Warning: I’m going to muse about football for a bit here. But it’s not just gushing, I promise. GO IOWA!! (Just had to get that out of the way.) I love college football. Not just following my teams, but the drama throughout the season and post-season. Football is theatrical. Football is theatre. That’s its whole own post, and for another day.
Gossip is a fascinating phenomenon in any context, but at the moment I’m examining it in relation to NCAA football. There is a lot of talk swirling right now around a really great quarterback, Cam Newton, who is the star at Auburn right now. He had initially signed to play for Florida and started school there; but he was playing second string to Tim Tebow. Which means he wasn’t playing. So he left Florida for Auburn, where he’s been starting. This year has been pretty golden for Newton. He’s fun to watch: he can pass, he can run, he can hustle. For a quarterback, he’s a big guy. He’s legit. He’s hot (and hawt). He makes plays and raises numbers. So it makes sense that, for a significant chunk of the season, a lot of people have been talking about him being a shoe-in to win the Heisman Trophy in December. (That’s another strange incarnation of gossip — people talking about you like you’re the winner before the contest is close to being over.) If he continues to play as he has been, he probably will not only win the Heisman voting, but will lead his (thus far) undefeated team to play in the national championship game in January. Auburn is solid. Cam Newton is Auburn.
But the gold is starting to tarnish a bit. Over the past couple of weeks, allegations and stories and claims have been circling around Newton. At first, there were rumors that he and his father, when first being courted by major NCAA football schools, asked for money. Not scholarship money, but money money. Nearly $200,000. If that were true of Auburn, if they’re paying him to play, that’s all kinds of illegal. His eligibility would be void and he would be suspended from play, perhaps indefinitely. The school would be sanctioned. Now, it’s not Auburn that is mentioned in the allegations; however, if he did ask for or take money from another school as part of the scouting process… Well, that’s just bad. Dirty and crass and bad.
So Newton and his father both denied those allegations. Gene Chizik, head coach at Auburn, announced that Newton is eligible to play. Great. The golden boy is actually golden. Moving on. Oh, wait — now someone is saying he cheated on exams while a student at Florida. Even before either of these stories came to the surface, there were stories of Newton being part of a ring of laptop thieves, also at Florida.
Sigh.
Two ways to look at it: First, someone is trying to make him look bad; the timing is just too spot-on. Someone’s just making crap up. On the other hand, he’s a college kid. College kids cheat sometimes. Is it different now somehow that he’s famous? Should what he did at Florida matter now that he’s left Florida? And can we even know that he did it in the first place? If a kid cheats and gets caught years later, what happens? We can be disappointed in him, but does that mean he’s not a good football player?
That’s the kicker. All of this stuff being said about Cam Newton — both the good and the bad — so much of it comes, so fast and so thick, that it’s really impossible in the end unless someone provides hard evidence for us to know what he did or didn’t do. Illegal money? Cheating? Is the golden boy of college football really a rake, or is someone just trying to spoil the fun because they’d rather some from their school win? If he was a bad boy party animal at one school, should those actions reflect on his performance at another?
There’s no way to know. So much of what we hear and say is hearsay. (Ha! That’s one for the quote wall.) Think about it, though. A lot of factors go into how we process information Who a particular bit of information comes from actually plays a major role; credibility often hinges on personal connections and trust that’s built over time. Human beings simply trust what is familiar more than what is not. I don’t know Cam Newton personally but, from what I’ve seen, I like him. I want to believe him. But I don’t know if I can simply because I don’t know him. Only the people closest to him know him, and the truth.
As a public, we trust authority figures. We want someone in charge to tell us what’s up. If the NCAA punishes Newton, that’s a powerful statement whether or not he’s in the wrong. People go to prison for crimes they didn’t commit. That time served changes the way they are perceived in society. People also go to prison because they deserve it. If they serve their sentence, shouldn’t they re-enter society with a blank slate? Haven’t they already been punished? That’s a completely different can of worms, but it’s good food for thought.
Even if his father tried to get money, is Cam to blame? If his father did wrong without his knowledge, can Cam be held responsible? Sins of the father, right? Could he know? And if any cash did exchange hands, we can’t assume that this is a new thing. That Cam Newton is the first athlete to ever be bought. I mean, the NCAA has committees who exist to ferret this kind of thing out. Should he be the fall guy for a huge conspiracy, if such a conspiracy does exist? Boosters and alumni trying to get the best guys to come wear their school colors. Should this kid take the blame because he plays good football?
