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Morning News

'Basketball Jones' Author Discusses Crime and Pro Sports

Aired January 17, 2001 - 9:35 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: The fate of former pro football player Rae Carruth is in the hands of a North Carolina jury. Jury deliberations will resume at this hour. Prosecutors say Carruth plotted to have a hit man kill his pregnant girlfriend in 1999 to avoid paying child support. The woman was shot to death. The baby survived. The former Carolina Panther could get the death penalty if he's convicted.

Joining us now to talk about the trouble that so many athletes seem to be getting into is Kenneth Shropshire. He is author and professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Professor, good morning, thanks for joining us.

KENNETH SHROPSHIRE, AUTHOR, "BASKETBALL JONES": Thank you, Daryn, good morning.

KAGAN: A number of different cases we could talk about, and we could, actually, use Rae Carruth as an example. Whether or not he is guilty of the crime that he is charged with, he does seem to be guilty of doing something that a lot of athletes do, and that is picking bad people to hang out with it.

SHROPSHIRE: Sure, that occurs, and it's the hangers-on that these athletes seem to attract once they gain fame and once they get a lot of money. It's probably not the crowd that they would necessarily associate with if they were just regular people.

KAGAN: And what do you attest that to? I mean, these should be guys that should be able to have the pick of the pick, only the best people to hang out with, and yet they seem to attract bad company and be loyal to those people, as well.

SHROPSHIRE: I want to emphasize, it doesn't happen all of the time, but when it does happen, it can be the case that these are people who have stuck with the athlete through early in life. If they're from a harsh upbringing, that's where some of these characters come from.

But there are also those that are attracted just because of the money, just because they see this as an opportunity to be in the limelight themselves -- that they can hang on to the athlete, and they too can become the star. They can -- they can sort of get the leftovers of whatever it is that the star himself doesn't want to have.

KAGAN: Well, here's another example: Ray Lewis, the Baltimore Raven -- talk about what a difference a year makes. A year ago, he's facing murder charges and involved in a situation here in Atlanta where two men lost their lives. He ended up pleading to a misdemeanor in that case. This year, he's going to the Super Bowl. What kind of message does that send?

SHROPSHIRE: Well, I think it's certainly great for him, and if this was the wake-up call that he got, that's outstanding, that finally he's taking the opportunity to move forward and move away from the kinds of characters that got him into the trouble that he was in. Hopefully, he was walking the straight and narrow -- it was sort of guilt by association -- and that he's sort of taken his life under control now and said look, I've got to focus on what I'm doing and get away from all this other activity.

KAGAN: And what kind of message does that send, though, to young people?

SHROPSHIRE: Well, the messages young people should get is that they're not invincible, that even if you become the star athlete, you're not invincible. You see it with -- you saw it with Bill Clinton, you saw it with Richard Nixon, that once you get in this power, sometimes you go further than the line would really allow to you to go.

So what young people should realize is that athletes are not invincible either, and these two cases are outstanding examples of more control needed to be gained in these athletes' lives.

KAGAN: Do you think too much focus is put on the black athletes getting in trouble with the law? That situation with the Green Bay Packers' Mark Chmura, the tight end: He's in trouble. He was facing charges of having improper behavior, I think with his kid's baby- sitter. There's a white athlete, and you don't hear nearly as much as you do with some of the other players.

SHROPSHIRE: Well, I don't know how true that was. The Chmura case was pretty well publicized. I think that the disproportionate knowledge that people have of the black versus white athlete problems comes because of the disproportionate number of African-Americans that are involved at the highest level in sport.

But I think, in these days, when the white athlete is in trouble, we hear about those issues about as strongly as we hear about the black athletes' issues. But if we do have any overabundance of information about black athletes' problems, it's because of the larger number, I believe, at this point.

KAGAN: And just finally, as we wrap things up, do you think this is the last we've heard of it, or just by the nature of the business and the money and all the hype and glamour, it's just a matter of time before we hear about somebody else in trouble.

SHROPSHIRE: Well, we've got a big Super Bowl weekend and a big Super Bowl party coming up.

KAGAN: That we do.

SHROPSHIRE: So hopefully, we'll get through this all right. But this is the nature of the invincibility of a professional athlete.

KAGAN: You're right, Super Bowl weekend right around the corner, and you're right, something does always seem to come out of that -- this time in Tampa.

Kenneth Shropshire, thanks for joining us this morning and stopping by.

SHROPSHIRE: Thank you, Daryn.

KAGAN: Good to have you with us.

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