We’ve all heard about Cam Newton by now. And if you haven’t here’s a little background.
He’s basically a tremendous football player. I won’t go into all the flowery descriptions of his play or wax poetic about his performance on the gridiron. He’s just a heck of a football player. He has also been in some trouble recently.
Here are the FACTS: A guy who played at Mississippi State 30 years ago received a call from another guy who played for the Bulldogs decades in the past who was soliciting money. This man claimed to have been told by Cam Newton’s father, Cecil, that Cam would play football at Mississippi State for almost $200,000.
These simple facts started a lot of rumors and brought instant judgment upon Cam Newton from the vulturous multitude out there who have nothing better to do with their lives than watch sensationalist news channels. Even if the allegations were unfounded, there had to be SOMETHING there. Right? I mean usually when someone’s accused of murder or rape for example, even if they are acquitted on lack of evidence, they were still getting drunk and brawling or committing adultery or SOMETHING. Right?
That’s the way the thinking goes. Even if that guy didn’t do everything he is accused of, he still probably did SOMETHING unsavory. We have proof that he’s not a perfect human being like our other sports idols. He is not a messianic Peyton Manning or Drew Brees, those immaculate paragons of morality who were conceived with an unnatural level of athletic ability in place of their original sin.
Recall the FACTS I have presented to you. Everything else available to the general public is rumor and innuendo. The NCAA, college athletics’ governing body, launched an investigation. What facts they uncovered we do not know. All we know is their conclusions. They determined that they had sufficient evidence to prove that Cam Newton’s father solicited money from Mississippi State in exchange for his son’s football services. They concluded that the evidence proved nothing beyond that. They could not prove that Cam Newton ever knew about these money-soliciting attempts. They cannot prove that Auburn University, where Newton ended up, ever knew about this pay-for-play scheme or ever payed money to anyone as an enticement for the Heisman winning quarterback. And it’s pretty much proved beyond a doubt that Mississippi State never paid money and furthermore immediately reported Cecil Newton’s antics to the NCAA.
Where does this leave us? Were we in Europe, perhaps we could condemn Cam Newton by plebiscite, strip him of his accolades, and parade him through the streets in shame. However, we live in America, where innocence until proven guilty is a noble cornerstone of our society, one of the bastions that elevates us to some degree of moral superiority over many other countries. We are supposed to be “enlightened”. If we believe any of this, if we really do have a higher moral standard, then why must we travel thousands of miles across the country to remove a speck from Cam Newton’s eye. Why not pull the proverbial plank from ours? Let’s not be blinded by assumption. Let not gossip, malice, or jealousy discolor our vision. Embrace innocence until proven guilty. Sure, Cecil seems like an unseemly character. Sure, Cam Newton is probably a spoiled young man. Guess what? He’s a blue-chip Division I college athlete. With the amount of pampering these kids get, they mostly are spoiled young men. We already knew this was a distinct possibility. We already knew that a 21-year-old might just happen to be unwise, immature, imprudent, etc. Nothing in the Cam Newton saga should have changed our perception of him.
Many were outraged when the NCAA ruled that Newton was eligible to continue playing this year for Auburn. They asked “How can he NOT be guilty?” Sure, you didn’t find “evidence” but who needs evidence when you can surmise? When the NCAA said Newton was eligible because he didn’t know about his father’s activities, many shouted “Loophole!” I ask “Where?” Where is the loophole? What loophole are you talking about? Anyone can go claim to represent a college prospect and ask for money? Should that non-participant be guilty by association? Can he really be held responsible for the actions of everyone else? The NCAA said that Auburn and Newton are both innocent in the matter. Or more precisely, not guilty. Sure, they weren’t able to prove innocence, but neither does our legal system. If “not guilty” is good enough for society as a whole, it should be good enough for college eligibility. If the athlete in question and his school are both found not to have done anything illicit, WHERE is the violation? Cam’s father isn’t playing anywhere. Mississippi State isn’t paying any money to anyone. Where is the violation? What transgression has been PROVEN by FACTS? None.
Let’s not assume. A bunch of kids at Duke had their college lacrosse careers ruined by the assumption that when a black woman accuses bratty rich white kids of sexual assault, it must be true. One of my favorite books is To Kill A Mockingbird (I’ve read it cover to cover multiple times and I HIGHLY recommend it). It amuses me to no end that black and white have flipped in modern society. As the book brilliantly illustrates, it used to be that a poor working black man was guilty until proven innocent. Now the rich white party boys are. These sorts of assumptions, which fly in the face of “innocent until proven guilty” and American standards in general, have the power to ruin innocent lives. Sure, you might catch more guilty people. But destroying the inculpable is not acceptable collateral damage. It’s not our right to immolate our chosen scapegoats on a pyre of self-righteousness, kindled by scandalous gossip.
Cam Newton is not white and does not come from a rich family. But he is privileged, and the same general breed of assumption and possibly class envy which doomed the Duke lacrosse players almost doomed him. And it may doom future athletes, as the NCAA is considering closing the imaginary loophole through which Cam Newton supposedly writhed his way, as if it were just another narrow alley through the defense that he darted through on his way to the endzone. Maybe “To Kill A Mockingbird”, which is set in Alabama, close to the Auburn University campus, can teach us a lesson. Maybe the Duke lacrosse incident can teach us a lesson. Whatever the hated class at the time is, whether the poor black man, the rich white boy, or the pampered athlete, it must be treated on an equal footing to anyone else. We have to rid our mind of assumptions and make sure to give Tom Robinson, Duke lacrosse, and Cam Newton their fair shakes.
By the way, Dabo Swinney, if you’re reading this, give me $200,000 and I’ll make sure my boy Jadaveon Clowney plays football for Clemson next fall. I’m pretty tight with that freshman phenom. Pinky promise.