Rozner: Change in sports has to start in locker room

Why can't we just talk about sports?

It's a familiar refrain, especially in this summer of sexual assaults and domestic violence.

Thing is, it's not just this summer and it's not just this year. This has been going on with athletes since man invented sports. The difference is now we hear about it.

This isn't ancient Greece and it's not Chicago in the 1960s or even the '90s, for that matter.

And the simple truth is we are talking about sports because this is very much a part of the sports culture.

That also goes back a very long time and there's plenty of blame to go around.

It usually starts with blaming the victim, which explains a lot about how we got here. There are always questions about what she said, whom she provoked, why she was there, what she expected and how much she had to drink.

Of course, it's irrelevant.

Unless your knuckles scrape the ground when you leave the cave each morning, you understand this is victim-blaming and at the crux of the problem.

So how does any of this change?

Everything starts at home, where education begins - or it doesn't. It's not always the case, so the next best place for athletes - specifically professional athletes - is the locker room.

See, it's about this feeling of entitlement. By the time they reach the pro ranks or in the major college athletic programs, athletes are given pretty much everything everywhere they go.

Beyond the big dollars in pro sports, athletes are given free cars and clothes and meals, and they reach a comfortable place in their lives where they expect it.

They go out for a nice dinner and the person who can most afford an expensive meal doesn't have to pay for it.

It's on the house. We're happy to have you here. Please come back again. Tell your buddies.

In every aspect of their lives, reality is hard to find, and once they've lost any sense of it they quickly expect to get whatever they want whenever they want it.

Unfortunately, this applies to their treatment of - or pursuit of - women.

They believe the world is there for them, and many expect to have their pick of houses, cars, clothes and women.

It's just part of the deal, right?

So who's going to tell them this isn't right, that women are not there as part of their personal playground, that it's not how the world works?

There have been many conversations here over the last eight years with law professor Leigh Goodmark. She teaches at the University of Maryland, directs the Gender Violence Clinic and is the 2013 author of "A Troubled Marriage: Domestic Violence and the Legal System."

Over and over again she has wondered when the NFL and other leagues would wake up and get to the heart of this. Goodmark believes the best way to get at the problem is among the players themselves.

"Of the many things the NFL has failed to do," Goodmark said, "is peer-to-peer mentoring."

In other words, someone has got to stand up in a locker room and say, "This is wrong. It is not OK to assault women. A real man does not do these things."

Yeah, it's difficult to imagine. It would take courage first to believe it, and much more to say it to other men who believe they are entitled to all the perks a pro athlete can procure.

That is the real culture and that is the real problem.

Entitlement.

Change along these lines has to begin somewhere in sports, and the locker room is the place.

Let's face it, most coaches are in it to win and make money, as are most owners. The urge to succeed and profit is at the top of the list, and at the very bottom is some modicum of social responsibility.

The Bears couldn't be less apologetic as it applies to the Ray McDonald fiasco because he offered the team just a slightly better chance to improve its record, and they are not sorry they took a chance to get better on the football field.

So it really comes down to someone in a locker room deciding that entitlement is a dangerous thing, and voicing his values to a room full of impressionable men.

Holding your breath waiting for it to happen is probably unhealthy.

But one has the right to hope.

brozner@dailyherald.com

• Listen to Barry Rozner from 9 a.m. to noon Sundays on the Score's "Hit and Run" show at WSCR 670-AM.