Playing by some very simple rules - sportsmanship - Column

What the hell happened to our formerly pastoral pastimes, sports in this country? Owners are rapacious and disloyal; players are spoiled, ill-mannered lowlifes; coaches are abusive psychopaths.; hot dogs are $6.50.

Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but the level of sportsmanship in America is dropping faster than the balance in Steve Forbes' daughters' trust funds. If I see one more athlete make a routine play and do a wild banshee itchy-dance, I'm going to slap the man senseless with my remote, strap him into the Tony Burgess chair, toothpick his eyes open and make him watch a little bit of the ol' shoe-company ultracommercialism until he pukes.

Today's athletes are so wrapped up in the entertainment aspect of sports that they can't complete the most basic of tasks without performing some kind of on-field, ego-driven, self-congratulatory ritual that makes ESPN's Plays of the Week look like that newsreel footage of Mussolini being oh-so-pleased with himself. Today's players dance after sex, they dance after touchdowns, they dance after they put their damn cup on! I bet just out of habit O.J. did an end-zone dance and spiked the knife into the ground when he was finished. (You are a bad, bad man, O.J.)

I mean, if I have to see Neon-Deion-Prime-Time-'Do-Rag-Video-Game-Rap-Album -Krugerrand-necklace-wearing-Pizza-Hut-Two-Sport-Sanders high-stepping into the end zone like some kind of Bob Fossetrained Nazi one more time, I think I'm going to do the Ickey Shuffle right off a cliff.

Bad sportsmanship has now become just another attitude. Somewhere along the way, winning became not enough. All of a sudden not only did you have to win, but you had to make your opponent look bad in the process, too. You know the attitude: You stand like a statue at home plate watching the ball sail out of the park, you hover over the quarterback you just sacked and point your finger in his face, you drag an unsuspecting child out of the stands onto the court and threaten him with a bucket of water that you know is really filled with confetti. Damn you, you evil Globies! Damn you to hell!

And today's fans aren't much better, either. Their rudeness makes it impossible to enjoy the game. For example, why is it at every football game, even in Buffalo where ifs 20 below in the sun, there's always that guy in the stands with no shirt on? And you know, the guy that takes his shirt off at the football game is always the guy who really, really shouldn't. Not only should this guy be wearing a shirt, but he should be wearing a bra, too. He is why shirts were invented in the first place. He's a huge fat guy with big breasts, and he's standing in his chair with a giant beer in one hand and a pile of nachos in the other--no plate, just nachos in his hand--and he's screaming Jim Kelly's name for 60 straight minutes.

And you know what?

I don't even think he knows Jim Kelly.

And the announcers say, "There's a real Bills fan. He painted his body Buffalo blue.' Hey, hey, that's not body paint--the guy's dying of exposure! How can the fans enjoy the game when a huge fat guy with big breasts is turning blue and dying right in front of them? Not in the same way they could if a huge fat guy with big breasts turning blue and dying right in front of them wasn't there. I think I made my point. I rest my fat-blue-breast-stiff case.

An end-justifies-the-means mentality seems to have infected all aspects of American life. We're fixated on success at any price even if it means winning uglier than Charles Laughton after a chemical peel. Sportsmanship, decency, honesty and fair play are all paid about as much attention as Money Penny at a Bond Girls reunion.

If we look at society as a huge dysfunctional family, then the relationship we have with our professional athletes resembles one between a codependent spouse and her abuser. In our minds, despite all we've accomplished as adults, we're still the pathetic little twerps who got picked last for all the dodge ball games. And we're still so desperate to be accepted by the jocks that we're willing to let them sit on us during lunch. We take their abuse because that way we're sure that they know we love them. And we continue to buy the double-decker tacos and the antiperspirant spray they hawk and allow ourselves to be gouged even deeper on ticket prices and condone the kind of off-the-field misconduct that would get you feed from Caligula's mailing list. What does it say about us when we confer hero status on a guy just because he can play a game?

Why wasn't O.J. properly disciplined after the first time he slapped his wife? Or the second time? Or the third? The 40th? The 50th? It's time to wake up and smell the overpriced peanuts, the fossilized popcorn and the syrup-needs-adjusting, lukewarm soda and realize that the same standards of behavior apply to everyone, and that a wife-beating thug is a wife-beating thug whether he lives in a mobile home still of bowling trophies or a mansion full of Heisman trophies.

We have given these monsters life. We cut them more slack than the jaws of the studio audience at a taping of Hee Haw: And you know something? It has got to stop. If these guys are to be treated like heroes and paid like heroes, then, damnit, they should act like heroes. Wealth and adulation carry a price. And don't give me that "I'm not a role model' crap, either. If you don't think you're an influence on kids, why are you doing commercials with cartoon characters?

So let me propose some very simple rules, rules we're all supposed to adhere to, but somehow, just like in high school when the guys on the football team got to skip assembly on the day of the big game, pro athletes seem to be at times immune to. When you're on the clock, give it all you've got. Be a magnanimous winner and a gracious loser. When you're off the clock, don't carry weapons, don't get into fistfights with fans, don't expose yourself in public, have sex with people who are of legal don't drive recklessly, stay away from the Bolivian marching powder, don't pull a gun on your wife, don't gamble illegally, and pay your damn taxes!

All right. "That takes care of the New York Mets.

Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Comedian Dennis Miller is host of "Dennis Miller Live" on HBO and author of Dennis Miller Rants," published by Doubleday.

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