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Commentary by Matt Hickman
Herald/Review
Barack Obama got into political hot water earlier this summer when he diagnosed a large chunk of the population as being “bitter.”
Bitter because their government didn’t listen to them, and as a result, they cling to guns, religion and xenophobia.
The only problem is that people have been clinging to those things since long before government was ever competent enough or receptive enough to begin letting people down in the first place.
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What I think makes people feel better toward their government in this generation is its total absence of accountability. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, not one person in government was fired — some were even given medals.
Crooked, smutty politicians caught red-handed seem to have a bottomless supply of justifications for themselves and when those run out, they hide behind lawyers.
Will no one ever fall on his own sword? voters ask.
Embittered, they turn not to guns, God and xenophobia — those were always there and will always be there — they project their wishes for justice onto sports.
A sociologist might look to see if in times of people’s extreme disappointment with accountability in government, there isn’t a reciprocal raised expectation for accountability in sport.
Because unlike the political machine, sports listens to and adapts to the wishes of its people. And it gets things done for them.
How long did it take to get the 24-second shot clock, the three-point shot, the legalization of the two-line pass, the designated hitter, the two-point conversion in pro football and overtime in the college game? Not long.
Even a college football playoff system, which had to take on the big, special interest money of the bowl system, reached a compromise that has satisfied most fans.
Meanwhile, our government can’t even begin to address the issue of immigration, the one policy that virtually every American believes is in need of radical change.
Instead, our leaders prefer to bandy the issue about as a political football.
The push for accountability in sports has never been higher. Much of it is due to the steroid scandal in baseball which struck fear in the hearts of sports fans to see the difference between government and sports was not so great, especially as home run kings deflected questions in front of Congress like the Corleone Family.
But when accountability runs amok, the public loses its sense of compassion. And when that happens, accountability becomes the hobgoblin, as well as the torch and pitchfork for little, bitter minds.
With two weeks left in the regular season, the Milwaukee Brewers were in line for their first playoff berth since 1982. But the team was struggling a bit, so the team fired its manager. Ned Yost was sacrificed upon the altar to somehow appease the gods of hot streaks. Can there be any rationale other than an unrestrained sense of superstition that could make a team thing changing managers with 12 games to go is going to make them win more games?
I’ll bet dollars to donuts the Brewers miss the playoffs, thus proving the proverb of legendary sportswriter Jim Murray, “There’s no situation so bad it can’t be made worse by firing the coach.”
But this week’s more disturbing example of accountability untempered by compassion is the treatment of NFL referee/Scottsdale lawyer Ed Hochuli. Hochuli flat out blew the call at the end of Denver’s 39-38 win over San Diego that cost the Chargers the victory. In front of as many Invesco Field fans as Obama accepted his party’s nomination in front of a month earlier, and millions at home, Hochuli admitted his mistake and pointed out that the rules prohibited him from fully rectifying it.
As a side note, the NFL has already begun to remedy this flaw in the rules for next year. Try getting your government to respond that quickly.
But Hochuli’s sin of allowing enough air to leave his lungs to make the little pea in his whistle rattle, is apparently unforgivable.
The people demand accountability. The people demand blood.
Not a full day later, the league issued a decree that the league’s most respected official would be “marked down” for his folly.
Commentators went so far as to even pick on his gargantuan biceps. Those biceps were once the paragon of virtue, a statuesque symbol of the strength of the rule of law.
Now, those same bulges are the subject of ridicule and a symbol merely of Hochuli’s vanity.
It reminded me a little of President Bush. When his approval rating was near 90 percent, his unpretentious, folksy ways were just what we wanted to represent us to the world.
Once his approval rating dropped below 30, we pretended that all along we were embarrassed by his arrogant, bumbling cowboy ways.
When accountability is lacking, the result is bitterness. When the demand for accountability overwhelms our basic instinct for compassion, the result is madness.
