ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 13, 1997 TAG: 9701130093
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GAY MEREDITH
AS A VIRGINIA Tech fan, I was offended by Nikki Giovanni's Dec 26 letter to the editor, ``Tech football team deserves fair play.'' I grew up in the shadow of Tech and have loved it as long as I can remember.
We listened as a family to Tech basketball on the radio in the '60s; I attended games when Tech was an unheard-of cow college. When my siblings and their families get together, there are represented seven Tech degrees besides my own. As a staff member for more than 20 years, I've watched Tech's growth and expanding recognition with personal pride.
In the past two years, I've been saddened and embarrassed by the legal problems of some football-team members, and by Tech's initial failure to take a swift and firm stand on the infractions. I find no anti-Tech bias in how The Roanoke Times has reported these events. The newspaper has been more generous than alumni, staff members and football fans when we talk among ourselves, and the Internet has buzzed with Tech jokes.
Like Giovanni, I am proud to be a Hokie. Apparently, though, my expectations for my alma mater are higher than hers. I watched our team go up against Nebraska in the Orange Bowl with mixed emotions: pride that it had come so far; disappointment that its best wasn't enough, despite Herculean efforts from so many players; and anger at teammates who selfishly betrayed these young athletes and their coach, and who, by their own irresponsible behavior, left the team without the depth it needed to withstand the Cornhuskers.
This defeat wasn't a consequence of bad reporting or negative public opinion, but of individuals unwilling to reflect Hokie pride in their personal lives - despite fat scholarships and athletic recognition.
I love football, but I do not accept Giovanni's implication that the ``changing status and accompanying pressures that a successful program brings'' mandate football players to act as other than law-abiding citizens. All sports fans are familiar with college and professional teams that appear to endorse this fallacy. I am sure Nicole Brown Simpson understood it well.
We are also familiar with programs like Duke's, where the coach refused to allow the Final Four championship banner hung until one of his graduating seniors and Dream Team Olympians cleared up an incomplete course and earned his degree before leaving for the National Basketball Association.
Duke's basketball players reflect great pride in the team uniform they wear. Which model would Giovanni prefer Tech to emulate? I opt for the model of personal integrity, teamwork and academic excellence.
We don't need the negative aspects of a football program where the cast reads like one for a tragic drama: a dedicated coach who is perhaps too softhearted for his own good; an athletic director who appears to side with players from major sports, although they physically gang up on an athlete from a minor sport; a provost who apparently misrepresents the truth to a distraught female student so that more football games can be won; a university president forced to involve himself in discipline of the football team; honorable players so frustrated by their peers' actions that they lash out in televised interviews.
Youth, as Giovanni says, may be about exuberance, excitement and possibilities, but none of these justify violence or other alleged illegal acts against fellow students or the public.
Athletes who accept scholarships have a responsibility to their team, coach, school and every fan who has spent a dime in support of those scholarships. Any player suspended for a second behavioral infraction deserves to have his scholarship revoked and the part already spent repayable to Tech as a result of his breach of contract.
Respect goes much deeper than the issue of guilt or innocence determined in a court of law. Our legal system was designed to allow some of the guilty to go free rather than wrongfully punish some of the innocent. Players who make enough personal mistakes to warrant legal indictments are so far beyond the limits of reasonable behavior that they become a liability rather than an asset - regardless of athletic abilities.
No, Ms. Giovanni, The Roanoke Times didn't contribute to recent legal woes at Tech. No one ``slung arrows at young men to make them feel alone, unappreciated and unloved.'' No one elected to destroy any player's reputation through a policy of ``if it doesn't work one year with one woman, let's try another year with another.''
The sad reality is that what has happened is the result of individual actions on the part of players who seem to have placed their arrogance above team loyalty, their whims above the law, and others' rights secondary to an ill-placed belief that Tech is required to forgive football players anything.
Apparently, some people mistake a football scholarship for a predator's license against society. The selfish, greedy, irresponsible behavior of a few have given the entire program a black eye and may have cost us that coveted Orange Bowl victory.
I salute the players who have upheld the values of personal integrity. I applaud the heart and dedication I saw against a fine Nebraska team. Now, I hope Coach Frank Beamer and all those associated with the football program will continue to back away from the temptation to put winning over how we play the game.
Gay Meredith of Snowville is an engineer in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech.
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