Athletes only reality really just a fantasy
Fantasy collided with reality during the NFL during the first week of NFL training camps.
The league doesn't like that, preferring to view the real world as huge crowds, leggy cheerleaders and dollar signs.
In the NFL's world, the worst thing that can happen is a career-ending ailment that leaves a player wealthy instead of fabulously wealthy.
Devin Hester lived in mortal fear of that happening to him, so he held out of Bears training camp for a couple of days and allegedly faked a hamstring injury after reporting.
For his trouble Hester was awarded a four-year contract extension with a guaranteed $15 million.
Only in America, or at least American football.
Meanwhile, a Lions seventh-round draft choice would have died to report to camp on time for the measly $445,000 annual salary Hester was owed for the two remaining seasons on his original contract.
Instead, sometime during the next two years the aspiring football player might die on a real battlefield halfway around the planet.
West Point graduate Caleb Campbell's primary employer had a change of heart and mind and told him he couldn't pursue his secondary occupation.
It should be noted that Hester's rear end belongs to the Chicago Bears and Campbell's belongs to the United States Army.
Major difference. In sports a contract is as serious as the lead in the pencil it's signed with. In the military it's as serious as the lead in an improvised explosive device.
As Hester did, Campbell participated in Lions minicamp and other off-season football activities. The Army permitted him to and added that he could play this season if he made the team in training camp.
The Army's reasoning was 2nd Lt. Campbell was more valuable as a publicity stunt than as an air defense artilleryman.
But when training camps opened, Hester refused to report to the Bears and Campbell was told he couldn't report to the Lions.
These two men are close in age and each had two years remaining on a commitment, one to football and the other to the military.
The similarities end there. In the Army a signature on a contract is a promise. In the NFL it's little more than an autograph.
The reality most of us live with is a contract is a contract. In sports it becomes optional dependent on whim. How unsettling that everyman is closer to military reality than sports reality.
College athletics should reinforce society's ethics, but coaches and universities conspire to make agreements meant only to fool the public.
Major League Baseball has its own commitment phobias, like Manny Ramirez declining to face a couple of tough right-handed pitchers despite his $20 million annual salary.
To persuade Hester to honor his signed contract, the Bears had to give him $15 million that might become as much as $40 million.
Teams all around the NFL are collapsing into similar never-minds. Like, it wasn't unusual when the Bears extended Brian Urlacher's contract just so he wouldn't bring a bad attitude to work.
Meanwhile, Campbell will spend the next two years in the Army - as he probably should after agreeing to do so - perhaps in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Hopefully reality and fantasy will collide again in 2010 if Caleb Campbell finally reaches the NFL and tackles Devin Hester on a kickoff.