Joba the Latest Athlete DUI

Last weekend, Yankees pitcher Joba Chamberlain was the most recent of the dozens of athletes to have been arrested for driving under the influence.

Hearken back to 2006, when both USA Today and The Washington Post released a list of all of the NFL players who had been arrested that year (of the 41 arrests, 16 were alcohol related). Since then, we’ve seen the NBA’s Carmelo Anthony, the NFL’s Lofa Tatupu, and several others arrested for DUI just in the past year. Tatupu, who had just signed a $42 million deal with the Seattle Seahawks in March, certainly could afford to call a cab, limo, and private jet to come pick him up.

We all know about the Mike Tysons and Adam “Pacman” Joneses of the sporting world, but it’s not just these few bad seeds that are getting into trouble; Anthony had good repute with the league and with the public, and even the media-darling swimmer Michael Phelps has a DUI arrest under his belt from 2004.

So what is it about professional athletes that is luring them into their cars under the influence? Well, let’s take a look into the persona of any professional athlete: most of them are young. (Excluding the George Foremans of the world), the vast majority of professional athletes aren’t of grandfather age, but range from around 20-35. So, what does this mean? For one, you can count on the maturity levels of some of these athletes to not be so high. After all, many of them are kids. The other thing you can count on is that young people party. So what you have is a recipe for disaster. Many of these players are thrown into wealth and celebrity before they can realize it, and understandably so – they can have lapses in judgement and make poor decisions.

What’s being done to solve this? In 2006, Officer Steven L. Buchanan of the Tampa Police Department launched the Professional Athletes-Against Impaired Driving (PAID) Awareness Education program. This program was created “to provide players of the game of baseball no cost impairment awareness education.” Aside from this, a company called Safe Ride Solutions has caught on with several NFL teams. The company provides round-the-clock transportation for athletes or any clientele who have been drinking and need a designated driver to take them wherever they desire. With programs like this in existence, it’s still a wonder how there are so many athlete DUI’s, but, newly catching on, only time will tell if they can slow what appears to be an epidemic among pro-athletes.

Sources:

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=AkRBaiCMQkZ57ljADeSEqYU8R9MF?slug=ap-yankees-chamberlaindui&prov=ap&type=lgns

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/sports/baseball/21araton.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=athlete%20dui&st=cse&oref=slogin

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/nfl/longterm/2006/nfl_chart_12162006.html

http://www.paidae.org/about_us.html

http://www.thesunchronicle.com/articles/2008/05/15/news/3174854.txt

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20080628-9999-1n28rides.html