Column: Jordan Effect, impacts sports' governance at all levels
by GEORGE "CLAY" MITCHELL, Press Argus-Courier Sports Editor Friday, November 13, 2009 11:30 PM CST
Elizabeth Lambert became a celebrity last week because of the Internet.
She's a junior at New Mexico who was recorded punching, kicking and yanking the ponytail of her opponents during a Mountain West Conference game.
New Mexico suspended Lambert indefinitely last Friday in response.
Now, I will have to contend, BYU (New Mexico's opponent during the match) had a few players that had their own set of punches and elbows. So, perhaps Lambert just got tired of it and just unleashed by either punching or using an elbow on one opponent's back.
She claimed that the actions don't reflect her as a soccer player. Lambert's right about that, it's a reflection of her character. Since the going got tough for her, she got tougher and overtly aggressive back.
I'm sure that may be fine in perhaps one situation, but not in athletics.
However, I'm rather stunned that the whole game went 77 minutes before anyone (in this case Lambert) was penalized.
Were there no referees in the game until the 76-minute mark?
Perhaps the refs were just awestruck by Lambert, who was a former rookie of the year as a freshman, and had helped the Lobos win conference championships during her sophomore and junior years.
Michael Jordan "supposedly" got away with all kinds of little stuff because perhaps the refs were afraid to call Michael Jordan out on a foul.
The same thing happened at the Florida-Arkansas game in which Tim Tebow and his team couldn't do any wrong in the eyes of the refs.
Even at the high school level, you'll see teams that the refs don't seem to care for, get called for some infractions that seem to escape the other team if it commits the same one.
Lambert's display starts at an early level. There's no way she decided in one game to do that sort of thing.
That is learned behavior. Lambert must have picked it up early in her career. Since she was never called on it, Lambert continued to see how far she could get away with it.
During the youth league last season, my youngest took quite a few elbows from a single player. It was rather obvious since neither one had the ball, so one can only wonder why the aggressiveness. However, it was enough that my wife wanted to leap out of the stands and get on the court to protect her daughter.
I have no doubt that in the future Arkansas' football team will become the darling of the national media. Thus many, many referees will be reduced to behaving like giddy little schoolboys to give Arkansas a free pass here and there. At that point, fans and coaches should be very grateful.
The best way to combat this sort of thing is to make sure that parents, coaches and siblings do not encourage overly aggressive behavior early in a young athlete's career.
The greatest irony of it the incident, according to her official bio on the New Mexico website, is that Lambert focusing on occupational therapy as part of her major. After the whiplash she gave one of those girls, Lambert might be able to help.