Because I’m not close to him or to whomever is talking about him, I don’t know what’s true anymore than I know what’s not. I know what I want to be true, but what I want has no impact on what the truth actually is. Wouldn’t it be nice if a golden boy could just be golden? Are we only allowed one Peyton Manning in a generation? Anyway.
I recently had an experience where I felt quite misrepresented. Not nearly to the level of Newton (if he’s telling the truth. Oy.) but something difficult for me to work through and process. I’ve been told I’m at a place in my career where I should probably start thinking about what people think about me as a person, and how those thoughts affect how people experience my work. That I should worry about PR. I think that’s a compliment. But it’s also a load of pressure I don’t know that I’m ready to accept.
A play can be personal without being personal. (Boy, I’m full of the deep one-liners tonight.) The point being: what makes the art great for me, both in the creation and the partaking, is the connections that are forged between all involved parties. I don’t expect people to come to the theatre and have a kinship with me; I expect them — rather, I hope for them — to make that kinship with a character. The fact that my voice is clear in a play does not mean that it represents my personality, my beliefs, or my politics. Even my likes. Sometimes those things enter a story naturally just because they are convenient. A short play of mine called “Cherry Pie” started with me, the writer, not loving cherry pie. It ended up an unrequited love story entwined with a pseudo-fascist persecution of thoughtful art. My politics? No. I do believe that art has the power to speak. But that’s as far as things go. My voice is present, but that’s about it.
A play should be personal. Art elicits an emotional response. Emotions are personal. But should I worry about how people talk about me, when it’s me they’re discussing; me, myself, and not the play? Should Cam Newton? Would it be different if I were writing plays from prison, or if Newton was guilty of something far worse than cheating?
We live in a time when Western society is fascinating juxtaposition of truth and fiction. Intense public scrutiny is combined with the fact that it’s easier than ever to inject information, however true or false, into the public sphere. People guess and assume and then make those guesses and assumptions public. Other people read those guesses and assumptions and take them for truth.
I recently saw the film THE SOCIAL NETWORK, writer Aaron Sorkin’s spin on the creation of Facebook.com. I enjoyed it very much; it’s incredibly well made. Sorkin’s screenplay is an adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s book THE ACCIDENTAL BILLIONAIRES, again about the creation of Facebook. The irony of the film is that of course parts of it are true — certain events. But the characters are the creation of the writer, director, and actors because they have to be. They are taking an educated guess at how and why the people being portrayed in the film made the choices they made. Assumptions are made because of someone’s understanding of a half-truth, or even a misunderstanding of an actual truth. Facebook presents certain truths about people — what people choose to show and tell about themselves, anyway. Those choices affect how others regard them. Isn’t that true of everything? Together Facebook and THE SOCIAL NETWORK are keen examples of how people think about other people. The one provides the information; the other shows how that information can be interpreted.
It should be enough for Newton to step forward and say “I haven’t done anything wrong.” Regardless of the truth of his statement, damage to his character has been done. No one will ever think of him the same way again, even while they declare him the finest college football player in all the land.
I don’t think I will ever rise to Newton’s level of notoriety, and I’m okay with that. I want people to think about what I write because I think about it. That’s part of the intent behind the work. But I don’t think I’m interchangeable with what I write. There are pieces of me in everything of course. Is that the point? Should the playwright’s person align perfectly with the intent of the piece? Can it? Does what an audience know about the writer really effect what the writer creates on stage? What the audience sees?
Cam Newton is a fabulous quarterback. If he’s not a perfect person — last time I checked, none of us are — can we deny to award him for the thing he does not only well but superbly?
Insert hypothetical — Think of it this way. What about the guy who will win if Newton is declared ineligible? It really sucks for that guy, because no matter how deserving he is the prize will be tainted. If LaMichael James of Oregon, for example, wins the Heisman the year that Newton is kicked off the ballot, people will think “James is an excellent player.” Because he is. But they will also think “He only won because Newton was ousted,” or “Newton deserved it more, but whatcha gonna do?” That sucks in so many ways.
More questions than answers, I know. Just what’s in my head at the moment.
Melissa Leilani
