“Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong.” –John G. Diefenbaker
Toni Smith is a 21-year-old basketball player at Manhattanville College; a tiny, Division III liberal arts college in Purchase, N.Y. Throughout most of the past season, she has turned her back on the American flag during the playing of the national anthem.
Her protest is one that millions of other people, both here in the greatest country in the world and abroad, in Europe, Asia and Africa have taken up. She is voicing her opposition to the impending U.S.-led war on Iraq. Smith has the freedom to voice her opinion–right, wrong or indifferent–but the real shame of the whole incredibly twisted situation she has stirred up is that she seemingly shows no care for the undue pressure she is putting on her teammates. She isn’t just turning her back on her country’s flag, and thus her country; she is also turning her back on her team.
“Wearing the jersey means you are representing something bigger than you,” Kansas State women’s basketball coach Deb Patterson said in a recent interview with The Kansas City Star.
This is a lesson Smith needs to come to grips with–and the sooner the better.
Manhattanville, mentioned earlier, is a Division III school. They are currently close to the bottom of their conference standings, and their season will most likely be over by the end of their conference tournament next weekend.
The Manhattanville basketball team is a representation of hundreds of other college basketball teams out there: They play the game out of love, but at the end of the day it doesn’t define who they are.
But right now, as we are in the midst of one of the most turbulent times in the past 20 years for our country, Smith is Manhattanville women’s basketball and she is the epitome of a part of sports that is drastically wrong.
“When our players put the K-State jersey on to represent us in competition, it’s no longer about them. It’s about us. That’s where I have trouble with what Toni is doing,” Patterson said.
Why does she have to turn away? Wouldn’t it be better if she just stood there and waited patiently for the anthem to be over; or better yet, how about if she just stayed in the locker room until the anthem is over?
That’s what 60 percent of the people who replied to a poll on ESPN.com want her to do. Of the other 40 percent who responded, 18 percent would like to have had her kicked off the team. Only 22 percent supported her. The poll was put up shortly after Bob Ley aired Smith’s story on ESPN’s “Outside the Lines.”
The reason for public outcry on this matter is not necessarily because they disagree with Smith, although most every poll, save those published in the liberal New York Times, shows that most people do disagree with her. Rather, the upheaval is because the vast majority of the population does not believe that athletic events are appropriate places for political protests. Indeed, they are not.
Maybe Smith is right, maybe she is wrong. Or maybe she has just watched one too many commercials with Martin Sheen in them (i.e. “Inspections work, war won’t”).
But sports are not a political podium, and they shouldn’t be thought of as such. To do so is an abuse of the game, and no one has that right.
