Coach's Corner

Last week, a lurid, sleazy courtroom drama concerning another public figure captivated the news media and thus Us. As a nation, I wish we all had better things to do and talk about, but apparently we don't. One of the best and most recognized sportscasters, Marv Albert, allowed himself, his family, and his friends to be humiliated before an enraptured national audience as all of the man's kinky sexual habits became water-cooler joke fodder. I'm no legal scholar, but what was this fiasco really about? Was it ever about any sort of criminal act? Or, was the justice system being used as a tool for a personal vendetta? Wasn't this trial really about Albert's quaint sex life, resulting in the destruction of his reputation and credibility, which for a public figure is everything?

Certainly, by now, you know the story of Albert and his 10-year affair with a lover, which unfolded in a Virginia courtroom last week. Everyone seems to think (or they say they think, or they just keep quiet) that the NBC broadcaster is a complete scumbag who's getting what he deserves. This is typical of the bizarre moral climate we live in today, where the most graphic violence imaginable is on display on network television, where embarrassingly explicit sex is as common on TV as a jar of peanut butter in a kitchen cabinet. Yet real-life sexual issues are still handled, publicly anyway, in a fashion not much different than that practiced by our Puritan ancestors.

Even if Albert is 100% guilty of shocking his long-time girlfriend (with whom he'd been sleeping for a decade) by munching on her back, and even if he tried to force (whatever that means) this person (who he'd been expending 10 years of passion with) into some kind of kinky act she'd never seen in all that time (this charge was dropped), even if you want to believe that every word is the entire truth, it's not near enough justification to use the legal system to vaporize a person's life.

It seems to me, given the long-term intimacy of these people, that the rational response would have been to say, "See ya later babe. I'm out of here. Don't call me again." Why a courtroom? What transpired in Virginia seems like a vicious, mean-spirited act, intended to do exactly what it did. At the end, the woman said she felt "vindicated." Were her motives ever about "vindication," or the redress of any crime?

Well yeah, you say, but he pleaded guilty. But just because Albert pleaded guilty, he's not necessarily guilty of any criminal behavior. He's certainly guilty of arrogance in the extreme. He knew the entire biting deal was real, yet he publicly lied to his employer, NBC, saying he was "100% innocent." He was guilty of great selfishness, grossly dragging his family and fiancee along on every public occasion, a path he knew was filled with moral landmines, lethal to him and his family.

I'm not saying Albert was a victim. The final results -- getting fired and paying only god knows what kind of price in his personal life -- were all the direct results of poor, ego-driven decisions. What I'm saying is this: Once the charges were made (you can't throw a skunk in the jury box, goes the courtroom adage, and then tell them they didn't smell it...), Albert was in a total lose-lose situation.

Do you want to wear your mom's garter belt with a nice sharp choker collar around your neck and, to keep you quiet, Spot's leather muzzle around your mouth? That's okay by me. Is there anyone reading this who would want their sexual play broadcast and discussed by the entire nation? For an average person, it would be humiliating. For a public person, it spells a destroyed reputation, a wrecked life and, for Albert, a maze with no escape. His only choices were to admit, as soon as the charges were made, that he was some kind of a pervert, hoping he didn't lose everything right there, or to stall and hope it all went away. Once the legal process begins, it's hard to stop.

Realizing, too late, the trap he was in, he quit and accepted a plea bargain. Should he have settled this thing long ago? I would have. Maybe this person never had a settlement in mind. In any case, Albert had a lot at stake and I suppose his ego said he could bluff his way through. He didn't hurt anybody, though, at least not hurt in the sense that would justify the fact that he's going to pay a far greater price than Mike Tyson did for rape. And his punishment will be far greater than Lawrence Phillips paid, even though Phillips was guilty of a vicious assault. But these people, along with the rest of the sports page Mafia, are the athletes, the stars.

The hard truth is, Albert's no more guilty than lots of us. But, he's very visible. He pissed off the wrong person. He got caught, and he's easily replaceable.

Well, so it's not a fair world. Still, it's wrong that a personal grievance, obviously running far deeper than the words on a legal complaint, can be settled in our courts, the outcome being a punishment far greater than the crime, if there was any at all, ever warranted.