She’s a liar, cheat, committed check fraud and is eternally disgraced. A federal judge, legions of sports writers, talk jocks, track buffs, pundits and the alphabet soup of track federations all agreed that track’s one-time reigning queen Marion Jones deserved to be locked up for her crimes. Even a contrite Jones agreed that she should do time. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have the right to ask President Bush for a pardon -- or even get one.
That, of course, won’t happen. Even if Douglas G. Logan, chief executive officer of USA Track & Field, hadn’t written a bellicose open letter to Bush pillorying Jones as a cheat, liar and a disgrace to the sport, virtually ordering Bush to toss her petition for the pardon in the trash, this is an Olympic year, and the track bigwigs are doing everything they can to sell the public on the notion that they have run the big cheaters out of the sport. The memory of Jones’ public tumble and the terrible image that she represents is still much too fresh. Jones has a better chance of winning the Big Spin Lotto without buying a ticket than getting the pardon.
However, Jones still can make a credible case for a pardon. A pardon wouldn’t wipe away her conviction; it only means that she couldn’t be sued for her criminal misdeeds. She’s also a victim of the old, time-tested double standard; in this case, a gender and celebrity double standard. She’s a woman, and, for a time, she was the highest profile name in the track and field world. This was more than enough to ensure that she would be slapped up on the neon-lit poster as the poster girl for all that’s evil and corrupt in track and field. The problem with that is that there are others who are just as deserving of being slapped on that same poster with her, and few if any of them are. Despite all the saber-rattling by track officials about busting the other track cheaters, she’s still the only known track offender who has actually done hard jail time for her offense. The jail time is not the only smackdown Jones has gotten.
She gave her medals back voluntarily. The International Association of Athletics Federation wiped her records from the books and demanded that she repay $700,000 in prize money, plus that the other women who ran on the gold medal-winning relay teams with her give their medals back too, though there was not a scrap of evidence that they cheated. Jones eventually came clean about her steroid use, and did a profuse mea culpa. At the time, she didn’t have a nickel to her name. She’s not just disgraced; she’s damaged goods. And when she’s released, she’ll likely be just as broke for the foreseeable future.
Other noted sports jailbirds, such as Mike Tyson and O.J. Simpson, fared much better. Tyson cashed in on his thug image and reaped millions. Before his Las Vegas bust, Simpson, managed to land some lucrative deals autographing sport memorabilia and lined his pockets by making celebrity sports appearances. Jones got a four-year ban for her misdeeds, but at her age, that might as well be a permanent ban from her sport. And there’s little chance of anyone dashing to her door with endorsement deals.
Meanwhile, the IAAF and the U.S Track and Field at one time waxed fat off of Jones, raking in millions in promotional fees, soaring attendance at meets where she ran and endorsement deals. This is the same IAAF that didn't lift a finger to go after some other big time cheaters in track (the Greek Olympic silver medalist runner-up to Jones, for example).
The issue, then, is not Jones’s guilt or her punishment. Her guilt is well-established, and the punishment that she got could have been much worse. It’s really about the hypocrisy of a sport and those that run it who shake their moral finger at Jones and others who used performance enhancing drugs, yet they gloried in and profited from their track exploits, used them and their exploits to strut and boast about America’s track dominance, all the while busily inking lucrative corporate sponsor ship deals.
Jones is no babe in the woods. She knowingly broke the rules and then lied about it. But so have many others, and they’ve done it often with a wink and nod from track and field higher-ups and their big-money sponsors. If Jones doesn’t deserve a pardon, they don’t deserve one either for their connivance with Jones and the other cheaters in the sport.
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Earl Ofari Hutchinson's new book is "The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House."
