Society: Athletes become entitled

A local college football player is accused of rape. A rash of bad publicity follows. Football takes a back seat to off-field problems.

Isn't this where we left off nearly a month ago?

For the third time in 2004, a disturbing story surfaced this past week. This time, a 26-year-old woman claimed to have been raped last Sunday by a University of Utah football player. Add that to rape allegations at BYU last winter and in August, and you have a distressingly familiar image: that of athletes on the loose.

Maybe just watching football is too much to ask.

Utah coach Urban Meyer, who can now sympathize with BYU's Gary Crowton, has the unenviable job of dealing with the latest situation. The day the Utah case surfaced, he said he was satisfied nothing wrong was done. But that's not entirely his decision. Whatever the final outcome on the situations at BYU and Utah, this much is certain: Bad things that happen in "other places" have hit home.

"I think (sports are) different than normal society," says University of Utah sports psychologist Keith Henschen, who has worked with Utah's sports programs and the Jazz. "I think there's a sense of entitlement. Society is partially to blame. Kids get the idea — as do pro athletes — that they can get out of anything, and the rules don't apply to them."

It's everyone's fault, then. Yours. Mine. Theirs. Everyone promotes them. The prettiest women date them. The media makes them stars.

Fans pay high prices for tickets. Team owners pay exorbitant salaries. Teachers sometimes award athletes inflated grades. I once interviewed a college football player, a senior, who said he was reading at an eighth-grade level.

We let them know they're something special.

"I keep going back to this: When are they going to realize they're not special people, just people with special talents?" Henschen said.

University of Utah police Thursday turned the investigation over to the Salt Lake County prosecutor for review. It's likely to be a matter of conflicting stories between the involved parties, both of consenting adult age. Whether they actually were both "consenting" is the question.

The BYU incident is more complicated.

Reports say it may have involved more than one man, as well as a 17-year-old girl.