Weekly Beef — Avery Suspension Bogus

You’ve got to love how many role models there are in sports.

Seemingly every other day, somebody in the NFL, NBA, NHL or Major Leagues is getting suspended.

Shoot yourself in the leg? Take a seat for four games.

Pound down a few diuretics? Let me introduce you to the bench.

Talk trash about your ex-girlfriend? Now that’s a different story.

Dallas Stars winger Sean Avery was suspended Tuesday for a few choice comments about Calgary Flames defenseman Dion Phaneuf and his girlfriend, actress Elisha Cuthbert. Avery once dated Cuthbert and seemed to find humor in Cuthbert’s proclivity for picking up hockey players. When he verbalized these comments to a bounty of reporters, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman wasted no time in putting Avery in the penalty box.

Before you could correctly spell Dion Phaneuf, Bettman indefinitely suspended Avery.

For talking smack about a girl and her boyfriend!

The only thing Avery should be suspended for is saying anything bad about Cuthbert, who I’m a fan of. (It’s because of her acting abilities. Yeah, that’s it.)

How bad has it gotten that commissioners of sports can single-handedly levy suspensions for what are becoming the most minute things? Since the dawn of the Roger Goodell era in the NFL, suspensions have been handed out like wafers at a Catholic communion. Especially in the NHL, which has television ratings on par with 1 a.m. “According to Jim” re-runs, anything that draws attention to the sport should be embraced as long as the transaction isn’t incredibly detrimental.

I suspect the attention surrounding Avery’s suspension has more to do with Avery himself. He’s an instigator known for brash attitude and love of women’s clothing. (I suspect he has some mommy-daddy issues that a shrink could sink his or her teeth into.) If Jeff Carter had said something about a jilted former fling, do you think he’d be in the commish’s office this week? I think not. (Carter, a Flyers center, leads the NHL is goals, apparently.)

I don’t have a problem with an individual franchise pulling a player off the field for “conduct detrimental to the team” (we need a Supreme Court ruling to define exactly what that entails). That’s their right. They sign the paychecks.

But commissioners are slowly starting to overstep their bounds. If you want to suspend players for breaking rules, then go ahead Bettman, Stern, Selig and Goodell. But suspending a player for a few snide jabs at a fellow player for his relationship?

That’s a sloppy call, Gary.