The criticism of Penn sports

One day this fall, however, we were reminiscing about Miles Cohen's harsh criticism of Jamie Lyren in the early winter of 1997 following the Yale debacle. "I don't think it's fair to criticize a college athlete, especially at Penn," Shaun said. "They're not getting paid. They're not even on scholarships. They're just out their busting their butts every day on the field. You can slam a coach because they get paid, and it's part of their job. But not the athletes." I couldn't disagree more. Penn is an NCAA Division I school -- not an extension of high school athletics. If that were the case, I'd still be playing baseball and not intramural softball. Division I athletes are highly talented, and certainly more than one of them has used Penn as a stepping-stone to the professional ranks. That's the way I see things. We are an Ivy League institution and hold to Ivy League ideals, and as a result, many would argue that we have compromised our athletic prowess. We're not about to go and beat Notre Dame on the gridiron, but the Ancient Eight certainly offers highly competitive teams in every sport. I will say that other schools have great advantages over us by offering scholarships, but the top teams in the Ivy League -- in almost any sport -- are nationally competitive. With this in mind, I hold all Penn athletes as responsible for their actions and performances as any athlete at any other college or university. They are not here merely for themselves, they are here to represent the University. Their performances are more visible than the words I have printed. The 14,000 copies of my story per day has little effect on the thousands of prospective students and the thousands of alumni which Penn's athletic tradition has wooed into its corner. My small voice can not override the performances of the athletes themselves, especially when those performances become yearly traditions, for better or worse. Yet a double standard exists. People criticize DP Sports all the time for not being professional. Usually, this criticism comes when DP Sports criticizes an athlete for failing to live up to expectations. It is surely ironic that the people who ask DP Sports to write more professionally (read: not criticize athletes) do not ask the athletes themselves to perform professionally. In other words, the critics of DP Sports ask us to fluff to the best of our abilities -- to unconditionally support them, without asking the athletes to play to theirs. I've heard the argument that because the DP has the largest student voice on campus, we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard. I believe we're already at that higher standard, but the athletes themselves also need to hold themselves to that standard, because their voice is much louder and much more important for the University. I covered the baseball game earlier this spring when scuffle broke out following the four-game rout of Columbia. This incident led to a front-page story in the Philadelphia Daily News and versions of it appeared all over the country after being distributed by the Associated Press. When writing my story, I had to put it in my lead; in fact, the brouhaha took up the first seven inches of my story, which then followed with 13 inches of four-game coverage. Penn baseball captain Joe Carlon sent a letter saying it was "sad that the DP's sports section continues to focus on events other than the games its reporters are sent to cover. Articles should focus solely on the spirit of Ivy League competition and the positive contribution student athletes make in sacrificing their time and energy to represent the University." If I was the Penn baseball captain, I too would have sent the very same letter. However, I would also have sent one to the Daily News and the San Diego Union-Tribune and every other paper that ran the story. Joe did not. I respect Joe's letter. He criticized my story like a captain should -- his defense of the team was well-written, intelligent and it made his point. I don't agree with what was said, but that doesn't matter. On the other hand, there are people like football captain John Bishop. John obviously has a lot going for him -- he won numerous awards both athletically and academically. But when he criticized DP Sports, he brought it to a personal level, making numerous weight jokes at Josh Callahan and myself and numerous "your mama" jokes as well. What John doesn't realize is that what we write isn't personal. No one in DP Sports has a vendetta against any athlete. So when John's letter to the Sports department, which was never published in the DP, came in -- after being circulated around the locker room for a while -- we all laughed and hung it on the wall. We laughed because what he wrote was actually pretty funny, until the same jokes got old. We laughed because we knew that the whole football team had seen it. We laughed because John's immaturity and lack of professionalism was immediately apparent by getting cheap thrills at other people's expenses. John was sticking up for his team the same way Joe was sticking up for his. But John's lack of professionalism in his job is grossly ironic to the same professionalism he thinks DP Sports doesn't have. I did not compete athletically for Penn, yet Penn Athletics has consumed the greater part of my life at Penn. I feel DP Sports and I have always conducted ourselves professionally, contrary to what many athletes and coaches say. We will not unconditionally support Penn Athletics in print, but we will in our hearts. But in doing our job -- as professionally as we can -- we have to take our hearts out of it. If we at DP Sports are guilty of anything, it's putting too much weight on every single contest. For instance, when the football team lost to Bucknell -- as frustrating as it was for the team and its coaches -- we should have recognized that it was a non-conference game, not a do-or-die matchup. I guess that's the only place our hearts come into our stories. When we criticize athletes or coaches, we criticize their performances, not the athletes or coaches themselves. The criticism we take is seen as growing pains for those who want to continue in the field of journalism. We feel the athletes should take it the same way, especially those wishing to pursue their careers post-graduation. Just because they are not being paid -- in any sense -- to play, doesn't mean athletes and coaches should be immune to public adversity. They are growing just like we are.