A Teachable Moment

Two Notre Dame Football players were arrested early Thursday morning stemming from a run in with local law enforcement in South Bend, IN. The two young men, quarterback Tommy Rees and Linebacker Carlo Calabrese, were at a party celebrating the end of the school year and had been drinking. Both players ran from the party when police arrived, and were eventually caught. Calabrese, who is 21 years old, was released on bond the night of the arrest, and Rees, 19, was charged with 4 misdemeanors, including consumption by a minor and resisting arrest.

Tommy and Carlo messed up. Even though under-age drinking is commonplace at colleges and universities around the country, Tommy should not have been drinking. Neither of them should have run away. It was a mistake...period. But because of the dynastic nature of the program they play for, the whole country was watching as the news of the incident came out.

Being a Notre Dame Football player is a blessing and a curse. Players get to play in fabulous facilities, in front of sold out crowds, and get a top rate education while they are at it, but they sacrifice a certain level of privacy. If you wear the blue and gold, everyone knows who you are, and because of the history of the university, people have high expectations of your behavior. Not only is there a level of expectation by “outsiders” who look on seemingly waiting for scandals to break, but there is a great responsibility to teammates, coaches and the fine university that is represented every day…not just on Saturday afternoons. Is this level of scrutiny fair? Probably not. Is it part of the job description that comes with signing a four year letter of intent to play for the University of Notre Dame? Absolutely. In our ever-increasingly social and technological world, the spotlight shines brighter, and the expectations on and off the field grow higher. And when things are good, they are great. But when they are bad, they are horrid. Public adoration and scrutiny come only in excess when you play for the Irish.

But something we forget is that, despite the fame, these players are still very much kids. They appear on ESPN, they have thousands of followers on Twitter, and have legions of fans, but they are still growing in the same way that all other college students are. They pull all-nighters in finals week. They break up with their girlfriends. They take courses that challenge their world views. They doubt their own abilities. They search for ways to use their gifts in our world of need. They make mistakes. Although the public media builds them to be titans among men, they are on the same journey of discovery as everyone else. This isn’t to say that their behavior is acceptable. Even if they weren’t Notre Dame student-athletes, their actions still would have brought embarrassment to the team, the university and the entire university community at large. It only confirms their adolescence and budding cognitive development.

As we confront this issue of these young men wrapped up in a bad situation, let us step back from the temptation to build them into something more than they are. Tommy and Carlo made bad decisions. Instead of moving quickly to condemnation, let us support them and the administration, as they try to move from a bad situation, into what will hopefully be a teachable moment that will help them GROW not only as athletes, but as young men.