Bad sports, good sports: I really don’t like Albert Haynesworth
My columns are often full of bad people. Athletes who break the law are everywhere, it seems. Yet the law-breaking athlete does not always seem to be the lowest form of scum in the eyes of sports fans. Instead, the selfish, prima-donna types are often seen as worse than any others. It defies logic, but I know that I feel that way as well. Consider the case of Albert Haynesworth. Before last season, he signed a contract with the Washington Redskins for $100 million. A year later, he is skipping mini-camps and asking to be traded. It seems that he does not like the style of defense that the new coaching staff intends to install for the upcoming season, and even the ludicrous amount of money he is being paid is not enough to keep him in line.
I can understand why Haynesworth would be unhappy with the move to nose guard that the new 3-4 defense will require of him. His display of dissatisfaction would make a lot more sense, though, if he were at the end of a contract, as he would then have a real concern that the new position would not best show his skills, and could therefore affect his next deal. He has a significant contract with a number of years left on it, though, and he has already collected over forty million dollars from this deal. Time to shut up. Earlier this year, Washington offered to cut him, which would have allowed him to sign with any team he chose. The condition was that the team would then not have to pay him the 21 million dollar bonus he was due on April 1st. Haynesworth said he wanted to stay, and the team kept him and paid the bonus. After that payment was made, Haynesworth felt free to restate his unhappiness.
The Redskins are planning to attempt to recoup the bonus money by taking Haynesworth to court. In the meantime, his agent is suggesting that the team trade Haynesworth to another team. I’d be fascinated to see who would want him. He has tremendous skill, but this is not his first foray off of the straight and narrow. The defensive tackle had a well-deserved reputation as a lazy player and an underachiever long before this incident. He earned the big contract with an exceptional couple of years while playing for the Tennessee Titans, and it is now clear that his only motivation was playing for that big contract. The most surprising thing about this story is the fact that more than a few players have actually spoken out against Haynesworth, including a number of his Redskins teammates. That’s not something you see very often.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. The NFL Players Association is likely to find itself in a bad position, as their desire for good publicity stemming from their current negotiating position with the team owners and the union’s expiring contract is at odds with the likelihood that the union will be forced to defend Haynesworth during the dispute about his bonus. There is no way the union can be looking forward to having to deal with that, considering how unpopular that position is likely to be with the fans.
Bad sports, continued:
2) As big of a sports fan as my wife is, she is never overly happy when I am watching one of the sports she dislikes, like NASCAR or golf. This story, though, gives me a new appreciation for her tolerance. A man in South Africa was beaten to death by his wife and grown children last week because he wanted to watch one of the World Cup soccer matches, while they wanted to watch some kind of religious show. Seems to me that the family is sort of missing the point of whatever religion that is.
3) I have said before that I know very little about soccer. To me, it often looks a lot like a bunch of guys running around aimlessly. Even so, I could tell that the call that reversed the tie-breaking goal late in the U.S. vs. Slovenia match was a bad one. It looked an awful lot like that referee was either paid off or had some sort of personal stake in keeping the Americans from winning. But what do I know?
Yep, it’s another All Bad Sports week:
4) Jamel Turner, an Ohio high school football player headed for Ohio State in the fall, was shot on Saturday at a house in Youngstown. He is in critical condition.
5) In an action likely to serve no purpose other than to invite the scorn of the rest of the world, the French World Cup team has collectively refused to practice after the team’s captain was sent home as a result of an argument he had with the head coach. Bye bye, French team.
6) You sometimes have to wonder what marketing folks are thinking. The geniuses at the Florida Marlins decided that they liked those vuvuzelas, the horrible noisemakers heard throughout every World Cup match, so much that they gave out similar horns at the Marlins/Rays game on Saturday. The sound was so distracting that it may have contributed to the Marlins’ loss, as they were penalized for batting out of order in the eleventh inning. Brutal.
Bad Sports, Good Sports appears every Monday
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Alan, good post … thanks for sharing.
Re: your comments on soccer, there ARE some less-than-beautiful aspects to “the beautiful game,” and we’ve seen most of them this past week.
You shortchange yourself in your powers of observation. That WAS an awful, inexcusable and inexpliucable call by the ref in the US/Slovenia match … and no amount of soccer expertise can make it any less than that.
It’s one of the differences between American football, and everybody else’s futbol … soccer does not have the a break in the action while the referee (who has already signaled the specifics on the penalty, performs his/her second, ritualized report to the stands. Usually, the penalty is obvious … and if it isn’t, the ref usually informs the players involved in the penalty … but ONLY as a courtesy, not as a requirement.
Re: the French team, you’ll find very few fans crying huge crocodile tears over their turmoil. Many fans I have spoken to are still upset over HOW the French made it to the World Cup Finals, at the expense of the more-deserving Irish national team.
Re: the vuvuzelas, bring ’em on! They are nothing new to soccer games, especially in Africa … last year’s Confederations Cup, for example. And even without the vuvuzelas, you still have the cheering, not to mention the coordinated chanting/stamping/singing/stomping, the drums and brass instruments, the handbells … often unabated from first whistle to last.
Me? I love it … it’s all part of the rauccous good fun, and a great way to put the fanaticism back into fandom.
Thanks for the comments, Jeff. I enjoyed the U.S. victory this morning, although most of the game failed to hold my attention. It’s nice to see the team moving forward, and I know a lot of people are excited. It’s also good to know that the Horrible Call of the Day failed to keep the U.S. from winning this time.