My Opinion
Mike Tyson, rape and the need for societal conversion

I confess: I'm a sports junkie. If I don't get my daily fix of Sportscenter, the sports page and some live action, the tremors begin.

Like many of you, I revel in the month of March, but this year that hallowed month has been bittersweet. The action on the court has been great, but some of the off-court events should give us pause.

One recent event points to an inescapable conclusion: The importance that our culture places on sports in general and athletes in particular is way out of whack.

The event does not involve the late Boston Celtics' star, Reggie Lewis and the pernicious rumors now surfacing about his death. Never, it seems, have cocaine confessions been more chic -- especially in the esoteric pages of the Wall Street Journal.

Neither does the event involve Michael Jordan's return from his Birmingham, Ala., exile. I didn't figure that my generation would be privy to the second coming. From every media source the message is the same: "The hoops millennia is upon us. Let us offer up our tithes and our offerings to his Holy Airness."

No, the event that I have in mind isn't about Lewis or Jordan; it's about a society's ostensible response to rape. It's about Mike Tyson, his imminent return to professional boxing, and us.

Three days ago, Tyson left the Indiana Youth Center three years after he was convicted of raping beauty contestant Desiree Washington at an Indianapolis hotel. Tyson's parole was expedited by three years for good behavior.

Though he has been largely out of the public eye for the past three years, it seems that we never really forget about "Iron Mike."

He was the troubled kid from the mean streets of Brooklyn. Under the watchful eye of Cus D'Amato he quickly conquered boxing's most glamorous division. He became heavyweight champion of the world at an age when most of us are college sophomores.

The only person, it appeared, capable of beating Mike Tyson was Mike Tyson -- and he eventually lost.

Tyson's unparalleled career in the ring was matched, blow-by-blow, by an amazing capacity for excess.

He wore proudly his 11-carat diamond ring. He reportedly gave his $150,000 Bentley to a New York traffic cop following yet another automobile accident. He supposedly ran another one of his 27 cars into a tree out of despondency over former wife, Robin Givens. He bragged to one author of his most devastating punch -- to the face of Givens.

Tyson saved perhaps his greatest extravagance for the bedroom. The stories of "Iron Mike's" insatiable sexual appetite are legendary.

The very night that he lost his heavyweight crown to a now-bloated James "Buster" Douglas, for example, Tyson went on a lascivious binge. He later bragged of having had sex with more than a dozen Japanese women. As some close to him later noted, the events in Indianapolis were inevitable.

Today, Mike Tyson is supposedly a very different man, thanks, in part, to his conversion to Islam. And he will need divine resources to deal with the leeches and losers in professional boxing. The biggest leech of them all, promoter Don King, personally escorted Tyson home to Ohio.

But his inevitable return to the ring raises some very troubling questions and issues.

Many fighters are lining up to fight the ex-champion. Why? After all, Tyson hasn't donned the gloves in more than four years.

The reason, very simply, is money. Many boxing aficionados are projecting a $100 million total purse when Tyson eventually re-enters the ring -- at least half of which will go to "Iron Mike."

But don't blame Mike -- he's just abiding by what the sacrosanct market says his fists are worth. I doubt any of us would turn down a multimillion dollar payday for a mere 45-minute performance. I see students flocking to Sera-tec to score 15 bucks to endure a little pain.

No, we must look elsewhere if we want to assign blame. The mirror might be a good place to start. The omniscient market, folks, is us -- you and me.

And, yet, we still feign astonishment at "Iron Mike's" earlier excesses. Aren't his excesses in some way related to our own excesses? Maybe Mike isn't the only one in need of a conversion.