A Tale of Two Randys

Last Sunday, Randy Moss scored the game-clinching touchdown against Green Bay in a playoff game at Lambeau Field. As part of his celebration, he walked to the goal post and pretended to 'moon' the crowd. The announcers called it "classless" and "disgusting", and since then, we've heard non-stop criticism of Moss about his selfishness and how much he hurts his team. He was fined $10,000.

The next day, in New York, newly signed Yankee Randy Johnson shoved and yelled at a news cameraman who was filming him leaving his hotel to get his team physical. Johnson had several security personnel with him, but still took it upon himself to assault the cameraman who was doing his job.

I first intended to post about this earlier in the week, but I wanted to wait to take in more reactions. At first, I found it amazing that there was a greater uproar over what Moss did, when what Johnson did was magnitudes worse, but I wanted to give it some time before I wrote it all off to America's underlying racial prejudices and typical double standards. Today, I still won't.

At most, this is only indirectly related to race (Moss is black, Johnson is white). There are more things at play here. Both athletes are among the very best in their sports, but Randy Moss has had a very controversial background, and many people paint him as the prototype of the spoiled athlete. Randy Johnson, on the other hand, is notoriously low-key and doesn't make the news for anything other than his exploits on the field. It's this, more than anything else, that causes people to hold Moss to a higher standard.

But I do think that Moss' background is the real difference in how these two incidents played out, and I'll let others decide how much race has played a factor in that. From the link above, we see that:

Moss earned a full ride to Notre Dame in 1995 before a racially-motivated fight his senior year in high school saw him charged with two counts of simple battery and cost him his dream of playing for the Irish.

And

But despite all his natural talent, trouble continued to follow Moss when he tested positive for smoking marijuana at Florida State and was kicked off the team. That's how he found his way back to West Virginia and a three month stay in jail for violating his probation.

So Randy Moss, as one of the best high school athletes in the country, spent time in jail and had to attend a smaller local college (Marshall) because of a positive drug test. This is what he said at the time:

"You only have yourself. There's no one to hug or clown around with. You have a lot of time to sit around and think about what you did wrong. I've messed up. It's as simple as that."

It sounds very different from the Randy Moss you hear today that refuses to apologize for his celebratory 'moon'. Why? It's because he left that jail cell in West Virginia, and through many years in college and the NFL, he began to realize how much of a raw deal he got when he saw others who had similar experiences growing up but none of the consequences. Yes, he has a chip on his shoulder, and I don't blame him.

An NCAA survey conducted in 2001 found similar results to athletes admitting to marijuana use among hockey, football, baseball and basketball. About a quarter of the athletes surveyed, but among so-called minor sports, usage much higher, highest for water polo. Nearly 50 percent for the sport of rifle.

He spent three months in jail for smoking pot, while many of his peers got away with it, and now he has a bad reputation because of it. And we're angry that he hasn't apologized for pretending to pull his pants down?

Going back to the other Randy, here's a letter to the editor of the Arizona Republic from Thursday.

Knowing how aggressive, pushy, antagonistic and general pains in the butt photographers and reporters usually are, they often deserve the treatment they get from celebrities. If reporters would act like gentlemen and ask if they could photograph and interview people before just plunging in, they might be treated with respect by people like Johnson.

God forbid Johnson didn't turn around and pretend to moon him. Then that would've been really bad.

The sentiment expressed in that letter towards cameramen can easily be applied to the Green Bay crowd, which gathers to moon the opposing team's bus after home games. The question becomes, why is it that once you have a "reputation", you lose your ability to be judged fairly?