week, the Broncos have an opportunity to whip the K.C. Chiefs this Sunday and again on January 1, 2012. Also, the Broncos will have a chance to present San Diego with a loss on November 27.

But---first things first: the Chiefs are not wimps by any definition, they are 4-4 and leading the AC-WD, but fortunately for 3-5 Denver they are weakest opposite where Denver has been weak. Meant by this is that the Chiefs offense isn’t all aces, so the vulnerable Broncos defense may not have to work as hard as when they had challenged the Raiders last week. Another plus is that the re-invented Broncos offense has a better than fair chance at racking up points providing that starting quarterback, Tim Tebow, can rush the ball as he had when Denver beat Oakland, which will require fast and mean pass protection and also running back, Willis McGahee, and wide receiver, Eddie Royal, getting the support needed to be free for Tebow transferring the football to them.

Expect from Tebow a lot of first down attempts via short yardage gains, yet the unexpected third or fourth down pass for the TD, also every possible effort by his offense to confuse and undo the Chiefs close-in defenders and the Chiefs secondary. The winning Denver offense-equation has to be Tebow + space, time & receivers = points, emphasis on the space and time that Tebow needs to find his options, choose and perform.

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