In Dallas, There’s Plenty of Blame to Pass Around

A few weeks ago, a young woman and her attorney called the sports department of The Washington Post. From a maternity ward. The baby barely delivered, they were calling to announce that a very famous professional athlete had fathered the newborn.

And why exactly were they calling the newspaper? “To get some pub.� And getting some pub, as in publicity, was the first step in “getting paid.�

Well, in this case we gave no pub. And whether the young woman got any money out of the young superstar, or even deserved to, is something that shouldn’t be reduced by a new mother to sport.

But this isn’t to pat my editor on the back for not involving us in sleaze as much as it is to say that this is increasingly becoming part of “covering� the business of sports as we head into the 21st century. Determining who’s credible, who’s lying, who’s duped whom, who’s silhouette that is on the videotape and whether it’s news fit to print is all part of a day’s work now.

And this brings me to the Michael Irvin-Erik Williams soap opera. While the two Cowboys have been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, the drama may be just beginning for topless dancer Nina Shahravan, the 23-year-old woman who a few weeks ago accused Williams and an unidentified man of raping her while Irvin held a gun to her head.

Tuesday, Dallas police charged her with filing a false police report, a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a $2,000 fine.

Maybe if Shahravan is successfully prosecuted and sent to jail or receives the maximum fine, she and others like her will get the message that the crime of rape isn’t to be trivialized by making an accusation and then recanting.

Even more likely, if she stands trial, is that people will get a deeper glimpse into the issue of sex and the pro athlete than they might want.

We laugh at Britain’s obsession with the Royal Family, but our preoccupation in the United States with athletes and entertainers is no less skewed. Everybody’s seduced into guilt on some level: young women, law enforcement, media, and then in turn the young boys who know that being a celebrity jock can put them above the law, get them most any girl they want and lead to a life of prime-time games and TV commercials.

It’s not exactly new. David probably had groupies the moment Goliath was counted out. But it’s so extreme now.

A friend who played professional sports for several years recently told me the story of how he was advised as a rookie to install video surveillance equipment in his bedroom so as to have incontrovertible evidence against anyone who might allege sexual assault for the purpose of “getting paid.�

We are quite accustomed now to the notion of athletes feeling entitled. As in, “Because I am who I am, I don’t have to follow the rules now, do I?� It’s the sense of entitlement to have their way on any issue that makes a college football player think he can grab a girl by the hair and drag her down a flight of stairs with no fear whatsoever of being punished.

But there’s another side, perhaps even an answer to entitlement. And that’s “getting paid.� Maybe it’s a legit way of fighting fire with fire. Anyway, after Xs and Os, women “getting paid� is the No. 1 topic in any locker room.

Among rich men, athletes are the easiest targets. It’s tough to plant yourself in front of, say, Denzel Washington on any given day. But you know exactly where to find the star guard 250 days a year: at the game or at practice. On the road it’s even easier: at the hotel.

In the last, say, 10 years I’ve had no fewer than 50 women -- some of them obviously under the age of 21 -- call and ask me, “Can you please tell me where the (fill in a team name) stay when they’re in town.�

The Super Bowl and the NBA’s All-Star Weekend are must stops on the calendar for young women looking to get so entangled with a professional athlete that he either forks over money willingly, or, well, through whatever means necessary. Some players stay as far from the scene as possible; others are all to happy to become ensnared.

This isn’t to sit in judgment of either party, just to make the observation that this “relationship� is as much a part of pro sports as an agent or pre-season training. And when it spills out into the mainstream via a police report then media coverage, it’s even uglier.

And there’s plenty of blame to go around.

The Dallas reporter who got the tip should shoulder some of the blame. I’m always always always suspect of somebody who calls a news organization to report a crime before calling the police.

The police should have been more circumspect in giving information, though the complaint itself is a public document available to reporters.

Those columnists who went overboard, and apparently learned absolutely nothing from the Richard Jewell episode during the Olympics, need to be forced by their editors to write apology columns that are displayed in the same space of the newspaper where the accusatory columns appeared.

I, however, am not one of those people feeling particularly sorry for Irvin and Williams.

Were they wronged by Nina Shahravan? Yes, if the police investigation that she was lying is correct.

But Irvin and Williams were not ruined by the allegations. Their reputations were already in tatters. Williams had already settled one rape charge from two years ago out of court, and Irvin had already been suspended from five games after pleading “no contest� to felony cocaine charges. That kind of behavior certainly doesn’t help one’s credibility.

Still, the last I heard, someone is innocent until proven guilty, even if they have appeared in a walk-up, in a fur coat, on “SportsCenter.�

Nate Newton’s assertion that the media reports caused the Cowboys to lose their playoff game is asinine. I like Newton. A lot. But the if so many Cowboys players weren’t involved in so many bizarre activities, the police wouldn’t be so quick to investigate and comment, and the knee-jerk members of my profession might be a little slower on the judgment trigger.

If the Dallas players are so concerned about their reputations, let them go home at night (especially the ones with wives and children) and not to party hangouts. Let them understand that almost always, in the end, the chickens usually come home to roost.