THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 22, 1996 TAG: 9601220129
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Bob Molinaro
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
Bad language by athletes has become something of an issue since two NFL players shouted profanities into open mikes on national TV.
The American public is accustomed to jocks doing extreme violence to the English language, not to mention corrupting the math skills of our children every time they claim to be ``giving 110 percent.''
But when Michael Irvin of the Cowboys and Greg Lloyd of the Steelers used dirty words over the airwaves, it was as if a sacred trust had been violated.
As soon as this crime against the FCC and civil discourse had been committed, watchdog William Bennett, former secretary of the Department of Education, was on the case.
``It's one more notch,'' said the crusader for cleaner content on TV. ``Civilizations don't collapse all at once, they do it one degree at a time.''
The mistake Irvin and Lloyd made was shouting the four-letter words on live television. If they had said them strictly in the presence of sports writers, Bennett and everyone else might have been none the wiser.
When they don't omit obscenities altogether, sports writers routinely substitute the five-letter word ``bleep'' to clean up an otherwise vulgar or sacrilegious quote from an athlete or coach.
The ``bleep'' is used, presumably, because that's the sound an expletive deleted makes on video tape. In print or on TV, the ``bleep'' fools no one over the age of 10.
For what it's worth, I've never heard an athlete say ``bleep.'' Or, for that matter, &% *!.
Deleting expletives may be the sports media's primary contribution to our so-called civilization. As Bennett himself acknowledges, though, hearing jocks swear on TV is not ``the end of the world.''
I don't mean to diminish the filthy language of Irvin and Lloyd. I wish we had been spared their outbursts. But the truth is, four-letter words do less harm than a lot of the sanctioned programming on TV every day.
The graphic violence, junior-high humor and gratuitous sex of prime-time shows do more to erode culture than a couple of ill-timed indelicacies sprung on the American public.
It's too bad when parents and children are ambushed by locker-room language. But day in and day out, daytime talk shows are far more damaging to the fabric of the family.
All this comes to mind as the Week of Words gets under way in the Arizona desert.
Very little that is said by players and coaches during Super Bowl Week deserves the attention the media give it. While the daily coverage may insult our intelligence, though, most of it comes rated PG.
Before the 1984 Super Bowl between the Redskins and Raiders, 'Skins guard Russ Grimm said, ``I'd run over my own mother to get a Super Bowl ring.''
The quote was printed in the next day's papers. When Raider linebacker Matt Millen was asked about Grimm's comment, he thought a second and then said, ``I'd run over his mother, too, to get a Super Bowl ring.''
Dirty language may be the patois of manly sports, but even football players don't need obscene talk to get their point across. by CNB