Is Pacman Playing the Wrong Game?

Pacman Jones should have played hockey. Maybe Carmelo Anthony, too. Or perhaps the Cincinnati Bengals should just switch sports altogether and join the NHL.

That league seems to be the only place in America where two grown men going at each other like Rock 'em-Sock 'em Robots is not an insipid act. In the NHL, you can pop a cat on the button, watch him get carried off on a stretcher, and only get a five-minute penalty -- maybe even while being serenaded with a standing ovation.

Pacman -- and all the other athletes whose respective sports simply do not suffice as an outlet for their aggression -- just picked the wrong game. If someone had said years ago that they could punch a guy mercilessly or even whack him with a stick while the officials stood around watching, hockey might look totally different now. They'd be calling it the National Homie League.

Then again, if the complexion of the NHL was closer to that of the NBA or NFL, perhaps the public would have swelled with righteous indignation long ago and the sport would be celebrated for its speed and grace rather than being ridiculed as the most out-of-touch sports league in America.

That's the only explanation I could come up with to explain the general yawn that followed New York Ranger Colton Orr's lights out clocking of the Philadelphia Flyers' Tom Fedoruk last week at Madison Square Garden.

In the loving vernacular of the NHL, Orr and Fedoruk are goons. That endearing term is used to describe players whose only discernable hockey skill is either throwing punches or catching them with their face. Oh yeah, they're also often assigned the kinder, gentler task of obliterating the opposing team's best player. Nice.

Orr and Fedoruk had a beef dating back a month when the Rangers and Flyers last met. So, just 20 seconds into the rematch, they went at it like playgrounds thugs fighting over a cutie. Only thing, Orr caught Fedoruk right on the chin and the Flyer was on Queer Street before his head hit the ice.

Thankfully, he was wearing a helmet. Otherwise I'd be writing about Fedoruk, the Vegetable, rather than telling you he only suffered a concussion.

For his transgression, Orr was assessed a five-minute blow in the penalty box. Back in November, Anthony was ejected and suspended for 15-games for his weak sucker-punch, break-dancing number against the New York Knicks, also at the Garden. Several other players were ejected and suspended, as well. And rightfully so.

That melee sparked public outrage and re-kindled unsettling whisperings regarding the overall character of NBA players, particularly those younguns among the hip-hop set.

Last month, Tennesee Titan defensive back Adam (Pacman) Jones was at the center of a storm during the NBA's All-Star Weekend in Las Vegas that left one man dead and another paralyzed. While that was just the latest criminal incident involving an NFL player over the last several months, it seemed to be the proverbial straw.

This week, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is likely to announce new disciplinary measures designed to punish players who run afoul of the law and act as a deterrent. The rules were reportedly developed in accord with the players' union, whose members gathered soon after the Pacman fiasco and decided something had to be done about the growing number of legal missteps by NFL players before it began to pinch their phat wallets. In the new collective bargaining agreement, the players share 60 percent of the league's gross revenues.

Where was the outrage -- and the action -- following the Orr punch?

Where was the media condemnation, the incessant replays on all the news and sports networks?

A double-standard? Of course.

Why? Please. Do we really have to go there today?

I didn't even have to play the R-card last week during a discussion about the double-standard on Sportsnet NY's Daily News Live last week because the three white panelists slammed it on the table before I could.

Maybe we don't care because hockey doesn't seem to care.

We still haven't heard a peep from NHL commissioner Gary Bettman regarding the One-Punch Orr -- and that's a shame.

In person, hockey is as exciting as any sport. And while I still can't pronounce most of the players' names, I'm hip to the kid Sidney Crosby (the next superstar face of the sport) and have long been intrigued by the emergence of black players such as the Calgary Flames Jerome Iginla. (FYI, he also happens to be the captain of the Flames.)

But when I see incidents like last week's go unchallenged and unpunished, I think, "Why should I take my kids to that?"

Mr. Bettman: Wake up and smell the sea-change.

Your sport needs a defibrillator. TV ratings are so low test patterns draw more viewers. Your stars are virtually unrecognizable to 99.99 percent of sports fans in America.

I don't buy the tired argument that hockey fans watch merely for the fighting. Well, no one's watching.

In today's post-Pacman, NFL-crackdown, David-Stern-no-tolerance, fan-friendly era, the NHL's WWF antics are not entertainment. They're crimes.

So ban the thuggish behavior, Mr. Bettman, and promote the speed and grace of the game.

And maybe, just maybe, someone will start watching again.