A rant that has nothing to do with stealing signs
I ranted a couple of weeks ago during the sports talk radio show I host.
I don’t normally rant. It doesn’t fit my personality and I am turned off by people who rant for a living.
So my rants are rare.
The story about the University of Michigan’s sign-stealing allegations had broken the day before and I found myself openly rooting for harsh punishment against the program.
It’s worth pointing out that I’m not a Michigan fan and I’m not a Michigan hater. I appreciate that the program has won at a high level recently but I’m not predisposed to want good or bad things for the team.
But I began thinking about the likely path to this story. Typically, allegations make their way to the NCAA (the sport’s rulemaker and rulekeeper) and those allegations are investigated. Months later, the school typicallly receives a formal letter of inquiry. The school has an opportunity to respond within a couple of months and then we hear about some inconsequential penalty two or three years after the allegations are made public.
In this instance, at least some documentation exists to support the notion that Michigan gained a competitive advantage over its opponents THIS SEASON, a season that is still being played.
So, it angered me that it was likely that nothing would be done to punish a program that appears to have veered so far from the rules. Sign stealing has always been a thing in sports, but the scope of the Michigan operation appears to go well beyond what is considered acceptable.
Of course now we know that the Big Ten Conference got involved and has suspended Head Coach Jim Harbaugh for three games and a court date is set for the end of the week to determine whether Michigan is granted a temporary restraining order to keep the punishment from being meted out to conclusion.
So actually, this is the one instance where justice may actually be served in the same time frame alleged improprieties took place.
But my anger really didn’t have anything to do with Michigan or sign stealing. The Michigan story was a reminder to me that no one is held accountable for anything anymore.
A society can’t function if enough people believe they can operate outside certain parameters without consequence.
How many videos of large groups of people pillaging department stores in the middle of big cities do we need to see before we realize this can come to no good end?
When the people that we elect to prosecute wrongdoing decide on their own that petty theft isn’t worth prosecuting, what’s next? (That DA has since rescinded that wrongheaded policy.)
And this culture of no consequences crosses all socioeconomic lines. I wrote in a recent post that corporations are almost never held accountable for employing illegals even though it is widespread and expressly against the law.
Numbers are hard to find but between April of 2018 and March of 2019, 11 individuals nationwide (and no corporations) were prosecuted for employing illegals.
My parents always told me that my actions have consequences. Do our children believe that today based on what they constantly see?
Grace is a foundation of my faith. Grace tells me that my salvation isn’t deserved, it’s Christ’s sacrifice that secured my eternity, not what I’ve done. I’m thankful for grace. Thanks to grace, my actions don’t have the deserved ultimate consequence.
That same God who gave us grace also gave us an order of things because He knows us better than we know ourselves. Our hearts and minds will take us as far to the edge as we think we can go and not face consequences.
Society is degrading to the point that — if things don’t change soon — we’ll fall over the edge.
So a simple college football sign-stealing story doesn’t mean all that much, but it just has me thinking about how close society is to tossing away the rational order of things. I worry about where that will take us.